Day 2 on the trail started with some official introductions. I told you before that there were 16 of us hiking together, along with guides Juan and David. But I didn't mention the large crew that was with us (really I should say that was ahead of us) and that were taking care of us. Now, as a mom, I can say that having to tend house, cook for, and clean up after a few people is difficult and tiring. I can only imagine what a big task it would be to care for a few people on a dirt trail in the Andes-much less caring for 16 people. And to have to carry literally ALL the equipment with you....sheesh. An unsurmountable task. But, the men in the picture below made it look effortless.
On the far right was the cook, Mario, and his assistant. Mario provided 3 course meals for us each night, and at lunch, and even managed to bake a cake from scratch on night. And frosted it. How, I don't know. Impressive. And tasty.
The rest of the crew in purple were the porters. There is a head porter, and he assigns specific tasks to each porter. They carried gear, set up tents, boiled water for us to drink and to wash our hands with, greeted us in the morning with tea or coffee at our tents, smiled at us encouragingly as they walked/sprinted past us up a mountain trail while they carried packs weighing almost 80lbs. Now I realize they all have lived at altitute and were physically much more prepared for the trail than we were, but that to me does not take away from how effortless they make their job look.
Some of them are even over 60 years old! The youngest was 20. Most people in Peru speak Spanish, but some natives in the Cusco area also speak Chechua. The porters were laughing here because Juan the guide was having them count in Chechuan, and most of them had forgotten how to count. Seeing that Keith and I had not remembered much of our combined 7 years of learning Spanish in high school, we sure can relate. Use it or lose it when it comes to foreign languages.
Once the Chechuan counting session was over, all of the porters introduced themselves, and we in turn introduced ourselves.
And once that was done, we hit the trail. After a rather short hill we stopped to get out passports stamped, and we saw this trail sign. We were at this time at the left side of the sign, just a little up that hill, and we were climbing over the top peak, and down into the next valley. Looks easy, right? Sure. What that sign should have said is "You're so screwed today" with a big red arrow pointing at the top of the mountain.
That top of the mountain is directly below Keith in the picture below. See the pretty blue sky? It makes a V between the two mountains in the foreground. See the little peak a little off-center to the right in the bottom of that v? That's where we're going. Doesn't seem so far, but from this point it took us 5+hours to get there.
Far. Very far.
And, I mentioned sickness in the last blog. Like an unwanted guest travelers sickness came to our tent on night 1 of camping and claimed Keith as its victim. Because of the sickness Keith did not sleep well, and then couldn't eat much the next day, so he was tired, weak and dehydrated. Not the best condition to be in for a strenuous hike. Thankfully we all hiked at our own pace this day, so we could stop often and rest. And catch our breath, because it surely wasn't getting any easier to breathe as we climbed the mountain.
On occasion I would walk ahead of Keith and take some pics. Keith proved to be an excellent, though unwilling model. I mostly got glared at when I was taking pictures, but thankfully Grady's glares has prepared me for that, I am an excellent ignorer.
Here we're fairly low on the mountain and the vegetation was still lush. That lushness provided much-appreciated shade, and almost formed a tunnel over the trail. Keith is the shadow you see in the tunnel below.
So we climbed a stretch of hill, and rested. There may have been some groaning and cursing when this picture was taken.
Being sick and slower than the rest of our group was good for one thing-it did give us opportunity to soak in the view. And I'm glad we could, because how often do you get to look to your right and soak up clouds that are almost at your level? Not often, unless you're a pilot.
And then we rest again.
And maybe again, a few minutes later.
But this time next to a stream. So gorgeous.
And then we walk again.
And then thankfully, some llamas, Andean deer, sheep and some cool looking irritation canals give us another reason to stop and look around. This is far below the trail, but we had the mega-zoomer lens on the camera today.
To give you an idea of how well the zoom lens works, here is a picture taken of the top of the pass. See the little people waiting there? Some of those are the rest of our group, waiting for everyone else to finish. The lens is fully zoomed in here.
And then, while standing in the exact same spot, I zoomed back out and this is the view. Can't even see the people anymore, but you can see the rocky trail. It took us about an hour and a half to finish from this point. So close, but so.far.away.
We were approaching 4200M altitude, and now everyone was struggling to breathe. The last part of the trail is nothing but large granite steps, and at most we could climb 4-5 steps before we'd stop to gasp for air. Or "to admire the view" as we like to say. See the clouds? We're in the clouds! I was so excited.
At this point (or for the last 4 hours, truthfully) I really started to worry about Keith. He was struggling. I started to wonder-at what point does a helicopter get called in to take sick people off the mountain? And...if he falls sideways, he's likely going down a steep cliff...so for the last bit I tried to walk behind him. My though was that if he starts to topple over, I could tackle him in the opposite direction and he'd land into the mountain-side of the trail, not the over-the-cliff-side. I thankfully did not have the opportunity to test my tackle theory, as he made it to the top. And even ill, we finished just a minute or so behind 4 other hikers in our group.
And here is the exhausted group. Keith and I thought that since the last 6 of us were taking so long to hike to the overpass that the 10 youngins might walk on, but they all waited! So nice of them. I really think we were incredibly lucky to be grouped with this bunch of people. All were so genuinely nice and caring.
Proof that we made it to the top. 13828 feet, if you were wondering.
We were so excited to rest at the top that we didn't even consider the rest of the day's hike. All I knew is that our guides said "steep up, then we rest, then we go down". And down should be easy right? Ha.
That "easy down" turned out to be 2 hours of steep granite steps. So, 7 hours steep up, then 2 hours steep down. It's like being at the gym on a stairclimber that never ends. Ever.
And while Keith was the slow one going up, I was the slow one coming down. Short legs + high steps=slowness. And the knees...oh the knees! Those hurt. But at least it was cooler on this side of the mountain.
And then, a mere 2.5 hours later, we were at camp. And the view from our tent, as you can see below, was the stuff you see in inspirational calendars. Just amazing.
There's no way to sugarcoat this day's hike. It was brutal. It was only a small consolation to hear the 22 year olds also bitch and moan about how tired they were as we sat around eating that evening's meal.
Before this trip I worried about sleeping in a tent for 3 nights, mostly because I'm a little high maintenance when it comes to beds. If I'm not comfortable, I don't sleep well, and then my back hurts, and I whine and complain and am just not pleasant. This night it took me less than 5 minutes to fall asleep and I slept like a baby. That hike did for me what taking the boys to the bouncy house does for their sleeping: knocked me out! Except when I woke up at 3am and had to walk in the dark on the wobbliest legs to the bathroom, but that's another horrifying story for later.
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