So we were still in Peru. We had seen Cusco and the Sacred Valley, and then we spent one, two, three days on the Inca Trail to arrive at Machu Picchu. I’m sure you’re wondering what else we could have possibly done in Peru, because what else is there?

It turns out… not that much, relatively! But we saw it anyway!

The day that we visited Machu Picchu, we arrived back at our hotel in Cusco at 11:30pm. We woke up the next morning at 5:45am in order to pack, shower, eat breakfast, and take a taxi to the bus station, where we boarded a luxury double-decker tourist bus to Puno, a major city on the shore of Lake Titicaca. 5:45am?!? Pish, by the standards of the rest of our vacation, that’s sleeping in.

The tourist bus would make 5 stops on the 280-mile trip to Puno, making it an all-day affair. We didn’t mind, though. We were so physically exhausted that we just wanted to be ferried around and told what to look at.

The first stop was a Catholic church in Andahuaylillas, which according to our guide is called the Sistine Chapel of Peru — a rather ambitious pronouncement, because the only similarity is that the walls and ceiling are painted. We couldn’t take pictures in the church, but here is the exterior and the surrounding market.

Church at Andahuaylillas

Tourist Market at Andahuaylillas

The bus journeyed onto stop #2 in Raqchi, where we toured the Temple of Wiracocha, a massive Incan structure that formerly boasted a famously large roof. The typical Incan foundation supports adobe walls; our guide explained that the local stones were too volcanic and soft, so adobe was used. The round structures served as supports for the slanted roof.

Temple of Wiracocha

As we toured the temple grounds, we passed a group of anglo New Agers, standing in complete serene silence with their fingertips extended to better receive some of that sacred Incan energy from the temple’s ruins. I hate to sound unenlightened, but they looked pretty freaking ridiculous.

Temple of Wiracocha

Near the temple was a vast complex of about 100 stone storehouses, used to silo grain. These are unique in Incan architecture because storehouse were typically square, not round.

"Silos" at Raqchi

The condor, puma, and snake are three of the most important animals in Inca mysticism. The snake represents the underworld, the puma represents earth, and the condor represents the heavens. Here they are pictured on a Chakana, or Inca cross.

Condor, Puma, Snake on a Chakana

Lunch counted as stop #3. It was a typical tourist buffet that seemed particularly exciting to me after eating family-style meals on Inca Trail. I could eat as much alpaca as I wanted.

After lunch, the bus made stop #4 at La Raya. The only attraction at La Raya was the magnificent mountain view at 4335 meters above sea level, which I believe is the highest on Earth I’ve ever been in my life.

Fabric for Sale at La Raya

La Raya

Our last stop was at the Pukara musuem, which has a number of artifacts from the Pukara era (pre-Incan society).

Pukara Museum

Pukara Church

The town is famed across Peru for producing the “Toritos de Pucara,” which are little clay bulls that many residents place on their roofs for good luck.

Toritos de Pucara

By then, the fatigue of my largely-sleepless trek on the Inca Trail was catching up to me, and I eagerly climbed onto the bus to doze the rest of the way to Puno. “Huh? Oh, look, it’s Lake Titicaca. That’s nice.” The rest of the night was a blur — we arrived in the Puno bus station, where our hotel picked us up and brought us to a very large room with excellent cable TV. I laid in bed, almost too exhausted to go eat dinner but not quite. We wandered down Puno’s main street and had very nice local fish with wine that cost $30USD. And then, bed.

The rain continued for the duration of our second night on the Inca Trail — periodically abating, and then rearing up, and then abating in 5 minute intervals. I twisted my body around in my sleeping bag, struggling to find a position that didn’t grind my hips into the rock-hard mattress pad.  I circled through my repertoire of surefire sleep inducers — I engaged in deep breathing through my nose, I counted my breathes and the breathes of those around me, I mentally relived plots to old sit-coms like Family Ties and 90210, I stretched out my spine as long as possible, and I tried to completely blank out my mind. But neither the rain nor my discomfort was the cause of my insomnia; I simply was not tired.

Raoul the Assistant Guide came to our tent with the tea-bearing porters at 5:30am. The night before, Will the Guide regaled our rum-drinking group with Inca Trail ghost stories, including one about the namesake dead woman of the Dead Woman’s Pass, and he advised us to avoid any undue nighttime hauntings by leaving an offering to her spirit outside of our tent: “She likes Milky Ways.” We left an apple. When we emerged for the tent, the apple was gone, presumably taken by Raoul.

Breakfast was another carb fest involving porridge, bread, and pancakes. Today would not be as hard as Day 2, but it would be long, with no mid-morning snack to see us through to lunch. The rain was light yet the clouds were heavy and dark. We started straight-away with a climb to the second pass. Here’s a view of the terraced campsite where I could not sleep, with a line of porters following us up the pass.

View of 2nd Campsite (Terraces) and Porters

Our group paused briefly to explore Runcu Raccay, a small circular Inca site that was probably used as a rest stop for passing travelers and/or as a strategic watchtower. It served both purposes for us as well. The rain stopped, to the happiness of all.

At Runcu Raccay Inca Ruins

We continued up the second pass, and it grew cloudier and started to rain again. Our guide Will advised us to carry a rock to deposit on a cairn at the top of the pass while making a wish. I climbed to a small hill to place my rock and make my wish, and then we had a group photo. Don’t we look thrilled?

Making a Wish at the Top of Second Pass

Group Photo at Second Pass

Soon after we descended the second pass, the rain stopped and the dreaded sun flies converged (imagine gnats that bite). We strolled easily along, occasionally chatting with other members of our group, occasionally stopping for a photo, always marveling at the finely-engineered trail upon which we walked.

(Notice how shiny-clean my hair looks considering it had been 3 days since my last shower? Thanks, insane unseasonable rain!)

Descending the Second Pass

Inca Trail

View of Inca Ruin Sayac Marca

Looking down on Sayac Marca

Soon after we passed the ruins of Sayac Marca, it began to rain. Hard. With wind. We hurried to our lunch site, which we reached at 11am. The porters set up a tent for us to throw our bags in and then we rushed into the lunch tent, where we sipped tea and waited for the remaining members of our group. Spirits were definitely low as the wind shook the tent and rain began to drip from the ceiling. Many people were wearing their last set of dry clothes. Some girls, including me, couldn’t stop shivering. Everyone couldn’t believe what a wet disaster the Inca Trail had turned out to be.

It’s really hard to overstate how profound an effect the rain had on our trek. I mean, this isn’t North America, when rain has pretty much an equal chance of occurring on any given day of the year. In Peru, there is a rainy season (Oct through April), when it rains pretty much every day, and a dry season (May through September), when it rains less than an inch per month. So, despite being conscientious tourists and paying high-season prices for dry-season conditions, we had the profound misfortune of hiking the Inca Trail during an aberrational climatic blip. The joke around the lunch tent was “If this is the dry season, I wonder what the rainy season is like?”

Please Don’t Make Us Leave the Tent

After another carb-monotonous lunch (“Oh look, potatoes,” I said with overly-feigned surprise as I passed a platter of fried steak and potatoes down the table. “To go with your rice, pasta, and bread,” one of the Brits quipped.) it was onward, and downward. The rain sucked, but it did not lessen my appreciation of the Inca Trail. The vegetation started to grow more jungle-like and exotic.

Inca Trail

The Inca Tunnel — a famous place for pictures.

Inca Tunnel

Soon, the nutty New Zealander caught up with us and we reached Phuyu Pata Marca, which in Quechuan means “Cloud-level Town.” How appropriate!

Phuyu Pata Marca

Very impressive stonework here. We spent 20 minutes going up and down the stairs, exploring the ruins.

Phuyu Pata Marca

Phuyu Pata Marca

As we neared the third campsite, the rain began yet again in earnest. There was a fork in the road, and we had a choice: either continue straight to the campsite, or take the long way around to see Intipata, another Inca site that was used primarily for agriculture. Well, sure, it was raining and we were wet, but how many times are we hiking the freaking Inca Trail?

Intipata

Intipata

Intipata

One (just one) advantage of the rain is that it makes colors more saturated for photographs. Also, I got to wear my pink raincoat, making me stand out like a brazen flower amid the ruins.

We arrived at the third campsite at Winay Wayna, where we would spend our last night before reaching Machu Picchu early next morning. There is a bar/restaurant in Winay Wayna, which we hit with the Quebecois. Beers were 10 soles each, an outrageous price until we reminded ourselves it was only $3.50 USD (still, for Peru, an outrageous price).

Dinner that night was sad — our last meal together! The porters baked us a cake. Somehow, they managed to steam eggy batter all afternoon until it formed a cake. It was delicious. In return, our group pooled together a bunch of money for the customary tips for the porters and cook. All 21 of the porters filed into the tent, and the only fluent Spanish speaker among us, the young lady from Connecticut, gave a touching speech about how grateful we were for their services. Everyone clapped. Then the Will the guide told us we’d be waking up at 3:45am the next morning. Mouths dropped open. He told us he wanted us to be the first group at the checkpoint gate into the area of Machu Picchu. The checkpoint opened at 5:30am, but he wanted to be there at 4:30am so we could be the first in, and also because the pavilion only had enough room for one group to stand in case of… (he didn’t say, but we were all thinking “in case of rain.”) I didn’t care about getting up at 3:45am, because I didn’t feel as if sleep would come to me that night, either. We left the dinner tent, peering up at the sky, looking in vain for stars to twinkle out from behind the fortress of clouds….

Our first night on the Inca Trail, I slept horribly. Blame it on the noise from party in the village, blame it on the stiff mattress pad provided by the trekking company, blame it on the rain that began pattering on the tent about 3am, or blame it on the reputed “sacred energy vortex” upon which Machu Picchu and the Camino Inka are constructed, but I would get a total of 6 hours of sleep over the course of three nights of trekking. Despite/because of this, my body was perpetually revved.

So I was laying in my sleeping bag, listening to the rain grow in intensity, and then fade, and then grow again. Further away, I could hear the porters start to stir. Soon, Raoul the Assistant Guide came to wake us up, accompanied by two porters carrying a kettle of hot water and assortment of teas. This is the standard wake-up call for trekkers on the Inca Trail. I suppose the hot beverage is supposed to coax people awake, but I’m the type whose is prone to dawdling over her mate de coca.

I think I ate more carbohydrates at breakfast than I eat in a normal week. Everyone knew that the second day up Dead Woman’s Pass was the hardest, so toast, pancakes, and gruel were steadily consumed with grim faces. Our group was a motley assemblage of Anglophones (15 including us): One early-20s couple from Vancouver, one early-20s couple from England, one mid-20s couple from India who live in Minneapolis, one mid-40s couple from Montreal, two young British women who just graduated from university, a mother-daughter pair from Connecticut, and one lone rather nutty New Zealand lad who was traveling in South America for 5 months.

When we signed up for the Inca Trail, I had envisioned our trekking group being filled with gear-heads, but it turned out Mr. P and I were the only gear-obsessed hikers in the group, probably because we’re older and have bountiful disposable income. After breakfast, I put on my rain jacket and backpack rain cover. Several people didn’t have any rain gear whatsoever, and most people only had flimsy ponchos.

We bid goodbye to camp. Our next campsite would be more remote, without beer or water for sale.

Campsite Store

We paused to look at some exotic trumpet flowers. We would also see some hummingbirds, but they were too fast to photograph.

Inca Trail Flowers

Porters from our group and other groups began to trot past us. They needed to get ahead to set up tents for our arrival. Notice that the porters wear sandals (heavily preferred over boots).

Porters

Our guide Will had initially wanted our group to stay together and take our time on this strenuous section of the trail, but the rain began to build in intensity, so he told us to go at our own pace to the mid-morning snack tent a few miles away.

Mr. P on a Beautiful Trail in Shitty Weather

Really, really well-constructed trail. Somehow, despite our extra load and extra age, we were far ahead of most everyone in our group. Soon the two British girls caught up to us and the four of us would rush through the storm to the mid-morning snack tent.

Inca Trail

Because of our fast pace in the pouring rain, the porters weren’t ready for us at the mid-morning tent, so we stood under some trees as our group slowly converged. The unfortunate people without ponchos had completely soaked packs and sopped sleeping bags; our guides rushed around to find ponchos for them. After the mid-morning snack (tea, crackers, and a puffy cheese sandwich), it was time to face Dead Woman’s Pass. Originally we were going to have a group photo at the top, but due to the weather our guide instructed us to keep going until the campsite.

We started off. My survival instincts began to kick in. I just wanted to be done with this hike. All those hours in the White Mountains paid off as I doggedly hiked up the notoriously steep incline of Dead Woman’s Pass.

Porters Headed Up Dead Woman’s Pass

I was about 5 minutes from the top of Dead Woman’s Pass when the nutty New Zealander from our group passed me. He told the rain was getting ridiculous and he just wanted to finish. Indeed, the rain was beginning to freeze and the wind was voracious. I reached the top of Dead Women’s Pass, which was deserted except for a line of resting porters and the New Zealander, who now had bragging rights in our group, but whatever. He knows who was at his heels.

Porters on Top of Dead Woman’s Pass

The New Zealander and I stood together and peered down the pass, watching Mr. P trudge up the final steps. The New Zealander took our picture next to the sign with the “4125 meters” altitude. That’s 13829 feet! (Unfortunately, both Mr. P and I closed our eyes in the picture. We’ll just have to go back.)

On Dead Woman’s Pass

The weather wasn’t getting any better, so we headed down the pass. Our guide told us it would take 90 minutes, but it took us about 60 minutes. Close to the bottom, one of the British girls madly scampered by us. “I have to go to the loo!” she whispered to me. She was a super-fast hiker. She told me later that she was trying to stay with her friend, but the rain was getting too ridiculous.

We reached camp at 12:15. The rain was coming down strongly. A porter directed us to a tent and sorta pushed us into it. We were dripping wet, but our clothes and sleeping bags had stayed dry. I was shivering as I peeled off my wet clothes and dried off with a towel. All we could do was huddle in our tent.

View from Tent

When the rain abated, I left the tent to use the restroom. The British girl invited me into her tent; she was lonely, so we chatted while she demolished a bag of chocolate raisins. Soon, other members of our trekking groups began trickling into camp. Lunch wasn’t until everyone arrived at 3pm; it turned out that conditions had really worsened on Dead Woman’s Pass, with hail and snow. One woman from another group was crying hysterically; another woman twisted her knee after skidding on some rocks; one man was taken down on horseback. I’m surprised no one developed hypothermia. The guide said that, in 12 years on the Inca Trail, he never saw snow on Dead Woman’s Pass at this time of year.

The rain stopped around 4:30pm and some sun even peaked out. The British girls started a game of charades. Optimism revived, then died as the clouds moved in and the rain commenced around dinner time. After dinner, the porters brought in a pitcher of a warm rum drink “to help you sleep,” but I would need a lot more than rum to help me sleep.

Day Two was a memorable on the Inca Trail, but for all the wrong reasons…

If you go to Machu Picchu — and it’s one of those places that everyone should theoretically aspire to go to — you can take a plane, then a train, and then a bus that will deliver you in relative comfort to the entrance of this most sacred Incan site. Or, if you want to experience Machu Picchu and you’re feeling slightly masochistic, you can hike in via the ancient Incan road system, the most popular of which is the Inca Trail, a 28-mile, 4-day journey through a lush landscape, Incan ruins, and oscillating altitudes.

Of course we would do the Inca Trail. It’s one of the most famous and historic trails in the world, so we would do it despite the requirement of paying hundreds of dollars to a trekking company, applying for a permit months in advance, and traveling with a group of 13 other people as well as a caravan of porters.

Our trekking company instructed us to be ready to be picked up at our hotel Monday morning between 5:20-6am. At 5:19am, I was just finishing packing (like most trekkers, we would be leaving some bags at our hotel) when a guy from the trekking company came to collect us. He hurried us through the streets of Cusco and deposited us on the bus, where of course we were the first ones. Over the next 40 minutes, the bus drove around Cusco, collecting the rest of our trekking group, and then finally our guides, William and Raoul, who instructed us to sit back and relax during the 90-minute drive to Ollantaytambo and KM82 of the Inca Trail, where we would begin.

When we got to Ollantaytambo, I noticed two things about the other 13 people in our group. One, most everyone (except for 2-3 others) was wayyy younger than us. Two, everyone was carrying very small book-bags, whereas Mr. P and I had these hulking backpacks. It turned out that most everyone (except for 2-3 others) had hired personal porters to carry the bulk of their stuff.

Here’s our group at KM82. How fresh we looked!

In the Beginning

The weather, incidentally, was gorgeous. Who could have possibly imagined that this was the last time we’d see the sun for the entire rest of the trek?

Aw!

Our group started hiking. Right away there was an Inca site, although it was so insignificant I can’t recall its name or function.

Inca Site

Much more interesting is Patallacta, an agricultural station with extensive terraced land. From the Inca Trail, we had a nice view of Patallacta, although we could not go to it:

Patallacta

Soon, we would have lunch. The 22 porters had traveled ahead of us so they could set up the meal tent and cook lunch for us when we arrived. The food was a pleasant surprise. The first course was sliced avocado topped with diced eggs and peppers — downright gourmet. Next we had fish accompanied by vegetables and plenty of rice and potatoes. As always, lunch ended with a hot beverage. Everyone was delighted.

Mr. P on the Inca Trail

After lunch, our guide Will told us to hike at our own pace to our campsite so that he could judge our pace. This spurred several couples in our group to race to the campsite. Mr. P and I hung back, encumbered somewhat by our heavy backpacks, but also because we wanted to savor the Inca Trail. This was hiking heaven.

From the Inca Trail

Still, despite our nonchalance, I must brag that we were the third couple at the campsite.

Campsite

I must mention that since we arrived in Peru, the country was in the throes of a national holiday. Santa Rosa de Lima day commerated the death of St. Rose, a Pervuvian woman in the 18th century who cared for the sick. She also deliberately made herself ugly by chopping her hair off and rubbing coal on her face. All of which means… fiesta! The small village next to our campsite was having a party, and they didn’t seem to overtly mind if the trekkers came, and they were selling cheap beer, so:

Fiesta

The locals were all drinking chicha, a corn beer that no Westerner dare touch due to its iffy manufacturing process, and also because chicha evidently can make you quite wasted. We witnessed a man so drunk that he tripped over a sleeping dog, and then turned around and kicked the dog (to the horror of the trekkers), and then struggled to his feet and tripped again, on nothing. Fiesta!

Fiesta

Soon, we went back to the campsite for dinner and then hit the hay, as it had been a long day, and Day Two would be the most physically punishing on the trek…