March 17: Inca Trail

This was the maiden voyage for my new REI Polar Pod +20 sleeping bag, and I'm happy to report that - wearing only boxer shorts - I stayed perfectly warm throughout the night. Outside the tent, things were a little less pleasing. It had started to rain sometime during the early morning hours, and we woke up at 6am to a steady drizzle. Of course, we also woke up to hot coca tea, served to us in our tents by the porters. Despite the fact that it was raining, I chose to dress, once again, in my nylon cargo shorts and red, polyester baseball shirt. I would actually wear this each and every day on the trail. The theory was that (A) I would warm up once I started moving and (B) there was little sense in mucking up my warm, dry camp attire. Basically, in the spirit of packing lightly, I had only brought along two changes of clothes. While there were some cold, uncomfortable moments, this line of thinking paid off each and every night when I slipped out of the stinky wetness into a perfectly dry, perfectly clean bliss. Brilliant!

An Irish guy at the hostel in Cuzco had warned me that the second day was one of the most difficult experiences of his life. Agreed. There's just no sugar coating it... day two is a bitch. Essentially, you start your morning going up, and then continue going up. Next, you go up a little more until you reach this spot where you keep going up. From there, you go up. After that, all you have to do is proceed in an upward direction. Honestly, it seemed like every time I turned a corner, it was just more and more incline. The worst of it comes after lunch (the final agonizing push starting somewhere below those clouds at the end of my stick). No talking... just pain. However, you do finally reach Dead Woman's Pass, and from there it's all downhill to the campsite. Though it was cold and rainy for most of the day, I couldn't even fathom what it would have been like under warm, sunny skies.

While we were certainly happy to have arrived in camp to lay back and throw our feet up, the site at Pacaymayu wasn't as soft and cozy as the night before. Fortunately, Flavio had sent one of the porters ahead of everyone else to secure a proper view. Spectacular. The sun had come out about two hours before we reached the tents, and we were greeted by the glistening glaciers atop the San Gabriel Mountains. Starting altitude: 9,842 feet (3,000 meters) Peak Altitude: 13,779 feet (4,200 meters) Camp Altitude: 11,646 feet (3,550 meters) Total Distance: 7.4 miles (12 km)

Each night, just as we arrived into camp, the cook had hot coffee and tea waiting for us in the dining tent, along with warm popcorn and various other snacks. We would usually set up our gear and then settle into full relaxation mode, tearing into whatever food had been prepared. By some freak of nature, on this particular night, Anna and I had each found some reserve storage of energy for a stick fight we had been promising each other. With the sun going down and an hour to kill until supper, the battle was on. The net result was a few whacks on the shins and two slighly out of breath hikers. As with any other childish idea conjured up in the Andes, I chalked this one up to the altitude. Anyway, I just get a kick out of this photo.

I'd love to be able to walk away from this whole experience with some false, inflated sense of ruggedness. However, it's hard to justify "mountain man" status when you have a team of porters hauling most of the gear and a cook serving up amazing meals like this. Not to take anything away from the difficulty of trudging up these mountains at high altitudes, but conquering the Inca Trail is sort of like conquering a Carnival Cruise. Just think of it as being on board one of the Fun Ships while spending almost every waking moment on the treadmill.

It only figures that St. Patrick's Day would fall on a Friday night this year, offering full potential to desperate party-goers around the world on the Super Bowl of drinking. And where would I be? Eleven-thousand feet on top of a mountain in South America, of course. To be honest, I wouldn't have had it any other way. Johanna, bless her heart, had the foresight to bring along a little hooch (though, as a Swede, I'm not entirely positive she had St. Paddy's day in mind). Either way, we sat up in the dining tent and polished off a colorful bottle of Anil (it sort of tasted like Ouzo). The girls sang traditional Swedish drinking songs, I belted out some of my favorite Irish tunes, and Flavio stared at us as though he was living through a bad dream. I blame the altitude. Skål!

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