May 27, 2005

The Famous Inca Trail - Day 2

I slept well that night, despite being on an incline which forced Stephen and I to both migrate to the same side of the tent. It rained, but we stayed mainly dry.

Being that there is no lighting other than flashlights, we'd turned in early and woke at daylight. It was hard to get to sleep as all of us had been going out till the wee hours of the morning in Cuzco before the trip started.

I was forced to wear the clothes I'd sweated in the day before simply because I had left almost everything back in Cuzco and it seemed a waste to get another set of clothes wet and dirty when I would just have to do the same the day after......then I'd have no clean clothes at all. There were no showers.

At breakfast I remembered Camp Rockmont when I was a counselor. I would have to stuff my face until nausea to keep from getting hungry again in two hours. All 15 of us ate huddled around the small table bumping elbows, telling stories, and complaining about our aches and pains. Travelers have the best stories ever.

I was stiff, in damp clothes, and set off around 8 with a backpack that felt like bricks as I hefted it onto my tender shoulders.

I'd bought that backpack for $15 bucks off a street corner in Thamel, Nepal 7 years earlier. I recalled that 8 year old smoking a cigarette who'd tried to sell me hash in the street on the way back to my Hostal. I looked at him funny, grabbed the cigarette from his mouth, stamped it out on the ground, and told him to go do his homework.

Damn that was a long time ago. Although as I think about it, I may be wearing the same shirt that I was wearing that day: a capilene patagonia T. Maybe that was a different one though.

Day 2 we walked in the clouds. We were around 4000 meters (12,000 feet), in and out of what felt like rain that never actually fell. It was up to ridgeline, down into a valley and back up the other side of the mountain, farther and farther into the jungle.

Quickly it was just like yesterday: Leaning on my walking stick, sweating profusely, always at the back of the group, panting and resolute, tireless and exhausted.

After the Spanish came and conquered the Great Inca Civilization, the Inca retreated into the jungle to various Famous Lost Cities of the Incas as our guide told us. Some of these famous cities are still lost.

Others were never lost to begin with....like Machu Picchu. When Hiram Bingham "discovered" Machu Piccu in 1911 there were a family of Inca farmers already living there among the ruins ready to sell rope bracelets and worthless souvenirs to future tourists.

The Inca were prodigous step builders. As a plodded ahead endlessly I imagined the short, stocky natives with straight black hair hefting these large stones around the mountains to make paths leading ever farther into the jungle towards ever larger rock structures. The Stone Age never went out of style for the Inca.

The rest of that day is lost in a haze of reflection on me and the labor of movement. It seemed so self-defeating to tear myself up to reach the top of a great set of famous Inca steps, only to have our guide point to the next ridge separated by a deep valley chasm and say, "We go for to arriving there." Then I'd walk some more over slippery Inca rocks further soiling the clothes I knew I'd be wearing for 2 more days.

Our guide spoke "fluent" English with no grammar whatsoever. We would reach a stack of rocks on the verge of being swallowed by the jungle and she would elaborate on how intricate, planned and technologically advanced the Inca were.

I never quite grasped all her grand claims about the Inca. I chalk it up to the language barrier. As she explained it, the Inca had everything but spaceships while all I saw were rocks and jungle. Certainly the Inca didn't invented rocks?

She always spoke the same phrases in both Spanish and English, even though no one in the group but me really spoke Spanish, and she knew that. I suspect she tired of speaking in English so she'd take a break, talk to herself in Spanish for a paragraph, and then switch back.

Her English sentences were exact literal translations of what she'd say in Spanish, grammar and all....which made for very interesting commentary. Latin Americans have a tendency to use the word "friend" more losely than Westerners do. Just as everything was famous in the jungle, so too were we her great friends, and she often reminded us of it.

"Amigos, despues del desayuno, Vamos a recoger las cosas y en cuatro horas mas llegamos a las proximas ruinas famosas para preparar el almuerzo y descansarnos. En este momento, hace buen clima, pero puede ser que llueve en la tarde. Amigos, Ya vamanos"

And then she would say: "Friends, after the breakfast, We go to gather the things and in 4 hours more we are arriving at the next famous ruins for preparing the lunch and resting. In this moment, it makes good weather, but it can be that it is raining in the afternoon. Friends, Let's go."

And everything she said sounded like that. It got very amusing.

Late afternoon, about an hour from camp while visiting some more rocks with amazing views of the jungle valleys it started to rain. And then it really stared to rain.

My biggest issue with camping and hiking is staying dry. There is nothing more misreable than wearing wet clothes, wet shoes and socks, sleeping in a wet tent inside a wet sleeping bag. There is no escape from that.

I am always at the back of the group. I walk slow and don't deal well with high altitudes, but when it started raining I started running.....fast. I passed the largest part of the group, passed those who had the porters carrying their bags, passed the others who had broken out into a jog, and even passed the head guide, who always stayed way out in front to make sure everything was ready when we got to camp. I made the last hour in 15 minutes....sprinting up the same damnable steps I'd found so endless just a few hours before. It is odd how tireless we become when there is a reason to go.

Regardless, I was still soaked, which blew. Luckily it only rained like that about 30 more minutes during which time I watched steam rise off my wet clothes and fill the tent. Everyone else arrived 30 minutes later.

I left my shoes in the cook's tent next to the fire to try and dry them before tomorrow. They laughed at me as I looked down and they were all wearing cheap plastic sandals.

The porters hiked up and down that fucking trail week after week basically barefooted with legs like tree trunks hefting all our cooking gear, food, tables, water, and tents. They packed after we left camp everyday, passed us on the trail, and beat us to the next site in time to set up again and laugh at me for trying to dry my 100 dollar trail shoes next to the fire while they walked around happily in their jelly sandals. Crazy.

We were all very old friends by this point and dinner was a soft blur of laughter and good company. After sunset the temperature dropped and I was left alone in my dampness to sleep and fight another day.

Posted by kelliottdykes at May 27, 2005 11:08 PM
Comments

Extremely interesting and as always well written.
I can imagine being there.

Posted by: Dad at May 30, 2005 03:17 PM

Why not go then?

Posted by: Elliott at May 30, 2005 10:22 PM
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