Cuzco, Peru

One and half days of flying and it was worth every TACA moment. The flight was beautiful into Cuzsco—the hills like the Alps, but covered with thick vegetation, giving them a deep green, even Chautreus look about them.

South American travel was not a chaotic as I feared. There is more civil society where informal relations take precedence over standardization. People stand in the ticket lines—passing themselves off as airport workers. It all came out well in the end, but I can see how it could lead to a great deal of fraud.

The people are very friendly, and the Nino Hotel is an excellent find. Old spanish design with a beautiful open air courtyard—one could never imagine it from the view outside.

The topography of Peru is quite stark. North of Lima, the mountains are all the more striking because they stretch up to the plane itself. From Lima, the coastal hills give way to the high desert plains, its features easily distinguishable from the air. Again the effect is quite striking. The Lima-Cuzco run is about an hour and as such the plane hardly climbs more than 20,000 feet or so. As one flies along, the ground seems bizarrely close—never quite giving way to the clouds or diminishing away to a distanced view.

The altoplain gives way to Alpine vistas. Again the unique vegetation here—jungles and cloud forests at 10-14,000 feet—gives Peru its well deserved reputation for natural beauty.

11/20/01

Inca Trail

Day One:

Incredibly hard. Blown away by the load and altitude and am very weak.

Thin air and overloaded packs were an unfortunate combination. Day one started out well with a level walk along the river valley. After a long lunch break things changed dramatically. With the first significant hills (which I could see on the train ride home were really insignificant) we began to struggle and soon were averaging one mile per hour. While we wanted to push on further, the hour and daylight forced us to stop at “los piedras”—the three white stones. We were exhausted, and Trip and I were at the limit and unable to eat. We turned directly to bed. I was exhausted and feverish—waking up to take some aspirin and thinking that pushing on tomorrow may be impossible.

The land was wonderful though. Snow capped and glacier clad San Juan and Veronica were our constant companions to the north. The day had brought our first ruin, “Llactapata”; a series of terraces almost impossibly built on a steep hillside, hundreds of feet above the river valley.

Leon our guide—with his light pack and brisk sideways gait he looks at us with sheepish eyes through thick hair, trying to size us up—what the hell has he gotten himself into. He is clearly disappointed by our poor pace, but remains a good sport about it.

For me, the day picks up when another guide gives up some cocoa leaves to chew on. As promised, my face is numb within a few minutes and suddenly I am in hiking heaven, zipping along and even passing hikers carrying day packs. It’s probably a dangerous mix with my diamox, so I don’t have any more.

Funny moment of the day: when we reach camp I dramatically pitch myself face forward in the dirt. Poor Leon, not being familiar with me, thinks that I have suffered a massive heart attack.

Day Two:

As with the Alps, the second day is much easier than the first, even though, on paper, it’s a brutal day. The plan is to head over “Warmiwanusca”(Dead Woman’s Pass). It is indeed the hardest thing that I ever done. Started at about 3,100 meters and climbed over the pass at 4198 meters. It took us about 4 hours to go 4 km.

We started off slowly, making barely a km an hour. At 10am Russ insisted on stopping for “lunch.” Leon wanted to push on, but Russ rightly insisted that we stop for soup. Trip had not eaten breakfast after skipping dinner. I too had barely eaten in the morning. Russ really showed some mountain smarts for stopping. The soup turned the tide of the day and really energized us for the push up the pass. From the lunchtime spot—which Leon had hoped would have been our camp the night before—we could see the pass way off in the distance and the tiny specks almost imperceptibly moving towards the top. As in the Alps, I took to this kind of hiking. At least you can see where you are going and can map real progress as you move from rest spot to rest spot. As in the Col du Bonhome, I took it very slow; my stride reduced to about half a foot length per step. However, this slow pace made it possible to move for long distances without taking a break. The net result was a pretty good pace up the pass.

At the pass we took a well deserved rest. Russ got some pictures of me with a llama—the llama did not quite cooperate and began to chase me—all the while I’m yelling at Russ “Are you taking the damn picture?”

At this point we met a delightful group of Norwegian hikers. They gave us some Norwegian chocolate—about which I commented “It’s good, but not really as good as German chocolate” This, of course, endeared me to them. We would encounter them throughout the hike and Trip would remark that it was unclear whether the one wanted to get together with me, or beat the crap out of me. “or both” I would reply. “you don’t get that lucky,” he said.

It began to rain—hard. Fun time was over, and time to descend into the next valley had begun. This descent was our first introduction to the Inca engineered steps. This uneven steps built from large stones are an engineering marvel. We noticed that the stones did not seem native to the area—someone had carted them in from some distance to build the Inca Road here. The steps themselves were simply brutal on the knees. This is where the hiking poles really came in handy.

Kodak moment:

The valley we descended into was connected to a second valley that ran into the adjacent mountains. At a certain point, a tremendous fog bank rolled into the lower valley and literally within three or four moments, the entire valley and pass was completely obscured.

The Crisis:

To get to Machu Picchu for the sunrise two days from now, it was necessary to make it to a campsite near the top of the next pass. This was a brutal revelation as we could see from Dead Woman’s Pass what the day held for us. After climbing almost 4,000 feet in the morning, we would now rush down the steps some 1,200 feet, only to have to climb over 1,000 feet to get near the second pass. Trip almost had a stroke saying “50/50 I don’t make that.” This grew into an out and out crisis as we bottomed out in the valley and began the climb to the second pass. This was hard for all of us after 6 hours of hiking already—but for Trip it was too much. After a long pep talk, Russ and I took some of Trip’s gear and we were able to proceed.

A few minutes brought us to the next ruins. The nice thing about the trail is that the ruins get increasingly interesting along the way, building up to Machu Picchu. “Runturacay” was a small lodge that was used by travelers along the Inca Road to and from Machu Picchu. Because Cuzco was the capital of the Inca Empire, at one time the road was probably heavily traveled.

A group of trekkers were at the ruins with their guide. When the guide was done with his account of the ruins, he announced “OK our tea and coffee is now ready and waiting for us.” Not so for us, so as the Norwegians mocked us, we pushed on to camp, another 45 minutes of climbing.

The views from camp were outstanding, the ground horrible. Clearly the rainy season had begun and I could see why the trail is empty in the summer. We had to scout the area for about 15 minutes to find a decent area that was not completely mud bound. We set up camp and enjoyed the fine alpinglow on Veronica and were again blown away by the rushing fog that completely obscured the valley within minutes.

Day Three:

This was the easiest—least brutal—day on the trip. Within a few minutes we had zipped over the last serious pass (having camped about 100 meters short of the top). At the pass, we continued a long tradition by building rock cairns meant to symbolize our wishes. I built one for Cheryl and myself, a common home, two good careers, two happy dogs and two above average children. Russ took a photo with my cairn, which I must say was something of a snappy sculpture.

We then proceeded down more steps to the next ruins “Sayacmarca.” Much more impressive than Runturacay, Sayacmarca is a genuine town towering along spur over the next river valley. Complete with small aqueducts that carried water down from a ridge and through the town, the town is the most sophisticated ruin yet seen on the trail. It is here that we started getting a sense of the extent of ruination and restoration on the trail. Apparently, this town, like almost all the ruins, was little more than piles of stone when discovered earlier in the century. The town as we see it now?—restoration courtesy of the ministry of culture. How did they know how to reconstruct the ruins? Guesswork. As a result there are various parts of the restoration that are simply incorrect. For instance, in Sayacmarca, we found stones with hole bored through them. Leon pointed out that such stones would be found along doorways to lash doors open or lock them closed. However we found such stones almost randomly placed throughout the ruins—a clear mistake from a rushed restoration. This began a long two day debate amongst us on the value of such forms of restoration.

We descended into the river valley below and then up over the last “pass” which is really nothing more than a ridgeline that one climbs and, after a few miles, crosses. In a testament to the power of women, Trip was suddenly energized. He had struck up a conversation with an attractive Swiss woman and was zipping uphill while talking French. It was his greatest output of the trip.

Along the ridge we came upon a real treat. A tunnel cut into the rock by the Incas. While a fairly simple construction, it was nothing short of amazing that they had brought out tools so far into the mountains to cut 40 feet through the rock. The cuts were sheer and the tunnel well constructed with steps cut into the rock. This continued a stretch of excellent trail construction. They had either cut the trail into the rock or had built up a terrace—sometimes 60 feet from the ground—to create a continuous trail that gradually hugged and climbed the ridgeline. I don’t think I have ever been on such a well-built trail.

We paused for lunch at the top ridge crest shortly before the Phuyupatamarca ruins. At the ruins we found a functional aqueduct bringing water into the ruins and the ceremonial baths. Here we saw some of the contested history of the trail. Leon was explaining that as a ceremonial city, Phuyupatarmarca was not an agricultural site. Its terraces were largely used for ceremonial and medicinal plants. In the distance we heard another guide tell his group how potatoes had been grown on the terraces. Leon turned to us with disgust muttering “they did not grow potatoes here—look around, is this the kind of climate you could grow potatoes in?” He walked away shaking his head at his fellow guide “ignorance.”

More steps, many more steps down to our last camp. From the train on the way home, I was able to make out this part of the trail and was really impressed with how high we were. Even at this point we were still some 3700 meters up (over 12,000 feet). We zoomed down the steps for nearly two hours and strolled into camp with the Norwegians singing Sinatra songs above us. We called out in deep tones “the Inca does not like singing!” but this only brought on a healthy diet of Sinatra and Abba from the European voices above.

The last campsite was at a major hostel. We set up camp and then checked out our penultimate ruins, Huinay Huayna. If the other ruins had been restored, these had been manicured. Leon showed us some of the walls where restoration had taken place. It is the lasting tribute to the Incas that one can easily see where the walls have been rebuilt. Where the Inca work remains, one cannot, as is often said, fit the blade of a knife in between the rocks. Where the walls have been rebuilt, the gaps between the rocks are large, with vegetation growing through them. The ruins were impressive, but they sparked a new round of debate on the value of restoration. Clearly a great deal of guesswork had taken place. We even found masonry used in some places to hold the “ruins” together.

Russ asked Leon how the ruins had changed since he had first seen them in 1980. This led to one of the strange parts of the trip. Leon—somewhat ashamed—admitted that he had not been here in 1980, that he had lied about being a porter for years before becoming a guide. He then began a long tirade in Spanish in which he lamented the whole process by which guides must make up stories about their qualifications, and about the contents of the ruins in order to convince tourists of the value of having the guide along.

Aside from Leon’s confession, the whole scene was a bit strange. The hostel was really just a roadhouse and the clash between the poor porters and guides and the rich and drunk eurotrash trekking set was quite stark. The purity of the trail was drowned out in beer, popcorn and disco. Just a few miles short of Machu Picchu, in the middle of the most beautiful mountains, there was a disco—Muir would have been driven to violence. I went to bed.

Day Four:

To reach the Gate of the Sun, which overlooks Machu Picchu, by sunrise we had to leave at 4. This meant getting up at 3 to break camp. It was already light when we started off. Around 5 the sun rose and we were still short of the Gate of the Sun. I asked Leon if the sun rose later at the Sun Gate because it was on the other side of the mountain. He said yes, but then looked at his watch and said—“the sun rises early today.” I didn’t need to hear anymore. Russ and I bolted, going as fast as we could. We passed dozens of hikers and climbed a final staircase—so steep that we had to climb with our hands and feet. We reached the Gate of the Sun about 15 minutes too late—Leon had failed us. We had started far too late. Still the light was perfect for photography. We now cracked out the 40 pounds of camera equipment we had. Four cameras, six lenses, two tripods, dozens of roles of film. Other hikers looked at us like we were crazy to have carted this stuff so far—particularly as we carried it all ourselves.

The view was without doubt one of the most beautiful things I have seen. Only the Col du Seine and Glacier Point rank with it in stunning beauty. The whole area of Machu Picchu is a series of peaks that surround the small plain on which the ruins are built. You can see why they built here—even without the ruins the area had power and mystery. The peaks guard the area and with every turn of the head one has the sense of being enclosed by the gods. Given that the Incas saw the peaks as gods, they surely saw this as the most sacred of places. If Muir thought of Yosemite as a cathedral, he would have thought of Machu Picchu as heaven itself.

We began our final descent of the trip—a victory tour of sorts down to a well-earned visit to Machu Picchu.

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