Next up was a short walk around the city centre, which contained all the usual cathedrals and statues as well as a stack of outdoor equipment shops. Kathy, Niki and I dropped into one of these to stock up on rainproof pants for the Inca Trail. We tried them out earlier than expected as it started to pelt down while we were handing our cash over. The streets were ankle-deep in water and we were soaked in seconds. Rainy season indeed.
We flung ourselves through the hotel door only to find that the foyer was in the process of flooding. Dodging puddles, I made my way to my room, and what do you know? Flooded. Fantastic, I cheered, my stomach having taken a turn for the worse after ten days of not-rightness. Overcome, I holed up in Kathy and Niki's room while those two beautiful girls moved all my stuff - hidden socks included - to the room next to theirs.
After Nasca's unbeatable awfulness, this was the lowlight of the trip. While Niki scoped out brownies for us, Kathy and I stayed at the hotel and waited for the doctor's diagnosis. Apparently I was housing a parasite paired with a bacterial infection, so he loaded me up with meds and took his leave. South America really lived up to its reputation in my stomach.
I felt almost normal the next day, which did much to reinforce my stupidity at delaying treatment for half our trip. All packed up for the next day's Inca Trail, we drove out of Cusco in the direction of the Sacred Valley. Our lunch stop was chiefly notable for its luxurious bathroom and the Amazonian parrots out front. One sprawling set of Incan agricultural terraces later, we arrived in the small, tourist-laden town we'd call home for the night. This part of the Sacred Valley is dominated by Ollantaytambo, a striking Incan site which shares a lot in common with Egyptian pyramids in terms of mysterious construction methods. Having heard a bit about Ollantaytambo's history - Incas started building the site until interrupted by the Spanish whereupon they fled to the jungle - we took a brief hike up to the Incan storage buildings at the back of the town. We stopped halfway for a panoramic display of Ollantaytambo, and also because our lungs were exploding. Good sign for the Inca Trail.
When the others returned to the hotel, I decided to tackle Ollantaytambo itself, buoyed up by my stomach's sudden neutrality. Up the decorative terraces I went, stopping every three steps for high altitude wheezing. It was painful stuff, but worth it once in view of the three intersecting valleys.
And then came the morning of the Inca Trail and all the accompanying antrepidation. I dressed in my hiking uniform of cream zip-off pants, explorer socks, hiking boots, a t-shirt and polarfleece vest: hot stuff coming through! Time to put those years of scouting to use. One good luck hug from Pablo later, we were packed onto the bus and leaving Ollantaytambo armed only with day packs, duffel bags and Luis, our hike guide.
Oh, Luis. What a character. He teased Niki mercilessly throughout the four days of the trail, trying to set her up with Rudi the chef to ensure good quality meals. This was to be Luis' final job on the Inca Trail, only 600 hikes into his career. We were charged with making it memorable.
Our bus raced around the narrow riverside road, stopping only for the occasional game of chicken with oncoming vehicles. When we reached the starting point, we met our team of 14 - yes, 14! - porters. This was glamping, not camping. The porters carried the vast majority of our equipment, put our tents up, rolled out our sleeping mats, left basins of hot water outside our tents so we could freshen up, woke us with coco tea in our tents each morning, clapped our arrival to the campsite each and every day, and, most importantly, cooked us some of the best food I ate in Peru. They also ran past us all the way along the trek as we sweated and flailed behind them.
The first day of the hike was a relatively easy series of ups and downs, though the altitude definitely added its own challenge. We took several breaks along the way, including a stop by an administrative Incan site. In the early afternoon, we took a turn from the main path and found our lunch tent already set up by the porters. We were fed soup and fried trout, most of which Kathy gave to a passing cat. The afternoon featured lots of walking by the hugely gushing river.
We arrived at our mountain-surrounded campsite in the late afternoon and collapsed onto the soft green grass. The tents were already set up and dinner was cooking. Remind me to bring porters to my next camping trip. The food was fantastic: obligatory soup and chicken with tasty green sauce. The rest of the evening was spent navigating the feral squat toilets, becoming outraged, and determining the best 'natural baño' locations. Everyone was slightly anxious about the infamous second day of the trek but we all got to sleep without much trouble.
Our trepidation wasn't wasted. I'm not sure there are adequate words to describe Day 2. (Niki tried 'difficult' and 'tiring', while Kathy offered 'horrifying'. I prefer 'barely survivable'.) I suffered an inauspicious beginning when woken in the night by a fever coupled with hideous stomach cramps. I dealt with this by stumble-crouching around in the dark, delirious, trying to decide whether or not to demand an airlift home. This little episode, combined with a rainy wake-up call at 5:30am, meant that Day 2 was set to be a blast.
But quinoa porridge plus personalized pancakes - mine said 'llama' - did a lot to improve spirits, especially since my stomach had calmed down by breakfast. The first part of the actual hike was a bearable constant climb. It eventually stopped raining but the stair-heavy struggle continued for a further two hours before we took a proper break. Somewhere along the way, my energy levels plummeted. I couldn't even manage to unzip my own pocket. I've honestly no idea how my body heaved itself up those steps, but I'm pretty sure it had a lot to do with my two amazing friends. Kathy slapped half a protein bar into my hands when we reached the rest point, and it saved my life.
Momentarily. After several precious minutes of newfound energy, the final stage of the climb - supposedly easier than the previous leg - almost destroyed me. I love hiking but the high altitude and previous night completely screwed me over. My lungs and legs weren't doing much to cooperate. Trouble was, each time we stopped to breathe, I felt like I was going to faint right off the side of the mountain.
It took us a good forty minutes to climb the final 200m to the peak. A couple of lovely Kiwis gave us a handful of lifesaving skittles when we passed by, right before they leapfrogged us. Our Danish friend Mads had been waving at us from the peak for a long, long time before we reached him. But we got there. We sat down and sucked in air at 4200m above sea level, which was a very special sort of triumph. We'd spent five hours climbing a vertical distance of 1.2km. The spectacular snow-capped mountain view was a decent reward.
On the other side of the peak we found steep stairs half-swallowed by blanketing cloud. Down we went for an hour and a half until we hit upon our campsite. Knees shook. Muscles screamed. I planted myself on the stony ground in front of my tent until the rest of the group joined us, at which point only our 2:30pm lunch could hoist me to my feet. And then we returned to the dining tent for an afternoon tea of saladas with jam, and stayed there right through to dinner. Nobody wanted to move. It was all congratulating each other and wincing at movement and eating whatever the porters placed before us. Bedtime was 8:30pm sharp.
It was still raining when we were woken at 5:30am by the coco tea-bearing porters. No pancakes today, but we did get savory French toast and eggs with potato. Hot chocolate featured. The plan for Day 3 involved steady hiking from 6:30am until 5pm; it was going to be another big day. We started with one final burst of stairs - a paltry 300m vertical climb - which took a pretty painful two hours. Once we'd gotten that out of the way, a whole lot of downhill steps said hi. For the next two hours, our group was a line of rainbow ponchos using hiking sticks to navigate slippery stairs.
We were all soggy knees and sorry joints by the time we paused for a snack break, but all too soon it was time to continue. Up and down and around the mountain we went, faster and faster as we got hungrier and hungrier for lunch, Niki heading the group at breakneck speed. Our efforts weren't wasted. In came Rudi the chef bearing a surprise cake - a cake! on Day 3 of a hike! - that said 'Welcome to the Inca Trail' in icing. We were more than happy to devour half the cake in five minutes flat.
Post-cake, we shiver-hurried back to the trail in the hopes of defrosting. Within five minutes we reached the Town of Clouds, a magnificent Incan site encased in billowing white, surrounded by high jungle greenery. It was straight out of Indiana Jones, as was the next set of steep, narrow, rain-slick Incan stairs.
Things grew gradually warmer as we descended one kilometre into mosquito territory. It stopped raining. The jungle started looking as I'd imagined, with huge leaves and cartoon-colour flowers.
Things grew gradually warmer as we descended one kilometre into mosquito territory. It stopped raining. The jungle started looking as I'd imagined, with huge leaves and cartoon-colour flowers.
Next thing we knew, we were emerging at the top of Wyñay Wayna, the towering Incan stack of agricultural terraces right near the final campsite. Mountains loomed in front of us, Machu Picchu amongst them, and the brown river roared between them all. We stood up straight in our disgusting rumpled hiking outfits and wrapped our arms around each other, triumphant and achy and enjoying the sun. Fifteen minutes walk later, we found our tents pitched right on the edge of a narrow stone path. And there the views continued.
That night we said thank you to our incredible porters, whose average age turned out to be around 40. Aside from our possessions and tents, these men had carried silverware and silver napkin holders, glass jam jars and full-size margarine containers, plastic seats and juice boxes and fresh fruit. They made jelly for us. Jelly! Using cold river water to set it. And let's not forget the Day 3 lunch cake.
A couple of amusing incidents later - headtorch plus natural baño, oh dear - we got up at 3:45am to prepare for the final morning's hike up to the Sun Gate and Machu Picchu. It was pitch-black and drizzly, but the earliness of the wake- up call was unavoidable; the porters had a train to catch. Queued up behind fellow hikers, we waited for a torchlit hour outside the checkpoint until it opened at 5:30am and the mad rush began. There were cheers; we were off!
We hustled down the path like champions - no breaks for an hour and a half of up-down path with beautiful mountain dawn views. Several prize idiots kept trying to shove their way past on particularly narrow bits of path. For the safety of everyone, I let this go on until the final flight of stairs below the Sun Gate - some of the scariest, narrowest, most sadistic steps the Incas built in Peru. I let two people pass, saw that about twenty more were set to follow, and just cracked it. No way.
Then we finally burst out at the Sun Gate. Although Machu Picchu was almost entirely shrouded in cloud, the landscape before us was still something beyond belief, with mountains piercing through like great hulking spears. The Sun Gate isn't just a viewing platform for hikers; it performs a special function during the Summer and Winter Solstices. On these two days of the year, sunlight shines from the Gate directly into the Temple of the Sun. How Raiders of the Lost Ark is that?
We stayed at the Sun Gate for about twenty minutes, hoping the dense mist would lift. No such luck, so we made our way down the long path to Machu Picchu. The arsehat hikers from earlier reappeared and started singing love song karaoke. We let them pass. We also managed to find a bush-absorbing tarantula web complete with enormous dead beetles and tarantula.
There wasn't any cheering once we were stood right on top of Machu Picchu. I could barely tell we'd arrived due to the visual white noise. As there wasn't much point waiting about in the mist, we continued down way too many steps to the cafeteria to reunite with Pablo and flushable toilets.
Luis eventually lured us away from the cafeteria so we could begin our tour of Machu Picchu. We limped out to find scorching sunlight and - thank goodness - clear views. It was like the postcard pictures, but so much bigger and more fantastic. But even with those terraces, towers and temples laid out in front of me, my eyes were still drawn first and foremost to those incredible mountains in the backdrop.
Back before its scientific rediscovery in July 1911 by an American, Hiram Bingham, the local farmers used to call Machu Picchu a pile of rocks. That's kind of what it is. Except it's also a miracle of human achievement and a spectacular place of sun, mountain and Mother Earth worship. Machu Picchu means 'Old Mountain' and refers to the mammoth spear of sacred mountain that the temple faces. When Bingham came along in 1911, attracted by stories of a lost Incan city, he spoke to some locals and got their young son to act as guide around the rock piles. He then took the Inca Trail backwards, which would take superhuman determination in view of the crazy Day 3 stairs.
It was a bit depressing to learn that, post-construction, the Incas would probably only have been able to use and live in Machu Picchu for about 50 years, as they fled into the jungle when the Spanish got to Cusco. The place isn't actually finished. They started building the terraces at the bottom and worked their way up, so there are still massive stone blocks scattered around the top section.
After our tour we all went and took a million photos at the classic Machu Picchu overlook. Dear god, the stairs; the knee pain! Then I made a quick circuit of the sundial and temples before fighting past swarms of tourists to get back to the others. We caught a bus for all of five minutes until we reached the site of a colossal landslide. Out of (slightly horrifying) necessity, we swapped to a second bus which took us all the way down to the town at the foot of the mountain.
Into the restaurant we went, looking and smelling like roses. And then we proceeded to eat and drink and get a bit delirious for a few hours. A train and a bus ride later, we were back in Cusco, then out to dinner, then out on the town. Until we collapsed.
The next day was all about Cusco. Niki, Kathy, Mads and I headed straight to Jack's Cafe for a post-trail triumph breakfast of pancakes, porridge, muesli and delicious coffee. Afterwards, when the others headed out to shop, I hit up the Convento de Santo Domingo, a gallery-church that used to be the Incan temple Qorikancha until it passed into Spanish hands in 1532.
I filled time people-watching in the main square while waiting to meet the others. In the sunshine, Cusco could easily pass for some town in Italy or Spain with its terracotta roofing and high green hills. All that's missing from the Florence-style scene are the iconic dark green pipe-cleaner conifers.
The others arrived, we skirted an amazing poofy 80s-style wedding dress, and into the cathedral we went. Gold and glass eyes shone from every corner. The main attraction was a painting of the Last Supper featuring tasty guinea pig so as best to woo the conquered to the Catholic side. We then headed over to the Choco Museum for something a little more suited to our Australian palates. Cocoa tea: incredible. We spent our final night in Cusco drinking, dancing and avoiding the local dog gangs. We had a lot to celebrate.
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