The Sacred Valley and Inca Trail

Tuesday 31 May we headed out of Cuzco up to Sacsayhuaman (pronounced ´Sexy Woman´). These ruins overlooked Cuzco and again huge rocks were gathered from natural landslides and carried up the hill to be interlocked with each other. The Spanish removed a substantial amount of the rocks and covered the whole site in soil to stop the locals from preaching to their gods. One of the stones was over 300 tons.

This is where I will first introduce Kate a really nice lass from Yorkshire, who was to keep the group in fits of laughter over the next few weeks with her skewed observations on the world. In La Paz after a glass of wine she was telling us all how she had seen the Clash twice, I found this quite strange as she was in her early 20´s and was probably about 2 years old when they split up. We later found out she had meant Ash and not the 70´s punk combo from North London, but this was only the first of the Kateisms over the next few weeks.

Kateisms..... Here a few to give you the general idea

After seeing the moon in the sky during the day she asked.... "Can we see the moon because we are at the top of the mountain ???"

After seeing some llamas she asked "Can you see those camels there ???"
But she was right about this as our guide Julio (who we had for the next 5 days) explained that llamas were actually known as Andean Camels so we bought Kate her own little camel called Camilla. This kept her amused for the rest of the day.

We then travelled by bus to the Sacred Valley and another Inca ruin high upon the hillside near Pisac (a small market town), this climb up turned out to be a good introduction to what we could expect on the next few days. Julio explained about the ruins and we were told of the sacrifices made (usually young girls) to the inca gods. After our lunch in Pisac we headed to a small chica (corn beer) factory to try some of the local brew and to play a local pub game where the object is to throw metal coins into a metal frog`s mouth, this game is better than it sounds and is quite similar to darts as most players play whilst drinking. It was then onto Ollantaytamboma our final destination before starting the Inca Trail in the morning, while we there we visited some more Inca ruins and bought our bamboo walking sticks and plastic ponchos for our trek.

That night we had the worst meal of our whole time in South America, most of the groups food was crap and some people´s food never even turned up. There was also a funny incident when the waiter kept bringing out a cheese pizza for Kate (who doesn´t eat cheese) and saying that there was no cheese on it (but we all could see it was dripping in cheese), this went on for about 10 minutes before Kate finally decided to leave and go to another reasturant. After tasting the rest of our meals we all wished we had followed Kate to the other place.

Up early on Wednesday for pancakes before setting off with our bags to drive to kilometer 82 (82 km from Cusco) which was the start of our four day trek on the Inca Trail. We were both a bit apprehensive as most of the guys were a lot younger and seemed a lot fitter than we were. We had also been told by the guys we had met in Pucon that the climb to the top of the Volcano in Pucon was not half as difficult the second day on the Inca Trail, and we had both struggled a bit to climb that.



Anyways we got our passport stamped at the start and after crossing a bridge all of us lifted a rock which was to be carried all the way up so that the Inca God Pachu Mama would make sure that nothing would happen to us. So off we went with our walking canes in our hands, the sun was out and it looked like a lovely day but we were told 5 hours of walking (we were thinking more like 7 for us). We walked by the river for a while and then slowly started to climb uphill. After about an hour we took a break, Louise one of the group had been really struggling at this point and required oxygen. After discussing it with the guide she decided to call it a day, So off the rest of us headed uphill again. Chris managed to keep up with Helena from Denamrk for the last stretch of todays hike, this was to be the last time anybody did as our own Viking warrior was by far the fittest and fastest of the whole group. We stopped at the Llactapata ruins on the way up towards the campsite and all of us managed to get there on the first day in 4 hours and 30 mins. Fairly impressive for a couple of old yins.

Now I must tell you about what our porters carried. Each of us was allowed a bag at 4.5kg. The porters each carried over 20kgs in weight and most of them were about my height or smaller! They wandered past us shouting ´Hola´ or ´Vamos´ (Let´s go) and off they hurried past putting us all to shame. They built us tents and everyday we ate like kings and queens. We had 2 courses for breakfast, 3 at lunch and 2 at night. Some days we even had a high tea as well!! These guys were really amazing. After lunch on the first day they even played football for 2-3 hours. Julio our tour guide brought out a football top to play in and guess what.....it was a Celtic top - I kid you not. Mr Reilly couldn´t keep the grin off his face, he wore his Scotland top and along with Mark and Jon they all played for a while....with Mark playing for at least a couple of hours.

At night after dinner we looked at the stars for a while before heading to bed for a well deserved sleep. We were both really worried about the second day as we had heard so many horror stories from people who we assumed were reasonably fit. Most of the next day was going to be a steep climb to Dead Woman´s Pass which was the highest pass on the Inca Trail at 4198 metres, to give you a comparison Ben Lomond is 974m and Ben Nevis is 1,344m.

We were woken up around seven with a cup of tea from the porters and after breakfast we made a move. It was all uphill right from the start and everyone was struggling apart from the Viking Warrior (Helena) who strutted her stuff. Julio kept the pace going at a reasonable level and we all stopped off for lunch after a couple of hours walking up hill with a few breaks on the way. The scenery was absolutely amazing and we could see all the way that we had come up (believe me it was some way up).

Immediately after eating lunch with our stomachs groaning we headed up the steepest part of the hill and this was tough, most of us where chewing cocoa leaves furiously to help conqueror the effects of altitude. Whislt nearing the top Mark had ran a couple of steps at the top to get water off of Dawn, but when everyone started to cheer he felt he had to run up the rest and nearly collapsed at the top, maybe he shouldn´t have played football for two hours the night before. The group were all within 10 mins of each other and a group photo was well deserved before we headed on the long slow climb down (for us anyway) to the campsite. Special mention for Rhys as he was feeling dreadful but still managed to make it up quite quicky and you really did notice him being ill because you could get a word in edgeways for a change. It felt like a great achievment to get to the top of Dead Woman´s Pass even though it wasn´t as tough as we had feared in fact this was Chris´favourite part of the Inca Trail (he hate´s going downhill with his dodgy knees and ankles).



The walk down was fine as you were following an actual paved road....but the only problem was that most of the rocks were not straight and you really had to watch where you put your feet so Chris and I took our time and managed to get to the campsite in one piece.

After high tea (lots of popcorn and biscuits) and another huge meal we all headed to bed early as we had an even earlier start in the morning. Just before heading to our tents a group of us wandered upto the toilets, once I got into the ladies all I could hear from the other side was all the guys rolling about in laughter, Chris was about to use the sink as a urinal before the guys warned him off, to be fair the sink looked like a large rectangular urinal. The guys found it funny and Chris got a bit of a ribbing for a few days.

The first night in the tents was a little bit cold but on the second the temperature dropped considerably and despite wearing our thermal tights (yup Chris looked sexy in his grey ones) we were both a lot colder. We were woken at 5.30 with our tea and then after breakfast started to slog back uphill to Runturacay an oval shaped inca building where we took some pictures before heading further up where Julio stopped to explain the ruins to us. We sat and watched the sun rise up above the mountains and it looked like it was going to be another beautiful day. We then went to the top of the second pass which had two small lakes and one in the shape of Australia had a deer quietly drinking water from it.



The walk until lunchtime was one of the most picturesque of the whole trail with snow capped mountains, deep valleys, rainforest and the climbs up and down were not as steep as the previous days or first thing that morning. After lunch it was a slow winding trail down to the last campsite. At this campsite there was hot showers available (first in 3 days.... Peeewwwwhhh!!!!!) and a bar selling beer and Inca Kola (Yeaaahhhhh!!!!!), so it wasn´t long before we were all singing and having a good laugh to celebrate what we thought was the end of the Inca Trail. We gave a small presentation to the porters for all their hard work carrying all our bags and the food for the last three days.

Next morning it was a 4am start so that we could be at the entrance to the Machu Picchu National Park for 4.30am, well our group made it first to the gate infront of everybody else doing the trail at this time (we think they allow a 1000 people on the Inca Trek at a time). The gate doesn´t actually open until 5:30am but Julio said the views from the Sun Gate would be much better if we got there first before all the pushing and shoving for the best photo location. This is where we found out that there was still a good half hour until we got to the Sun Gate and another half hour after that until we got to Machu Picchu itself.

Helena, Rhys and Oyvan set off at the front with lightning pace, the rest of us mere mortals didn´t do too bad after walking through some rainforest which had a swirling mist below - I half expected Nessie to pop her head up (we were worried that the sun wouldn´t come out) and then clambering up some really steep rocks. Chris was leading the way for the rest of us shouting "steps up" and steps down to warn us because it was still dark and you could easily slip or trip on the uneven rocks, Chris arrived 4th to the Sun Gate with the rest of us not too far behind. The whole group had got to the Sun Gate before anyother group, the only problem being was that the Sun Gate was entirely enclosed in cloud and we couldn´t see Machu Picchu from this vantage point. It was great fun getting here anyway and it was a great feeling for the whole group to be here first, it was a slow descent now to the Pachu Mama´s where we placed the stones we had carried all the way from the Kilometer 82 on the first day. It was here we caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu as the mist started to clear and we all headed down to view point where most of the famous photos of Machu Picchu are taken from.



Our guide Julio was impressed that our group made it so quick both to the Sun Gate and Machu Picchu. In general he gave us a lot of information (but boy did he like to talk) and was enthusiastic about the history of his people which was a refreshing change. He kept us going and was fairly acurate for us when judging how long we would take to get from a to b each day. Some of his most frequent phrases were ´Right Mates´, ´Alright My Friends´ and ´Piece of Piss´.

We met the rest of the people from our tour who didn´t go on the Inca Trail at the view point, after stopping for some huge Bacon rolls (but they still don´t taste like the ones from home) and Inca Kola (it is still not really like Irn Bru) we were then taken on a tour round Mach Picchu by Julio and he explained the meanings of all the temples and buildings. Chris and I then wandered around by ourselves for another hour (and even managed to climb back up to get some pictures) before getting the bus down to Aguas Claiente (a small town nearby - this is where we got the train back to Cuzco).