Well, I am on a 26 hour bus ride from Lima to Guayaquil. What I thought was going to be a nice relaxing trip in first class, at least as relaxing as 26 hours on a bus can be, may turn out to be a nightmare. The agency who booked my ticket booked me in second class instead of first, even though I sat there with her and picked the first class seat #10. Instead I got seat #10 in second class, even though I paid for a first class ticket. Not sure if she intentionally ripped me off or not, she probably did though. I guess I should have checked my actual ticket when I picked it up. Yet again, South American transportation has been the biggest challenge / nightmare on this trip.
So, any ways, Peru was overall very good. Lima was a lot better than I expected. It's a really big city (10 million I think), so I expected to dislike it. However, I really liked the Miraflores neighborhood where my hotel was. It's a ways from downtown, but very nice with lots of restaurants and the ocean very close by.
Cusco was also very nice. It is probably the most pretty and well maintained city in Peru. This of course is from all the tourist money that comes through on it's way to and from Machu Picchu. I did not think the number of tourists in Cusco was overwhelming as it sometimes can be. They were overwhelming in Machu Picchu, but we will get to that later.
So, the Inca Trail started out very well, a very nice sunny day, that then clouded over near the end of the days hike, but never actually rained. The first day was an easy, relatively flat 7km walk from the village of Chilca at Piscakucho, or the famous KM82. This is where you register for the trail, and get a cheesy stamp in you passport. The days hike ended at the first campsite in Wayllabamba. The most interesting part of this day was the Inca ruins at Llactapata. This is our first sighting of both Inca ruins (we are standing in an old watchtower), and of the Inca terraces that were built into the sides of the mountains. The terraces were used primarily for agriculture, amongst other purposes. The Incas used the watch towers, on the peaks of the mountain tops, to warn Machu Picchu of invaders by lighting signal fires. The geek in me found this interesting as it's just like in The Lord of the Rings books/movies! We were standing in one of those watch towers, and the guide pointed out the watchtower to the south, barely visible on the top of a distant mountain, as well as the next watchtower in the chain, through the mountains to the north. It was pretty cool.
The camping the first night was probably the most pleasant. We stayed in a farmers private field, and there was no other groups immediately around us. Oh, I forgot to mention there was only 7 of us total in our group. We were hiking with a company called SAS, who were excellent. In our group there was 5 of us, myself, Rob Cameron, Ron Pascoe, Russ Husum, and Rob Boldt (whom I had just met). One person from our group had to cancel. Then we only had two others with us. They were a young American couple, Scott and Keri from Austin/Dallas, who were very nice. So, it was a very good small sized group, perfect for hiking.
So the second day I awoke with a little anticipation. This was clearly the most challenging of the days on the Inca Trail. It would be 12km, of which 9km was supposed to be straight up hill to the Dead Woman's Pass. I had done worse before mind you, but never when I had already hiked the day before, and had to hike another 16km the next day, and then another 6-8km? the day after that. So, we started up the steep trail to the dead woman, seeing her profile pointed out to us on the mountain, and luckily breaking for lunch a little more than half way up the pass.
By the time we stopped for lunch, I was quite enjoying the hike so far that day. I was bringing up the end of our group as I had predicted, but it was not as hard or as steep as I had expected. It seemed like the other guys thought it was a race to get to the top first, so I never got much chance to talk with any of them. But our guide Jimmy was often at hand, so I got lots of valuable stories, and questions answered by him on the way up. Also, I took lots of little stops to enjoy the view, catch my breath, and get some great pictures.
After lunch we started back up the pass, and again it was a very pleasant hike... until the first of the trip-killing rain started. I'd say it started as a harmless drizzle about 1/2 hour before the peak of Dead Woman's Pass. However, it quickly turned nasty at the top of Dead Woman's Pass. There we made offerings of stones and flowers collected on route to Pachamama, who is basically the Inca god of the earth. The view from the top of Dead Woman's Pass would probably have been amazing. In clear weather, I am sure you would have been able to see all the way down and over the two valleys on either side of the very narrow pass. Instead the valley we came up from was now mostly covered in fog and light rain, and the valley we were going down into was completely covered in rain. This was only the first of the amazing views to be spoiled by the rain in the upcoming days.
I also did not have a proper rain pancho, and only one pair of shorts for hiking. So therefore I wanted to try and avoid the rain as much as possible. So, with this in mind, and nothing to really see in the rain, I flew down, I have no idea how many stairs, trying to find a break in the rain. No such luck. For the next 3km?, all the way down into the next valley, it was pretty much pouring rain. Only on the last tiny stretch, just before the campsite, did the rain finally start to stop. By the time I got to the bottom, and our second campsite, I was soaking wet, I had a headache from the rain, and my mood had gone from unbelievable excitement for the hike to utter disgust. I took lots of drugs for the headache, lied down in the waterproof tent and waited for both the headache and rain to go away. They eventually both did go away, but my mood was definitely soured.
The next morning it was still a little foggy/misty, but the rain had completely stopped during the night, so it was shaping up to be a much better day than the previous afternoon. That was good because this day of the hike was labelled the "unforgettable" day. It lived up to that label as well. We traveled down from the high Andes mountain planes climate, through the "cloud forest" micro-climates, and into the upper reaches of the amazon basin. All of this in a one day (16km) very pleasant hike.
There were some pretty cool inca ruins, and terraces along the way as well. And, most importantly, there was no rain during the 3rd day of the hike. It did seem to be right on the verge of rain many times throughout the day though, and this obscured some of the views that probably would have been much more spectacular.
The final campsite was at the pretty famous (and spectacular) ruins of Winaywayna. It's a very impressive expanse of terraces, very close to Machu Picchu. They believe it was one of the main food supply sources for Machu Picchu. It's hard to tell scale in the picture to the left, as we are standing quite a distance from the ruins, but it looks like we are standing right at them. The houses in the middle are all 1-2 stories. The person at the top of the stairs in the top left will give scale. So, after a quick visit to Winaywayna, at the very end of the day, we were just barely safely inside our tents, and the rain started again. It then poured during dinner, and was then on and off pouring raining throughout the entire night.
I awoke to the sound of heavy rain on the tent at about 2am on the fourth day of the hike. This was the day of the visit to Macchu Picchu. I could not get back to sleep thinking that all of the views and hiking was going to be ruined now by a day of rain on the most important day. So, I lied there until 3:30am (our wake up time) listening to the half hour cycle of heavy rain, followed by a break, followed by rain, etc. The only hope I was holding to at breakfast was that since 2am the cycles of rain had become gradually less frequent, and each one seemed to be less powerful than the one before. By 3:30 the rain was much less than it had been at 2am. I was crossing my fingers for a miracle!
After waiting an hour for the checkpoint to open, we started the final hike to the Inca sungate in a very light drizzle, so it was not too bad. As a matter of fact the fog at this point gave the surrounding mountains and the deep valleys below a kind of mystical quality. I was able to get some very cool pictures when the mists would momentarily clear parts of the scenery. It still would have been much better if it was completely clear, but it was not a total disaster.
The sun-gate on the other hand was a complete write off. When we arrived, we could not see a single thing in all the fog. We did not stay long, as it did not look like it was going to clear. Instead, we pushed on towards Machu Picchu, and hoped for a miracle and the weather to clear. We did get one amazing momentary break in the fog, just as we were rounding a corner with an overlook of Machu Picchu. I got a great 2 minute video of the fog completely obscuring Macchu Picchu, and then gradually clearing up to an almost clear view of the city. See the pictures for that great video.
We arrived at Machu Picchu with the same fog, and the occasional drizzle of rain. We had about an hour guided tour, which I found quite informative, in which our guide (Jimmy!) showed us around the city and explained some of the main sites. Then we had about 4 hours free to explore on our own. Unfortunately after only about two hours if started raining quite heavily and this cut short the visit to Machu Picchu. I would have liked to see the Inca Bridge, as this was supposed to have a good view high above the valley, but with the fog there was no point in hiking the hour to get there and not be able to see anything.
It was also quite a shock to all of sudden be plunged back with so many tourists after 3 days of hiking with relatively few tourists. Machu Picchu itself was literally overrun with tourists. You could not go anywhere without hordes of them. I was very glad we had already done the hike and saw many similar Inca ruins already. Non were obviously as big as Machu Picchu, but we at least did not have push our way through to everything. I could easily understand why they think they will have to close the site to tourists in 7 years.
So, overall the weather did put quite a damper on the whole Machu Picchu experience. I am still glad I went before I got too old though. After 2 months of traveling, I can say I am happy to be getting home. I started this blog on the bus to Ecuador, but finished it on the plane ride home. After walking many hours every day for 2 months I think I have lost some weight, but I think it will be my last real "backpacking" trip. Time for either retirement or the lions... hmmm. :)
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