The Peru Diaries part four: hiking as I've never hiked before

Up until so far, we'd been pretty lucky avoiding any sort of major calamity or disruption on our trip, but our luck didn't last beyond wee hours of the morning of our fourth day, when things got off to a gloomy start. Though we will never know for sure what wreaked havoc on our friend's system overnight, we suspect it was the tres leches cake that had likely been left out all day from the restaurant the night before. Whatever it was, it was clear that the malevolent visitor of her system rendered her too ill to embark on the three-day hike to Machu Picchu. Despite her pleas to "just strap me to a donkey", she and her significant other stayed behind to focus on recovery. And so we the four remaining trekkers dug out our saltines and animal crackers, bid a reluctant farewell to them, wishing for speedy recovery and resolving to meet in a few days at Aguas Calientes, the city next to Machu Picchu.

We hopped in a van and rode for about four hours out of Cuzco and into the surrounding mountainside. The first half of the ride was fine, as we were on paved roads, but as soon as we veered off into dirt road, the journey decidedly took a turn for the worse. I'd woken up that morning with a headache and an extremely painful sore throat (rendering me more or less voiceless the entire day, and feeling pretty stupid whenever I had to strain to whisper) and the topsy-turvy, stop-and-go ride did nothing but exacerbate how shitty we all were already feeling. The roads in the mountains were lined with large rocks that would violently shake the tires of the van as we zipped up and down mountainsides with no barriers between the skinny, one-lane road (the driver would honk around bends to announce that we were approaching) and the thousands of feet below us. The fact that our van would get stuck in muddy areas and need to get manually revved up - tires screaming, mud blasting everywhere - didn't exactly inspire confidence, either.

After two hours of switching between nervously peering out the window and closing my eyes pretending to be unaware of how high up we were, I let out a huge sigh of relief when our van finally slowed to a halt and we scrambled out.

We were very, very, VERY happy to have our feet firmly planted on the ground again.

A peaceful pastoral scene to start us off.

The trail we embarked on was called the Salkantay trek. The first two days were supposed to be about eight hours of hiking each, and the third would be for exploring the reward that was in store for us at the end of our trek, Machu Picchu. We booked a tour through Quechuas Expeditions and were joined by Chabo (guide), Walter (cook), and Eduardo (porter). Chabo stayed with us throughout the entire hike while Walter and Eduardo went at a separate pace with the food supplies and our donkey. We were just responsible for carrying our own day packs, which consisted mostly of water (I am now a believer in CamelBaks) and layers of clothing.

We were told warned that the first morning of the first day would be by far the most difficult leg of the trip, as it was largely an uphill journey through various temperatures to the peak of a mountain sitting at a cool 15,200 feet up in the air. At the time when this was told to me, I was well-fed, well-slept and sitting rather comfortably in an air conditioned room. The hike sounded like a blast of an adventure. But the morning of, in my sore-throat and sleep-deprived state, I definitely became a lot less thrilled about the prospect of ascending a mountain.

Nonetheless, ascend we did. The journey for the first day looked roughly like this:

Up to this point, I'd kept altitude sickness relatively at bay by physically taking it easy and by flooding my system with water and coca tea. But hiking at altitude with an initially ambitious pace definitely brought out the symptoms I'd been warned of, especially light headedness and shortness of breath. Imagine doing the stairmaster for about two hours, but with gradually decreasing amounts of oxygen being fed into your bloodstream. The going quickly slowed; 45 minutes into the hike, we were already passed by our porter and cook (from whom we'd had about a 20 minute head start).

Giving a camera a grin before we hiked the mountains of DEATH

Looking back, that first morning's climb was definitely the most physically taxing thing I've ever done in my life. I had to take a lot of breaks to catch my breath and several times I contemplated plopping my ass down in the gravel and just saying "Ok, I give up, someone send for a helicopter." It took a lot of patient goal-setting ("let's just get up to that next bend") and a lot of coaxing (sometimes involving Snickers bars) to keep me going.

Another challenge was the dust. The Salkantay trail is frequented by donkeys and horses alike, and since we were hiking in the dry season, the dust on the trails mingled with dried donkey poop particles and would get swept around in the air that we'd inevitably inhale into our systems. Here's a video of a typical donkey-passing scenario we'd encounter:

Despite how difficult the hike was that first day, the trail itself was nonetheless amazing. The views, for one, were just staggeringly, mindblowingly gorgeous. And the serenity of having nothing to do but just to walk and to take in the surroundings was quite a startling but welcome change from my normal day-to-day. It's amazing how quickly the mind and body adjust; gone were the modern-day amenities that normally serve as anchors to my life in the city and instead there were only the mountains, the trail, and the sound of boots crunching on gravel. The only piece of technology I used during this segment of the trip was my camera and even that was only sparingly brought out (relatively, at least. And mostly because I was too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.)

Pausing for a photo op before the ascent. Lookin' pretty foxy in my unevenly-bunched up SmartWools and sweaty-ass bucket hat, if I say so myself. 

What little breath I had from the trail was taken away every time I looked around me.

When we finally reached the peak of the mountain, we were beyond ourselves with excitement and pride. Not only were we extremely high in terms of altitude, but at that point our brains may have been er, a little dazed from the lack of oxygen in our systems.

Posing Captain Jack-style

Leaping out of joy. Or maybe just craziness.

The mountain behind us peaks at well over 16,000 feet up and has never been successfully climbed. We were certainly not going to attempt to on that day.

As the pictures hopefully convey, the views up top were pretty amazing; it was basically 360 degrees of  insane mountainside; some covered in ice, other in flora, yet others in the distance peaking out of thick, mysterious white clouds. Once we'd finished taking in the beauty surrounding us, Chabo told us a bit about the history of the trail and how the Andean ranges are considered sacred to locals. We each stacked a rock to create our group's cairn - a symbol of us having passed through this remote and beautiful area.

It's like a rock snowman!

Our timing also proved to be quite lucky; about ten minutes after we reached the peak, we witnessed a small avalanche happening on a nearby mountain:

As Isaac Newton once famously said, what goes up must come down. And it was cold and windy up there on the mountain. Perhaps most convincingly, lunch awaited in our future, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore the symphony of growls that our stomachs were emitting. We took one last look at our surroundings on the peak and decided to get a move on.

Descending the mountain was a much more pleasant affair, at least initially. We walked downhill for about another hour until we reached a much flatter, plains-like area right next to a gurgling fresh stream, where we met Walter and Eduardo for our lunch break. I was so ravenous at this point that any sort of nourishment would have been welcomed with extreme enthusiasm, but as it turned out, Walter had prepared a delicious and fresh meal of soup, avocado salad, and chicken stew. Looking back, I'm still amazed he was able to prepare all of our meals with basically just a pot of boiling water at his dispense. It was thoroughly delicious and hit just the spot after a challenging morning.

The afternoon hike went by quickly. There were two camping spots we could have taken; one was closer than the other but would require an earlier start and more hiking the next day. We aimed for the further one, encouraged by Chabo's claims that it was more beautiful anyway, with a very energetic pace that we kept for most of the afternoon. Unlike the morning, we rarely stopped and were able to keep up fairly well with our fleet-footed tour guide. A couple of hours of downhill hiking and you could definitely start to feel it in the upper thigh (burning), knees (aching), and toes (repeatedly jammed into the front of hiking boots from supporting the weight of the body). We passed the first campsite far sooner than expected; our spirits lifted by our progress, we made good time for the remainder of the journey, eventually making it to our campsite for the night at around 5 in the evening, just as the sun was starting to disappear from behind the vast mountainside surrounding us.

Dinner that night was a candlelit one of soup, bread, spaghetti, and hot tea. I wasn't feeling well and barely ate anything - all I wanted to do was crawl into our tent and sleep off my exhaustion. According to my friend's watch, we'd burned 4,500 calories on the hike alone, not counting the bus ride, sleeping, etc. I'm guessing we ended up going through 5,500 or 6,000 calories for that whole day. Sleep was definitely in order. I was so sleepy that I could barely brush my teeth and pull off my hiking boots (not a pleasant affair, by the way) before I passed out. Early in the morning, it rained for about an hour. Lucky for us, the tents were sturdy and waterproof. It was soothing to fall back to sleep to the pitter-patter of raindrops so close by.

Our fantastic tents. Also, moving headlamp + long nighttime exposure = the bumblebee effect

Dinner. It's a good thing I took this picture instead of being in it because my eyes would've been crossed from fatigue and my skin tone would have probably blended in with the color of the walls.

Morning came all too early. At around five we were woken with Chabo's friendly voice and hot cups of tea being handed to us through the tent. (I think I woke up more from the fear of sleepily spilling hot tea all over myself than from drinking the tea itself). We had a quick breakfast, packed our things, and set out for our next adventure just as the sun was coming out.

Sunrise over the campsite. Not a bad way to start off the day.