i’m behind on organizing pictures and notes from our recent trip to peru.  but when i was running through some video, i ran across this little nugget of annoyance.

imagine, if you will, that you’ve spent the better part of the last 3 days hiking 30 miles in the andes and you haven’t had a shower.  you’ve traipsed around machu picchu and you’re dog tired.  more than anything, you’re really looking forward to getting some sleep and chilling on a train on your way back home.

as a slight aside, i should point out that some folks who’ve hiked the inca trail and arrive at machu picchu to be confronted by, “we took a bus here” tourists get their teeth set on edge. when confronted by these tourists complaining about having to walk up and down stairs at a wonder of the world the last thing you want to do is have to put up with them on a train.

however, the company that runs the trains from aguas calientes is (justifiably) loathe to miss a marketing opportunity and after they’ve given you some light snacks and tea proceed to bust out the sales cart and the pulsating techno.  when you want to sleep and politely ignore the couple sitting 18 inches across the aisle from  you this is not helping things.

a note of advice – if you’ve going to do the inca trail and you’re making a decision as to which train you’re going to take back to cusco, or wherever it is you’re going back to, stick with your peeps.  you want to be with worn out fellow hikers and folks who aren’t going to be drunkenly whipping out their visa/amex/mc to purchase alpaca wool sweaters and shawls.  more importantly, you don’t want to be dealing with some rancid marketing techno while you smell like ass.

3:30a comes way too fast and i’m deeply asleep.  the porters wak us and as a group we do surprisingly well getting ourselves going.  we really only were running about 10-15 minutes behind the blistering pace that alex (our guide) had laid out for us the night before.

a comment about breakfast – cake.  seriously, it was cake, with frosting.  the porters and the cook are quite pleased with themselves, but i think everyone had the same reaction when they were introduced to the cake at 3:45a.  muted surprise and not as well muted disappointment.  still it’s a nice touch and kudos to the crew for doing it.

breakfast is short.  we collected our stuff and prepped for the trail.  in all of the hustle and bustle; elise falls from the tent terrace to the cooking / dining tent terrace.  this was about an 8-12 foot drop.  fortunately, she’s unhurt and what could have been a very bad situation is mercifully a minor bump.  she and her husband (josh) were understandably peeved by the relative ambivalence expressed by the guide and the porters to what was potentially a nasty situation.  still, kathy and i were impressed at the level of calm josh and elise seemed to have about the whole situation.

as a group we have to hustle to make it to the sun gate (intipunku) check point.  the check point opens at 5:30a and we’re almost the first ones in line.  all the groups queue up here.  the early morning rise was worth it.

it’s at this point that i develop a particularly strong appreciation for our group.  as i overhear the banality of our neighbors.  the whining brand-oriented 20-somethings w/very little daypacks.  daddy hired them porters for their makeup.

we get through the checkpoint and we haul ass.  i mean we seriously haul ass to the sun gate.  our group was passing the group ahead of us and it was a very brisk pace uphill to the sun gate.  from here, you have an amazing view of machu picchu.  more importantly, from this point, it’s a relatively short (and surprisingly modestly sloped) descent to machu picchu.  when we got down to machu picchu and looked back it was apparent that we seriously motored through that distance.  the distance between the sun gate and the funeral rock is a respectable amount and it took us no time to cover that distance.

finally, we’d made it to machu picchu.

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.

hell day.  breakfast was a healthy dose of pancakes.  then we hit the trail, we had the longest day of the trail ahead of us and it was a requirement to get going right off the bat in the morning.  it was basically climbing, climbing, climbing and some more climbing.  we climbed on stairs, through rain forest on stairs and on trail.  the scenery was really quite lush and after a couple of hours we got a break.

we broke in a nice valley where there were touts offering us water and snacks.  after hitting the bathroom we slogged up to dead woman’s pass. (DWP)  the valley at the base of the pass approach is really some of the most memorable in the hike, were we pestered llamas and sheep in between some steep rocky mountain sides.

DWP is so named because the pass has the profile of a woman lying on her back complete with lumpy breasts and perky nipples for imagery.  the trail itself consists of a handful of switch backs which gain altitude fairly quickly then a long, long set of stone stairs which take you to the top.  these stairs seem to go on forever.  you stop, take a look back, see how far you’ve gone and then look up and see how far you have to go.  the porters basically run up  the mountain side and it’s more than a little sobering to see these guys hauling ass with ~60 lbs of gear each up the side of the mountain.  the llama path guys all wear read and they move as a group so you see them coming and going and they pass you like you’re standing still.  often you are.

when you make it to the top of dead woman’s pass, you’re pretty well out of breath and you’re welcoming the opportunity to rest and snap some pictures.  then it’s down the back side of the mountain.  this is the cold side and the contrast is amazing.  you put on a hat and a shell and you haul yourself down the backside of the mountain this time it’s down the stone stairs.  if you think going down stairs is easier, you’re quite mistaken, this is a painful undertaking when it’s nice weather. on the back side of the mountain where it’s wet and cold, it’s a particularly nerve racking experience and downright dangerous in many instances.  doing this without trekking poles strikes me as insanity, but the porters basically run down the stairs here.  after a couple of hours of going down stairs, you’re body is screaming for a flat expanse to walk on.

we ended up having our lunch where several groups were actually staying for the night.  their day was done. we still had another pass to hit and the corresponding descent to our camp site.  kathy massively powered through this second pass which was wet and rainy.  when we got to the second pass there were all sorts of small stone piles left by previous trekkers.  it would have been a fun place to take some pictures had it not been pouring and a requirement that we haul ass down the back side of this mountain as well.

by this time, a number of folks in our group had become sick.  whether from altitude or something in the food it was tough to say.  two folks were trekking and puking their guts out en route.  not fun.  by dinner we were at about 50% of the start group.  folks just went to their tents and crashed.  we had dinner and then crashed. i don’t know that i’ve ever slept so well camping.

we woke right at 4a and hustled to pack the rest of the gear.  my pack feels crazy heavy.  we got a 1/2 porter for kathy to carry her clothes and sleeping bag.

we got on the bus at plaza regocijo and we met celia a hardy mid-20 something french woman who was sick the evening of the briefing and wasn’t able to make it.  she seems to be ready for this trek.  we took the bus to ollayantaytambo where we have breakfast and buy our bag of coca leaves and ash.  at this point we start to get a feel for the group interaction.

we also got to check out a guinea pig castle and the frog drinking game we’d read so much about.  i can see how this would be a mess you up drinking game.  it clearly takes some practice.

from here we ended up taking the bus to kilometer 82 – which has something of an interesting staging area next to the train tracks and the river.  it’s a essentially a village that pops out of nowhere with a helluva  lot of bustle and no shortage of touts.  folks pop up to sell you water, gatorade, walking sticks, ponchos and a litany of items which one might actually need but really should have had beforehand.

a slight aside re: the roads – the bus ride from ollayantaytambo to kilometer 82 gave us a first hand look at road conditions in rural peru.  in short, they’re pretty rustic.  a good hunk of the trip was on relatvely well paved single lane road.  at various points it devolved into single lane gravel road.  what isn’t always evident is the fact that the road often abuts a steep drop or in some instances a cliff.   driving here requires no small amount of concentration and situational awareness.  not to mention planning and coordination in the direction of what’s coming at you from the other driection on the road.

there seems to be something of an unspoken coordination between drivers where the party closest to the workable shoulder moves to use it to allow the other party to pass.  this is not something to try in the U.S. where every self important prick assumes that they have the right of way.

at the staging area we were herded to the first check piont where our passports are stamped and we’re checked into the trail.  we get to cross the rio urubamba on a swinging cable bridge.  it’s an auspicious start and sets you in the mood for a haul.  the first few miles on the trail aren’t as rustic as you might think.  there’s some meandering through farmers fields, plenty of folks offering to let you rent their bathroom and selling stuff on the trail.  there’s a surprising number of families who live on or next too the trail.  there’s also a surprising amount of donkey shit on the trail.  you spend the first couple of hours expending a lot of energy dodging donkey shit.

at first, there’s nothing particularly challenging about the the trail, and you’re fresh and eager.  towards the end of the day however, we got a bit of a taste of what was to come.  we hit a number of steep sections and got some healthy climbs in.  by the time you hit the camp after that first day, you’re ready to crash.

kathy left dinner early the evening of the first night on the trail. pretty tired and there was some rather spirited discussion about continuing; with her feeling under the weather.

inka museum – bring your own tp.  note, this is one of those places that you would think is included in the boleto turistico, but in reality, it’s not.  i run hot and cold on this one.  there’s some interesting stuff here.

very few of the displays here have english translations. so you have to puzzle through the explanation if you’re spanish challenged as we are.  there are guides available for hire based on tips only.  in retrospect, it might have been useful to get a guide to tell us the stories associated with the displays.  i don’t mean for the word “stories” to come off as pejoratively as it does, but you always have to go back and balance the account that you’re told when you’re on a tour with the research that you can dig up as an obsessively detail oriented individual.  in most cases, it’s close enough or romanticized appropriately.  sometimes you just want to hear a good story.  remember, if it bleeds, it leads.

getting back to the inka museum … they’re pretty aggressive about enforcing the ticket policy here.  there are guards all over the place and they ticket number at entry.  kathy couldn’t find a bathroom and they almost didn’t let her back into the museum.  a little bit of local explanatory help got her back into the mix, but seriously people …

the displays here are no where near as polished as the displays at MAP there’s a lot of card stock and fading ink-jet printing with ye-olde english font action.  there are however, a lot of artifacts that are well worth checking out and a few dioramas that are more than a little entertaining.   that said, the artifact displays are haltingly covered in english.  if you’re not conversant in spanish, you’re screwed.

almost worth the price of admission alone are a handful of large format aerial photographs from the 1930s.  these were clearly taken before exhaustive restoration and excavation had taken place.  ollayantaytambo looks practically native and machu picchu looks like it was just discovered.  there are a number of pictures from the 1912 national geographic expedition led by hiram bingham.  this had to be the first expedition of note since the “discovery” of machu picchu by bingham a year earlier.

as a side note – these pictures had me dig up the original national geographic articles from the natgeo archives.  fascinating stuff from a time when there was still active exploration to be done.

the first floor of this museum has a couple of small textile production exhibits.  one of the exhibits has a number of interesting displays detailing various textile patterns and their symbolic significance.  (star pattern / mountain range / etc.)  apparently, there’s a lot of interest in the part of the peruvian government in insuring that there’s a repository of native skills and they’re supporting a number of initiatives to teach and document the original techniques.

thursday evening – the briefing …

this was the pre-inca trail briefing at the llama path office.  this was more interesting than i thought it would be.  first off, it’s the first exposure to the people you’re going to be slogging 30+ miles on the trail with.  our impressions were very favorable.  there’s an underlying dread at the possibility that you’ll have to slog the next 3-4 days out with a bunch of douche-bags.  fortunately, we got a good crew.  largely non-U.S. in composition, we had a handful of australians, a portuguese couple, a woman fromt he isle of man, a couple from michigan and a venezuelan by way of seattle.

• day 1 – looks to be relatively chepa
• day 2 – looks to be a bitch
• day 3 – looks like stair hell with a break in the afternoon
• day 4 – wake up @ 3:30a – hike in the dark, wait in line, hike and tour within machu picchu – bus to aguas calientes and a train to poroy for us.  llama path bus to cusco.

we hauled our asses to the llama path office at 8:30a and were picked up by a tour bus marked “valle sagrado” only after i repeatedly said to kathy, “awesome, that must be our bus,” about a hundred times in the 15 minutes between our arrival and the actual pickup by the bus. we hopped on and proceeded to make number of loops through cusco picking up additional folks with no clear guide emerging. it was only after we got to a gas station on the outside of town that our guide boarded the bus. marco antonio, who was quite the player and drew numerous comparisons between himself and marc anthony, the singer.

our first stop was carao, a nondescript little village en route to sacred valley notable only for a big hunk of cement with a dog that i took numerous photos of and a clear relationship between the tour operator and the folks selling schwag at a roadside stand. we were also graced with a number of llama photo-ops.

from carao, we made our way to pisac. pisac is a surprisingly sprawling site, placed the crest of a mountain it contains some royal housing with a considerable amount of agricultural terracing. despite it being the offseason, we had to really hustle around this site to check out the elements that were interesting. of particular interest to us were the follwoing items.

- this was the first time we were able to see inca fountains in action. there was an elaborate routing of water from the moutainside through the “urban area” of the site.

- pisac has the largest known inca graveyard. this is actually a hill side facing the urban area with a large number of holes exposed. apparently each of these holes corresponds to a tomb, which had been looted at some point. the incas would bury their dead in the fetal position. a reference to the return to the earth mother (pachamama). buried as such, the tombs were on the small side.

we got a slow start to the day and ended up sleeping in a bit longer than we’d hoped. after grabbing a quick bite at the hotel we ducked down to the ATM machines to extract the balance of the necessary cash to pay the balance of the inca trail tour. we were able to quickly settle up with llama path and made our way to the Museum of Art Precolumbian (MAP). it bears noting that this place seems to have the toniest cafe in town. you got the opportunity to eat in a stylish glass cube in the middle courtyard of the museum. we were sufficiently non-plussed by the menu to skip it for lunch.

the MAP is actually one of the nicer museums in cusco. the displays are nicely laid out and there’s a considerable amount of content. they had a large collection of ceramics and sculpture from all over peru. it was well documented in both spanish and english which made it a fairly engaging museum for us. in addition to the ceramics they had a surprisingly large collection of wood sculpture, metalwork and some post-columbian painting. all of this was well organized and largely, well documented.

lunch – chez maggy. if you read the local reviews and the lonely planet writeup on this, you’d think that this was some orgasm inducing pizza. it’s not bad, but it’s not worth writing home over. we opted for the “super macho” pizza (sausage and red onion) which was tasty.

after lunch, we struck out for saqsayhuaman (aka: sexy woman) in typical fashion, this involved hauling ass uphill. both in town and on the stairs / trail leading to the ruins. an interesting (and annoying) feature of cusco is the presence of stair streets. resbalosa is one of these, “stair streets”. after reaching the top/end of resbalosa, we hugged the edge of a winding road leading up to the entrance of the trail to saqsayhuaman. it was a little disheartening to see so many people on their way down while we were climbing up. then it started to sprinkle.

when we reached the top of the trail to saqsayhuaman, the officials descended on us for our boleto turistico. at this point we also appreciate that it would have been a 5 minute taxi ride and there was no shortage of offers to take us back down. the easy part.

saqsayhuaman is a truly impressive site and it’s interesting to note that it’s still under active excavation. while we were up there they were actively digging out portions of the site and documenting it. it’s easy to see why the inca’s chose it for building their defenses, there’s an impressive view and assaulting armies would have a hell of an ascent.

we got about halfway down the trail to the winding road leading back into town when it started to rain in earnest. the descent in the rain while on the road wasn’t at all difficult. however, descending resbalosa when it’s wet is a bit taxing. this stone stair street has had years of foot traffic and flowing water to wear the stones smooth and it’s quite slippery.

we’d visited llama path, our tour operator to see if there was an option for us to pay the balance via american express or an alternative credit card, but they were adamant that the balance be paid in cash. annoying to say the least. while we were at llama path we took the opportunity to book the sacred valley tour. this amounted to a full day tour of a number of notable inca ruins which we were interested in, as well as a couple of villages in the sacred valley area.

another one of our errands was to purchase the boleto turistico, this would get us access to a number of the archeological sites as well as a handful of museums around cusco. though the nasty gotcha here is that there are a number of interesting museums which you’d really like to see that _don’t_ use the boleto turistico. we discovered this quite quickly as we went to go check out Qoricancha. aka, the nads of the jaguar.

Qoricancha was known as the temple of the sun. apparently when pizarro arrived in cusco and took control, the spanish got busy stripping the temple of all of its gold, melting it down and shipping it back to spain. a task they were apparently able to accomplish within a month. the church and aboveground structure is built upon the ruins of the original temple, and is not covered by the boleto turistico. what _is_ covered by the boleto turistico is the underground museum. this is a sad, dank underground affair that’s accessible from avenida del sol. it’s about 6-8 poorly lit rooms with correspondingly poorly lit and documented displays. there are some potential nuggets within that little basement museum but they had no english translation to the labels. of particular interest, to me, was the display on trepanning. they had a handful of skulls which had been operated on and it was clearly apparent that there had been some healing that took place. this would have been a fascinating topic to dig into when you had the skulls right in front of you. unfortunately, there was zip. you eventually end up climbing out of this museum to emerge in the middle of the grounds of qoricancha, which is actually quite pleasant.

the above ground museum on the other hand is quite interesting. you really get a feel for the spanish ability to build on someone else’s foundation. there are a large number of existing walls from the temple of the sun days, which the spanish simply opted to cap with colonial architecture. today, most of this has been opened up as a museum, where you can check out the masonry and earthquake proof trapezoidal doorways left behind by the incas. oh, and there’s the santo domingo convent on site.

while wandering about we also took the opportunity to check out the 12-sided stone and snap some photos with local students. kathy proved to be quite popular. those hot chicks always are. the stone was impressive and underwhelming all at the same time. you have to appreciate the skill in crafting it particularly given the toolkit available at the time, but it does come down to it being a stone, in the middle of a wall.