Camino Inka

OK so thing number 1 i promised to talk about is: The incan trail. The pure amazingness of the incan trail, and arriving to machu piccuh. So it all started with a 5am very smelly bus ride (the porters were on the bus with us) with our amazing tour guide freddy zapata to KM-80. And it was beautiful. We started on a bright sunny day with blue skies and fluffy coulds. We got our passports stamped and starting walking for 2 easy hours, looking at the scenery, rejoicing in the excitment of what we were about to do. Freddy was an amazing tour guide and told us all about the many ruins, plants, and snow peaked mountains we passed along the way. Right before we got to the first less than easy part, Freddy stopped us all and gave us one of the most amazing pep talks of all time. I wish i had recorded it! It was something like.

"Ok, please guys, life, guys, is like the inca trail. You will go up and you will go down. You will be happy and you will be sad. You will laugh and you will cry. Sometimes you will meet mean people and other times you will meet the nicest people. There will be times that you will not think you can make it to the end, the nice comfortable end of machu piccuh, where we all want to get to. You need to keep trying and keep going. Never give up. Lets go guys."

Freddy has done to Camino Inka 323 times (more by now since he did more after us.) His first language is Quechua, and he is also fluent in Spanish and English. He Loves meeting people, his country, his people, and his life. i don't think i would have enjoyed the hike as much if he wasn't our guide.

So we kept walking for a few hours, then stopped for lunch at a camp site. Now, walking along with us, or should i say running along ahead of us, were the porters. Now these men work like horses basically, carrying 25kg of materials with them on their back, running to the next campsite to set up the tents and cook the food for all of us, then they pack up and head out before any of us. It's crazy what they can physically do, and i can't believe a job like that exists in the world. They are mostly quechua speaking men, like the ones we have worked with in occoruro. Actually one day in occoruro a family corey and i were working with were joking about porters they said "well we may be poor but at least we arn't porters." How interesting that they see that job almost the way i do too. Back to Lunch, among the porters is a chef, who cooks all the meals for everyone. I was expecting for lunch some rice and meat or poataoes, something usual like that for hiking. nope. we got a 3 course meal. 3 COURSES! and Juice to drink during the meal and tea after. It was unbelieveable, and completely unexpected. It was like that for every meal, even breakfast. AND we would have a tea time in the middle of the day as well. Matt said to me, after i said so many times i can't believe this, "This is Perú's star tourest attraction. Of course it is going to be like this."

We started up again, this time going up hill most of the time. It wasn't bad, just long. And it took a while to warm up too hiking with all your stuff for 4 days on your back, but by the time we got to the camp site for the night i wasn't hurting too bad.

Day 2 is the hardest day, and that was very true. We woke up, ate gourmet food, and hiked uphill for 3 hours. all stairs that are called the gringo killers. It was definitely hard, and i definitely enjoyed my break we we got to the top of dead woman's pass. The hardents part though was yet to come. stairs. for the next 4 hours all we did was walk (run) down and up stairs. It was killer on the joints and legs. i was sweating buckets and we were all panting. i personally enjoy going down the stairs more than going up, but that doesn't mean they feel any better on the legs. Our group was so fast that freddy said if we were willing to wait a little longer for lunch, we could countinue walking all the way to the campsite and eat lunch there, that way we wouldn't need to stop and start up again. When we got there, it was pretty dreary and gray and foggy, just like the whole day had been, but i felt good. and soar. I had carryed my back all by myself and gotten through the longest hardest day of hiking. Everything else would be easy after this for the next two days. We all sat around and slept and ate three meals (tea time is pretty big). After dinner that night Freddy told ghost stories about spirits who have followed him on the incan trail, which made me stay up a little longer that night.

Day 3= not to bad. down hill alot and more tome for Freddy to do some more explaining of ruins plants and the incans. The Ruins were wondeful that we saw. Th ebest part of this day was... apparently our group was moving almost faster than any group of his previously. So he gave us the option of walking to machu piccuh today not TOMORROW but TODAY!?! and then we would spend the night in aguas calientes, wake up tomorrow morning and go up to machu piccuh and get tickets to hike huaina piccuh, the big mountian you see in all the famous machu piccuh pictures. If we were to do the regular 4 day incan trail, getting tickets to hike huaina piccuh would be near impossible, since only 400people can hike it a day and by the time we woudl get there all the tickets would be gone. We all said yes to this plan. We ate lunch and started walking to machu piccuh while all the other groups around s stayed behind. We were doing something that was never usually done! It was so unexpected. We literally RAN there. A 2.5 hour hike turned into a 1 hour one. We were all just so hyped up on adrenalin and excitement and food that we couldn't help but run the whole way there. Right before we got to the view of machu piccuh, we got the the sun gate. on every summer solstice (june 21) the sun will rise right over the sun gate and cast a perfect ray of light into the window of the temple of the sun. It is a stone structir of pillars, and can be seen from a distance while in the town of machu piccuh. It was INCREDABLE to walk through that gate and look down at one of the most amazing sights in the world. One of the 7 wonders.

We couldn't stay long in Machu piccuh that day cause we only had a one day pass, so we hiked closer to it, than out of the park. Some of us also only had the funds for one bus ride and we wanted to save that for tomorrow, so we climbed the stairs down to Aguas callientes we we found a cheep hotel and stayed the night.

Day 4. We rose at about 430 to get up to the top by 530 to get tickets and climb to the top of one of the most famous mountains in the world. It was awesome. The view from the top of huaina piccuh was spectacular, and we sat up there for quite a while. We then walked the ruins, sat, walked, talked about the incas, eventually walked down to aguas callientes (again) and sat for the train to leave.

Machu piccuh was a town made by the incas in the 1500s. It was a special town made between to Apus for suport and protection. People would walk there and make a pilgramge, just like we did. They hid it on purpose when the Spaniards came so there woudl be some city to come back to, that the spainairds didn't distroy. When it was discovered in 1914(?) by hirum bingam (did you know that indiana joans is based on him) it started being uncovered and researched immediately. Now it is the biggest attraction of all of Perú, and thousands of people go there a day to see it. And that is Machu Piccuh's biggest problem. Apparently the city is sinking due to the weight of the thousands of people who visit a day. The city was only built to hold 600, and many more than that walk the grounds of this place everyday. This got me thinking... how can it be that the Perú government hasn't done something about that yet? This is one of the most valuable ancient site in all of south america. What would happen one day if its gone? It it sinks between the mountains and into the rio urubamba below? If the lost city of the incans really becomes lost? And i saw it.