We are excited to add camping to our newfound interest of hiking.  What a special place to do this…not to mention that our awesome guide (Harry) and team made it an absolute pleasure.  In order to hike the Inca trail you must go with a local guide and the national park service only allows 200 new hikers on the trail each day…not that we’d consider doing any type of mountain hiking in a foreign terrain without a guide, but the porters were an extra.  When we booked the trip we thought we booked a small group trip, so when Harry mentioned the six porters we didn’t think much of it.  Come to find out that they were all for us and we were the only ones…no group.  With all of the things we have been booking, we can’t recall if we booked it as private or if it just so happened that nobody else booked this.  Nonetheless, we hiked and camped with the two of us, and seven others (a cook, five porters plus our guide, Harry) to help us.

So…this begs the question…if you go camping with 7 others that cook fabulous hot meals, clean up, carry (our things, not us!), guide and assist, is it really camping?  Well, I peed outside and slept in a tent in 30 degree weather, so I say YES!  I will admit that it is a bit like cheating on a test, but still getting an A.

Our first day was amazing.  We followed a stream cutting through valley with steep mountains on either side.  We were on the trail for five hours, but a relatively easy day since it wasn’t too much uphill.   We city slickers were obviously impressed by the Inca ruins everywhere, but also entertained by the chickens, roosters, bulls, cows, horses, dog and donkeys scattered about.  We’d stumble upon little make shift houses where people live and the animals wandering about were theirs.  What a simple life.  The people living up in the hills don’t even pay taxes or other bills, unless they have electricity, which some had as of two or three years ago.  Some homes even had satellite TV!  We asked Harry a ton of questions about what these people did all day and the answer was–farm.  This is where some of the mastery of the Inca Empire comes to light.  The area of the Andes is so steep with jagged cliffs one after another and no flat land to grow crops.  So like any good old-fashioned dictatorship the emperor took rural people and essentially made them work to the bone during the dry season to build the now famous terraces.  Impressive for many reasons, the amount of land and rock that was moved on these hillsides is massive, while being in very remote areas it made the task even more difficult to comprehend how this was competed.  Remember we are talking about late 12th century, which means the only tools were sharper and harder rocks then the one, your cutting and some bronze pieces found in the nearby area, that would wear out and be replaced.

A quick note on our amazing porters. These guys are totally super human.  As the tourists slither around using walking sticks, sucking water out of our camel backs barely making it up the mountain, these porters buzz by us with 44 lbs. on their back, running at three times our speed…or maybe even 4 or 5 times!  They are given sturdy boots to wear, but most opt for little leather sandals regardless of the weather…rain, hail, 30 degrees out, etc.  It doesn’t matter.

Porters

We wrapped up the first night by strapping on our headlamps and making one last visit to the outside bathroom.  I noticed a pair of eyes deflecting off of my headlamp.  I assumed it was one of the cute llamas that were in the area, or maybe one of the rotund cows.  I did not think much of it, until I heard a minor stampede and a yelp from Greg.  Apparently there were a few bulls that decided to run at lightening speed right past Greg, nearly stomping on top of him.  They disappeared as quickly as they arrived.  Phew!  Close call!  No harm done, just a white faced Greg that lost a few years off of his life.  🙂

Some fun and interesting Inca Facts:

– Who needs FedEx?  The Inca’s utilized errand messengers to communicate.  The messengers were in lookout stations that were placed every 5 miles.  It was the ‘pass the baton’ concept.  They could send a message 1,500 miles in under 7 days in the most rugged terrain of the Andes.   Impressive especially if you do the math to figure out the average speed in MPH.  We did this calculation before the hike and thought it was too fast but could justify the calculation since Harry reminded us that each messenger’s leg (no pun intended) was only 5 miles.  Now that the hike is over and we traveled the same terrain ourselves the figures are basically unimaginable due to the speed, like much of the Inca accomplishments.  Imagine asking your entire network of friends to strategically wait around for a message, and then sprint full speed for 5 miles to pass the message on to your next friend and so on.  We can’t even meet up with our friends for evening plans without cells phones to constantly text to check where or what time, or is the party cool or should we go elsewhere, etc.

– Inca ruins were everywhere we turned mostly high atop mountain ranges for strategic reasons, the empire spanned throughout what’s now called Peru, Ecuador, and Chile.  There were approx. 100,000 nobles controlling 12m people that were mostly conquered one small village at a time.  There is even a little town we visited that is considered the last working Inca city…streets exists as they did 500 years go with buildings intact now converted into Hostels, a market, and restaurants selling the fabulous Pisco Sours (a local drink made from sugar cane liquor – think Margarita with a bit more of a kick) and souvenir shops.

– What do strong men do in our culture? Throw tires in the strong man contest? Or dead-lift 600lbs?  Well…not very productive.  It is estimated that it would take over 500 men to move a single large rock. The sacred temples were the most impressive since those rocks were smoothed and perfectly chiseled to fit together like Legos.  The precision and work ethic were unbelievable, beyond astonishing and unexplainable.   Really unexplainable by modern researchers today, the theories behind how a community moved these rocks miles and then lifted them on top of each other with perfect alignment can still not be replicated TODAY!  The walls still stand, many in perfect condition without any mortar or hinged devices withstanding earthquakes, natural geographical shifts and general weather.  Like many wonders of the world, words won’t do the site justice.  It must be impressive if we were willing to hike 4 days to see it, on that note there are only two ways to Machu Picchu – walk or train.

– The Incas took the multiple wife methodology  One noble even had 300 children from all of his concubines.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I think a dog and cat are a lot to handle, much less 300 kids!

– The Incas performed surgery!  The Incas conquered local tribes and often had to go to war to do so.  Not surprisingly, they would often suffer from head injuries.  So, what happens when you get clubbed over the head with a big boulder?  You either drop dead or your brain swells from the injury.   We were shocked to learn that there is proof that the Incas would perform trepanation, which is when you would bore a hole in the cranium to relieve the pressure.  Pretty darn progressive.  They would even close up the hole with a metal of some sort.  Crazy cool.

– When viewing the impressive Machu Picchu we learned that 60% of the work is under the mountain for the foundation.  We only see 40% of the real work that they performed.  Impressive!

– There is a little town in Peru called Ollantaytambo where some more Inca ruins were.  Most of the massively huge boulders…as in 2 or 3 tons…were brought to the area from a quarry almost SIX MILES away.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t even imagine orchestrating such a feat.   It may take a thousand men to help with the move of a single rock.

Day 2 of the hike got serious and so did the appreciation of the beautiful landscape and level of loyalty that was needed for these structures to be completed.  Most cities are considered incomplete despite being built for hundreds of years.  Imagine the vision, and to some degree ego, of the emperors and architects to set out and build things that would take hundreds of years by utilizing millions of workers.  In contrast, and there are many examples, we use a microwave to cook food.  So impatient we let radiation developed during WWII soak into our food so we can eat quicker.

Still winding along the main river in the valley that cut the mountain peaks almost in half with the relentless glacier caps melting creating the massive flow of water year round.  Then the uphill battle began, as did a dose of reality and altitude.  We didn’t train for this hike due to our travels so we were a little nervous but this extra energy probably came in handy.  And when we didn’t have the nervous energy we luckily had the coca tea that was served every morning and afternoon.  The porters didn’t bother with drinking the tea; they chewed on the leaves to get a more potent return on their investment.  Eight hours on the trail and we are feeling it.  The walking sticks came out along with the early sunrise at 6:00 AM.  We immediately fell in love with the sticks; they stabilize, propel and create a rhythm that is necessary if you are hiking for this long at a slow pace due to the altitude.  We finished the day at 11,000 feet so oxygen is at a premium, especially going uphill for two hours straight.  It was not too steep but the turtle and the hare theory are really coming into play.   Even though the baby wipes are keeping us clean, a warm shower is crossing our minds regularly.  I joked with Linda that if baby wipes are good enough for a babies butt, they must be good enough for us while we hike.  This was particularly important since today I had my first standup poop (FYI-this is Greg saying this), yep no toilet seat just a hole in the bathroom floor.  I’ll spare you the rest of the details.  The night was freezing cold with temperatures down to 30 degrees, if it wasn’t for the hot bottle of water in an aluminum canister to snuggle with I don’t think Linda would have made it.  You would have thought we were hiking Everest with it below zero the way we carried on, thankfully in the morning the sun was shinning and we saw the campers next to us still alive:).  I always believe these situations need to be measure with something relative in mind.    We were cold relative to the person on the beach in the Bahamas but warm relative to the hiker summating Kilimanjaro (more on this soon to be adventure later).   Linda is being tougher than I thought she would be but we still have a long way to go before we can handle Kilimanjaro in a month.

Day 3.  This is our big day, the day we will be tested, when we have to prove what we are made of.  Feel free to put yourself in the zone of thought that reminds you of the biggest day of your life where your performance needed to be at 110% percent.  That’s what we felt like after being pumped up by our guide for the 12 hour trek.   Then we looked over at the campers next to us again and realized they were 10-20 years our senior all bandaged up with knee braces, funny hiking hats covering their necks and head along with hiking poles and 1980 spandex outfits.  I am not sure if this created more or less pressure.  It eased the anxiety of being able to finish but simultaneously crushed the ego.  It turns out this hike and camping is not considered very rigorous, for the newbies it was more than we thought we could handle especially when the rain started just after lunch.  The next three hours was a combination of rain and hail.  About an hour in to the raining we learned that waterproof hiking shoes are really not waterproof.  Luckily Harry knew a trick to get the shoes dry later…cook them over the stove burner!  We were a little giddy so it wasn’t so bad; we are now at 12,500 feet in the cloud forest.  Everything has moss on it; trees as high as you can see and rocks up and down the path are covered.  It was like walking in the Alice in Wonderland movie with all the different color moss everywhere; we have all seen the blue and black moss but this furry sponge was red, blue, purple and orange.  Really neat colors, nature is so cool.  It was around this time we decided we could breed a super tourist, a person that would grow up to love traveling, never complain, doesn’t get tired, likes to socialize on the road, speaks every language and tips well.  We weren’t sure if it was altitude sickness or just good old boredom, either way we could be on to something with this breeding thing.

One last freezing cold night and another 5:30AM wake up call, baby wipes to the rescue for day 4.  Useless fact – we saw a huge wasp, Harry told us it was a Pepsis wasp.   Now one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard.  The wasp stings tarantulas just enough to put them in a comma, then puts eggs in them and before Charlotte the spider can wake up, then the spider is forced to give birth to the wasps it was injected with.  Just like the scene from the movie Aliens.  Test me on this one because I didn’t believe it either, just Google Pepsis wasp.  The last day was easy since we knew it was the last day.  The gate of the sun structure gives you the first view of the lost city, a rewarding sight to say the least.  We walked through the city then off to the hotel for a shower.  Since we had a half day tour the next day there was no need to postpone relieving each other of the smell that was barely human…or maybe all too human.   Speaking of smell, we have decided anything lemongrass is good.  We have had it in lotion, soap, shampoo, tea and herbs in food, which have pushed us to start our very own lemongrass lovers club.

A morning tour of Machu Picchu allows us to soak in the total experience, the four days was about the history of the Incas, beautiful landscapes, a much needed challenge and new adventure.  A train ride back to Cusco then a flight to Lima where we stayed a few nights in our first branded hotel, every other hotel/posada/hacienda was a boutique up until now. The Marriott was nice with all the amenities and a little US feel after the hike and over six weeks on the move.  The next day we walked the city and just relaxed and quickly realized it was the third day since we left the US where we didn’t have travel or an organized day.  What a relief!   Not much else to say about Lima, I am sure being drained has a little bit to do with that statement.  Next up Argentina and Buenos Aires where we have rented an apartment for a few weeks.

Thanks to Harry, who loves photography, we have a ton of great pictures!  We joked that we felt like we were in a wedding with all the pictures we were posing for.  Harry is a perfectionist!  🙂

PERU PHOTOS

– Cusco

– Machu Picchu