Peru: Trekking (Oct 2006)

Having left San Jose on another fun filled flight with TACA we arrived at Lima airport where the immigration is amazingly, worse than even the UK! So given 2 and a half hours of waiting in the line we made a few friends. So by the time we had got though immigration we had decided to go to Cuzco the next day with an auzzi named Harry. So we brought are tickets for the next morning favoring the 1 hour flight to the 22 hour bus journey and arrived in a suspect looking plane which gave everyone a bit of excitement by landing on one wheel followed abruptly by the other two.
So having arrived in the city of Cuzco we proceeded to the city center being ripped off by the taxi driver along the way, but at least we had the excuse of not knowing what the currency value was at the time. We found a cheap hotel near the Plaza de Armas and got on with trying to find out how to get to Machu Picchu in the most cost effective way. In the end we managed to get a five day trek for 155 USD which we thought at the time was a pretty good deal. We then decided it might be a good idea to go horse riding in the mountains to check it out. Having never been on a horse before i wasn't particularly looking forward to 3 hours of trying not to fall off and look like an idiot. I appropriately named my horse "lethal menace" but unfortunately never got to ride it as Harry's horse "Volter" decided it didn't like his weight and point blank refused to take him. So having been lumbered with the slow and lazy horse we went off with our guide who didn't speak much Spanish and persisted in whipping my horse from behind, making it bolt at random intervals which severely hampered my efforts to stay on and avoid unnecessary pain. Harry also contributed by pushing my horse into several hedges and one cow in a further attempt to thawt my efforts. However both the Guide and Harry had underestimated my determination and i managed to cling on for the entire duration of the 3 hour ordeal. At any rate it was worth it as we overlooked the city from high in the mountains where the remains of the Inca temple of the moon are.
Having booked are Trek for the next day we were awoken at about 4 in the morning by the tinny racket of my mobile phone alarm and headed out into the street to find the people that were taking us. They managed to get us and some other randomers into a taxi made for 4 people and dropped us at a bus stop on the outskirts of the city somewhere. We then boarded a bus which, like most of the others in Peru looked like it started life as some kind of big van that had a huge cabin stuck on top of its tiny axle at some point. This turned out to be the least of our worries as we didn't even know who are guide was supposed to be as we were dropped off at some town in the mountains. We followed the other people that looked like they were about to embark on some trekking and found our man in the end. We were doing the trek with a group of other people that booked though a different company whose guide had passed out drunk the previous night and subsequently they now had one who didn't know the route. Anyway we set off on the 4 day Salkentey trek walking for 8 hours on the first day, which was a bit of a shock to the system given the altitude and the weather which included hail stones and temperatures down to -7. Not surprisingly no one had bothered to mention any of this when we booked. Luckily for me (or so i thought at the time) I had packed all my thermals and taken the maximum wait allowance of 20kg for the donkey to carry. The first day was hard but manageable and we camped in the valley leading to the base of the mountain at 4200M. Maybe not so unfortunately for Adam, he twisted his ankle and so got to ride a horse for the end of the first day. We were woken at 5 in the morning to start the trek on the second day having not had much sleep due to the temperature and the fact that the campsite resembled a gravel car park on the moon. The first part of the morning wasn't too bad but as we got near the base of the mountain there was what looked like a vertical wall of rock and debris leading up to the base of the glacier. This is when it got really tough. At an altitude of 4700M its not easy going on steep uphills and i started to get some bad altitude sickness. This was probably due to the lack of time we had spent at altitude before starting the trek but i took some comfort in the fact that i wasn't the only one suffering. Having said that there's nothing like seeing a 60 year old Peruvian overtake you carrying 20kg on there back and with the rest of their family in tow to make you feel like a wimp. It got to the point that i couldn't take more than about 5 steps without wanting to sit down and stop. Its like being slowly suffocated, even when you sit down you cant take in enough air so walking becomes impossible. With some help from harry though i managed to make it to the top in a dizzy haze. After that we started to descend into the valley and stopped to have lunch. I had completely lost my appetite by this time though and was feeling totally done. Adam had being riding the horse all morning and caught up just in time. The donkeys and equipment leave quite a while after everyone as they are surprisingly a bit quicker. Unfortunately he found he couldn't ride it in the afternoon when the owner came over and said "Horse is very angry, you make horse very angry, it carry you no mas" Apparently it hadn't taken to being ridden quickly up hill very well.
From then on in it was a lot better, as we descended into the tree line the temperature heated up dramatically and the vegetation became jungle like again. My altitude sickness got better with every step i got further down and by the time we got to the next camp at 1300M I was fine again. After a fun night surrounded by chickens (much to Adams dismay) we set off for Aguas Calientes which is a town built near the hot springs. Having turned down the option to spend more money and stay in a youth hostel Harry and I decided to stay hardcore and camp again. This turned out to be a mistake as there was what can only be described as a torrential down pour that night. For some reason the guides hadn't bothered to tie down the tent properly and so as the wind whipped up the valley it bent the tent over and the water just came straight in. After a sleepless night in the water filled tent, we found out in the morning that we weren't the worst ones off after all. Some people at the other end of the campsite had literally had there tents washed away and had been rescued some time in the night by are guides as theres had passed out drunk. Hence they didn't bother to help us. Adam had decided to take the hostel option so he turned up happy and refreshed the next morning, to our dismay. At this point the guides told us in broken English that the donkeys don't go any further as they cant cross the river. So that meant we had to carry all the stuff for the six hour trek to Machu Picchu town. Again this wasn't something we were told when we booked the trip and for me it meant 6 hours with 20kg which i wasn't partially excited about. The river crossing involved getting into a basket attached to an overhead wire. Being the only way across the river it quickly became apparent why the donkeys didn't go any further.
So eventually at the end of the day we arrived in Machu Picchu town which is at the bottom of the mountain that the ruins are on and is where the train from Cuzco goes up to. This was the end of the trek and we got to stay in a hotel for the night before going up to the ruins the next day. We decided that it would be a good idea to walk up there to catch the sunrise as we'd been told thats the thing to do, and also as i figured having walked that far it really would be wimping out to get the tourist bus service up there. This however turned out to be a mistake as it was freezing cold and chucking it down with rain when we set out at 4:30. The water proof trousers i had brought in Cuzco for a couple of pound quickly became not so waterproof after being subjected to the rain for about 5 minutes.
An hour later we finally made it to the top having being passed by many tourist buses with people looking out at us from the climate controlled cabins with a look of utter astonishment on there faces. We only saw one other person on the way up on the usually busy path and he was a guide who couldn't afford the bus. So feeling exhausted and soaked though we found yet another guide and made it though the crowds of people at the gate into the ruins. Minus the tour round the ruins it was worth it all once we got there and i felt a real sense of achievement. Although its easier for the people that do it on the train i cant imagine they get anything like the same feeling once they get there. After a while the rain stopped and the sun came out and i got some postcard shots of the ruins with lamas and all.
After this we headed back to Ollyantytambo by train then back to Cuzco.........