peru – 29-november, 2009 – inca trail day 3
29-november, 2009 – 3rd day of inca trail
this was our short day on the trail. for other groups, this would be their longest. we basically had one small pass (trivial after the day before) and we descended for a number of hours. kathy wasn’t feeling particularly well, so we opted to bypass a small ruin and take the porters trail directly to the camp. this enabled us to change clothes and take a nap for a couple of hours.
refreshed from our nap we had a quick snack and took an afternoon tour on winaywayna. this was a pretty neat and relatively recent discovery. with still working water falls and expansive terraces for agriculture it made for a very nice diversion.
happy hour was where we discussed the porter tipping situation. tipping does tend to bring out some interesting cultural perspectives. europeans aren’t accustomed to the bribery that we engage in as americans with tipping. the U.S. contingent in the group was a bunch of democrats who just assumed that you tipped generously and carried with us a little bit of 1st world guilt. france – was simply and diplomatically silent on the topic. the english contingent seemed to feel that we were being held up by llama path. in the end we settled on everyone contributing what they were comfortable with and took up a collection of ~720 soles. which amounted to about 36 soles / porter and 72 soles for the cook. this was well short of the recommended tip by llama path but better than i was expecting based on the tenor of the conversation that had taken place.
after dinner everyone was crashing early. we had a 3:30a wakeup for the entry and trail into machu picchu.
at this point in the trail, the bathrooms are disgusting. folks aren’t feeling at their gastro-intestinal finest and the squat toilets do next to nothing to make you feel any better. brushing ones teeth is an exercise in gag reflex control.
crash hard, sleep hard and make sure you have your crap packed up for the early wakeup.
