Inca Trail: Day One
06/19/10
“Here we go again - back to pooping in holes,” Boxie-boo said, walking under the darkened, cobblestone streets of Cusco before the sun had risen. As a result of our room at Apu Wasi Hostel all night going from sauna hot to ski hill cold, I now know what it is like for a mountain goat to go through menopause. It was a ba´aaa´d night of sleep, further interrupted by someone who could have been tap dancing on the floor above us. I wanted to re-direct my hot flashes into lightning bolts and blast the tap dancer´s feet on fire.
There was no bingo-bang-bang in my heart, only the feeling of my brain attempting to jump ship through my nostrils. Screw this guy! I am leaving! I must have been an Egyptian Pharoah in a past life - Ronamin Ribatronius, the King of Insomnia and Mountain Goat Menopause.
“If I get negative on the hike, don´t get mad, but remind me to stay positive,” Boxie-boo said as our bus climbed a hill so steep, the driver could not leave first gear or remove his socks. “Just say, ´stay positive,´” she added, her voice high-pitched with her arms swaying like Popeye post-spinach. We were on route to Kilometre 82 - the starting point for our four-day, three-night hike along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
The drive went up and down a swervy mountain highway, then down through valley towns. Some streets were lined with cactus, others with homes built within a few feet of train tracks. The area had vast, snow-peaked mountain ranges and low valley farms. Our driver dodged whipped cow crossings, boulders of fallen rocks, edging us passed other buses so tight along cliff edges his mirror had to be turned inwards. We passed through the villages of Chinchero, Urubamba and then stopped at Ollantaytambo, creating a break through our three-and-a-half hour drive.
Inside Ollantaytambo, ancient viaducts ran through the town in small streams a foot wide. Locals surrounded passerbyers, offering everything from hiking poles, toques to coca leafs that our guide said aid in the battle with altitude. We reached the Terraces of Pumatallis (above), an ancient Inca site that had cut the mountain in latches. These terraces, a common architectual practice of the Incas, allowed them to farm on otherwise unusable terrain at various altitudes. At Ollantaytambo, the walls of cut stones were higher, which archaelogists have also found at other Inca sites like Chinchero, Pisaq and Yucay. It was so beautiful, I decided to find a bush to pee in.
Leaving the small town, the bus drove down a tight, one-way path on top of train tracks set between the tires, spitting up rocks. I felt as though we were driving inside a gravel pit, as we continued to lower our altitude, leaving Cusco´s 3,400 before arriving one kilometre before Kilometre 82, walking alongside the Urubamba River, the route used by the first westerner to be shown Machu Picchu.
“We are all family now,” our guide Valeriano said. I thought about this briefly and realized our Mom must have gotten real busy. We were a mixed group: Two Canadians, one Chinese-American man, one British guy, one Bulgarian woman, brother and sister Aussies, a Brazilian man, a Swiss girl and two girls from Argentina.
When we reached Kilometre 82 called Piskacucho, the first of four control points, we had to show our passports while our guide showed our Inca Trail passes. Only 500 people a day all allowed on the trail, including guides and porters. Being the dry season, it was the more popular time to hike as it decreased the chances and danger of rain. I was glad I reserved our trail pass many months ahead, almost a full year, a must to be 100 per cent certain on being able to hike the trail.
Crossing the Cuisichaca (Happy Bridge), our hike finally began, stomping across creaking wood while the cables steadied the crossing. With my first step on the gravel path, I felt the dust rising, the wind forcing me to hold onto my hat, while a donkey bumped its nose into my bumhole, the aggressive animal tailgating a species with no tail, just awkwardly placed balancing equipment. I was already a slow tourist in the world of superhuman porters, who passed us with bags upwards of 25 kilograms making me feel no more masculine than a girl in a wet t-shirt contest. Hey boys!
We battled our first uphill climb, sucking up the thin air like hotdog eating contestants, drying our lips, yet somehow, still allowing Boxie-boo and I to fart, sometimes in unison. It was romantic. Our path was surrounded by massive cactus, house-sized boulders and mountains that towered in all directions, casting giant shadows. We felt our presence, more than saw the trail, a feeling of how minimal our existence is an area that has stood relatively motionless for thousands of years.
“I feel so bad for them,” Boxie-boo said, as a porter passed with a bag so big it went from behind his bootae to a foot over his head. He was wearing sandals, his toes black and nails sharpened. His fingers, gripping a strap across his upper chest, had turned a pale white. Valeriano led the way out front, his 260th time hiking the trail. I wondered, did he still enjoy the hike?
“I enjoy the second day, watching the people who look like they are dieing,” he said, passing a donkey dragging a stick. “Keep going, keep going, I tell them,” he smiled. Boxie-boo did not. Instead, she gave me a disgusted look as if I had pooped myself. “I enjoy this too much.”
We continued, listening to the sound of horse shoes, metal stomping dirt, the clip-clopping ringing and mimicking my rising heart rate, while porters jogged by continuing their inhuman capabilities. Valeriano pointed at Angel Trumpet Flowers, white and dangling downwards with the tube of a trumpet, which he said can make us hallucinate. He teased us, asking who would want to try a special tea made from the flower.
“You drink this tea and the mountains go flat,” he said, as we all laughed. “Then tomorrow, day two will be easier.” He asked us to stop, then pointed at a glacier mountain, known by the Incas as the Wheeping Mountain, 5850 metres. He then pointed ahead at the 4,215 metre pass we were set to do the following day. Nobody reacted. We looked at it the way people look at monkeys at the zoo - it was beautiful at first, but monkeys tend to throw poop. The mountain, instead, had the capability to throw boulders and create mudslides that could disappear civilizations.
Valeriano put what appeared to be a white seed in three of the girl´s hands, then smashed one of them, turning the Fabienne´s (Swiss girl) palm red. It was a bug. We all laughed, while Boxie-boo quickly threw her bug in a bus. Valeriano cackled, as he always did, the way a 12-year-old boy reaching puberty sounds if he was attempting to mimicking a crow´s mating call. Ah! Ah! Ah! The pitch always the same, coming from the back of his mouth, sounding throaty and dry. In everyway, his laughter was contagious.
After crossing a forest of eucalyptus, we reached the Salapunku archaeogical site (above), situated across the left bank of the river. Valeriano explained the difference between reconstruction and restoration - reconstruction involves new stones, while restoration means the same stones are used. At Salapunku, they used the same stones, a sight that has stood in the Sacred Valley for centuries, with no Tim Horton´s in sight.
Recently, archaeologists at the National Institute of Culture (INC) said it may be the resting place for a pre-Inca tomb, while other researchers believe it was a “Tambo,” or resting place for travelers. The remains found, according to the INC, may belong to a woman from the Quillke culture, which flourished before the Inca Empire.
“When the people built the railway, they destroyed one of the Inca trails,” Valeriano said, chewing on coca leaves, which dangled from his backpack´s shoulder straps in a small plastic bag. He said there were originally six trails to Machu Picchu. On day two, we would be walking on actual Inca-laid stones, a pathway cut by the ancient civilization for pilgrimages to visit Machu Picchu and pay their respects to the Sun God. The ancient means of communication, Valeriano said, was through runners from Cusco who would pass their messages throughout the empire to different posts, where other runners continued, between the cities. This means, the Incas were capable to run across passes we walked up with the pace of snails towing a sandal.
The nearby river, the Cusichaca River (as it is a tributary of the Urubama River), was believed to be the representation of the Milky Way galaxy on Earth for the Incas. To me, it represented the easier route, or “lazy people passage” as Valeriano called it, where people took the train to Machu Picchu.
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After lunch, the hike began to live up to its reputation and got tough, but throughout the hike, Day One was relatively easy. “You don´t need Jenny Craig, just do the trek,” joked Victor from Australia, hiking with his sister Yamila. We were walking along a steep cliff, where below, cows mooed and chewed, mocking us with their ability to laz around, and I suppose, use their hooters as milk squirt guns. I thought back to my goat menopause, now feeling cold as the altitude rose, heading from the Kilometre 82 at 2600 metres, to 3,000 at Huayllabamba, a village we were set to camp at. With no other goats insight, I had nobody to head butt, so I released the wedgie from my bootae and stretched. I prepared to continue, began chewing on some coca leaves and focused on slowing down my breathing. From on top a mountainside, we could see Patallacta (also known as Llactapata).
Llactapata, known as the “Village in the Highland”, was located at the foot of a mountain (above). At this site, people were given free food and lodging, a stopover on their religious voyage, Valeriano said. From above looking down, we could see the cultivation terraces, which probably served to seed people and fill the “Ambos” (store houses) along the Inca Road. Its urban sector helds approximately 50 families, Valeriano added, a small society, as the Inca Empire had an estimated 30 million people. Beside the site, local families were farming the same vegetations their ancestors had cultivated for centuries.
By the time we reached Huayllabamba, it was around 5 p.m., 12 hours since we had awoken. This small indigenous village, located on the foothills of small mountains, was surrounded by neigbouring farmland, chickens and wondering dogs. Nearby, were ancient Inca steps, our next challenge after a night set for us to sleep on a mattresses less than one centimetre thick, inside a tent I was too tall for. All complaints aside, our porters proved not only to be exceptional hikers, they were hardworking - our tents and dinner were ready before we even arrived.
That´s all for now.
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