The Inca Trail: Day 4 Wayllabamba -- Pacamayo

After a restless night disturbed by tentmate Joe's frequent and noisy vomiting, we started the second proper day of walking with the knowledge that this would be perhaps the hardest thing many of us had ever done -- and possibly the hardest thing we would ever do.

We had camped overnight at an altitude of 2700m at a place called Wayllabamba, which in the Peruvian Quechan language means "grassy plain". Both of these are quite safe, reassuring facts that you take comfort in on the trail. The altitude is low (although that is still double the height of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles), and the name tells you how it's nice and flat. This contrasted with the focal point of the day: Dead Woman's Pass, standing at an altitude of 4200m, over three times the height of Ben Nevis and nearly four times the height of Snowdon^*.

It wasn't long before the ascending trail took us up through what is referred to as "cloud forest", where the forests are persistently misty -- this made it cooler for the uphill hike, but the altitude was still tough. Joe hadn't recovered from the night before, and was struggling to continue going since he couldn't even keep water down. We were lucky that it stayed dry for us, since this part of the trail had a reputation for being hard going when it got muddy as well as steep.

I remember one stop we made for a rest and water, which really symbolised the contrast of the traditional Peruvian society and the "modern world". We stopped to regroup and rest, and a few feet away, under a tree sat two Peruvian women in traditional dress, with their donkey. And a table selling bottle water, Coke, chocolate, Powerade and various other delicacies. Every now and then the donkey would wander closer to one of the women, and she'd hit it with a stick. I got the impression the woman was telling the donkey to go away, but maybe it was the other way round -- the donkey enjoyed it, and every now and then just had an urge to be hit with a stick again, whereupon the old lady would oblige.



Lunch a couple of hours later was a beautiful lush valley, with views of snow-capped peaks and the heights of Dead Woman's Pass lying ahead of us. Joe was in a bad way. He was dehydrated and weak, from being unable to keep anything down but still being determined to keep going. I think the trail and the long months of preparation did that to you: giving up was not an option. If I thought I had things bad with dodgy knees and a bad foot, Joe had to be put on an intravenous drip in a tent.

When I arrived at the lunch stop true to form our team of trusty porters had already erected the three group dining tents for us, as well as the cooking tents and done all the cooking -- and there was still a few minutes to go before meal time. Most others had been there a while longer than me, but I was perpetually slow. It's now such a bad way to take the trail, you get the opportunity to take in all the sights around you -- which never have the chance to become familiar or run of the mill.

I encouraged a fellow trekker to venture in to one of the surrounding fields where llamas (or maybe alpacas, I can't tell the difference) were peacefully grazing. I had been tasked by Ali to hug a llama for her, and I was determines to meet my obligations, and have a photo taken to prove it. Unfortunately, the llamas had other ideas about this. They might be big. And smelly. But they are also still timid of people, and weren't keen on the idea of being hugged by someone who hadn't showered in a couple of days. I settled for a photo near a llama instead, though I won't post it since it's not a very flattering picture -- and I don't look a whole heap better.

Lunch was packed with carbs -- the now-usual selection of dishes ranging between soup, chicken, white rice and traditional Peruvian dishes. It was delicious, and best of all plentiful -- and we needed it, since Dead Woman's Pass still lay several hours ahead and several thousand meters above us.


After lunch the trail got steeper and relentless, there was often barely enough room for two people to walk side by side, when there would come up the mountain a shout of "Porters!". Everyone would move to one side to let these Peruvian supermen past -- with port-a-loos and stoves on their backs and nothing more than sandals on their feet.

The altitude made the trek hard going. We'd be able to walk no more than a few minutes before having to stop to catch our breath -- the thing about altitude was that the air literally did feel thinner, you could take long, deep breaths but the air just didn't go so far. Your heart would pound, your head would thump, and you just had to stop and let everything settle -- no amount of eagerness or speed would get you up the mountain any faster.

With the altitude came the cloud, and once we reached Dead Woman's Pass (so-called because it is said to resemble a dead woman lying on her back, with the view of two mountainous peaks resembling breasts) it got cold very quickly. We all assembled together to appreciate what would be the highest -- although not necessarily the hardest -- point of our trip. The views were limited by the cloud around and below us, and strangely reminded me of Dartmoor -- probably because of the cloud/fog, rock and desolate landscape. On many of the surrounding hills were small piles of stones, not unlike the cairns found in the British Isles -- they were apparently expressions of wishes by Quechan travellers, who would return and add another stone to the top of the pile when their wish came true.

Getting to the top of Dead Woman's Pass was only half the battle -- there was still a 500m descent to camp to go. While the ascent was hard-going because of the altitude and steep climb, descending is often just as hard, and the relentless steps are torture on your knees -- and like with the ascent, you can't speed up, even if you want to, and know you are against the clock to get into camp before dark.

The second night camping was in the Pacamayo (or "sunrise") valley, where instead the sun was quickly setting. My tentmate Joe (who had been carried at one point on the steepest part of the trail uphill) was already in the tent and his sleeping bag and fell sound asleep almost as soon as I got back. My knees were so painful and stiff I could barely bend them at all without crying out -- which made it incredibly difficult to crouch down and sort out my bedding in the tent without waking sleeping Joe.

After a hard day, many of us were a lot more tired than the night before -- there was no time for stargazing in the clear mountain night this evening, instead we went to sleep right after dinner.

The next day was promised by some to be the hardest, with another very early start.




^*Readers outside of the UK: please feel free to chip in with how this compares with mountains you are more familiar with -- I appreciate the UK isn't known for its mountainous terrain

The neuro-virus, and why you shouldn't stroke other people's cats

We take a short break today from the regular scheduled programming -- that is, the forever-delayed posts about the Inca trail -- to instead write about being unemployed. Because hopefully by the time I have written about the remaining three walking days of the trek, I will have a job again and have no witty observations to make on this sort of thing.

Last week, I was sat in the benefits office. Waiting my turn. Smiling to myself every time someone sat down without taking a ticket first. They'd be told they needed to take a ticket, from the machine. But the machine appeared to have no tickets. There would be a moment when you'd see people hover on the edge of getting angry and mouthing off to the claims assistants, or getting more confused. You could almost see them physically teeter on the thin line between them, at which point one of the assistants would instruct them to open the top of the ticket-dispensing machine and find where the roll had curled up inside. Some needed further guidance as to where the end of the roll was. I suspect these people also have a note attached to their clothes for the morning which says "Remember: trousers first, then shoes".

Waiting patiently, if not quietly, one young lady was talking to her friend about the sickness epidemics at her child's school. She told her friend quite earnestly how one child at the school was sick with "the neuro-virus". Why nobody had told this particular young lady just to refer to it as the "vomiting bug" like most mainstream media does, I don't know -- because confusing the norovirus with something that sounds like a brain disease is going to surely cause more harm than good.

They went on to discuss "the swine flu", and how "they say the swine flu might be like the plague, and kill loads of people". It wasn't clear in what sense it would be like the plague, whether it was in total number of deaths or fatalities as a percentage of the population. Nor did she elaborate who "they" were in this case, though I suspect it was either The Sun or The Daily Mail. What she was saying wasn't exactly wrong, there has been media speculation about how many deaths from the virus could be expected this winter, and of course there are conspiracies about eugenics (like those espoused by the rather wonderful David Icke). Just the same, these young ladies didn't seem especially concerned about the possibility of the plague.

Today, the freak brigade were out in force in the post office. I wasn't paying attention at first when I heard raised voices, but after a little while with the counter clerk was explaining to me how long I could expect a first class letter to take if I posted it today (off topic; this is an interesting development in customer service -- I am sure it is only in the last couple of weeks they have started mentioning this and checking you are OK with it) I started listening to what was going on in the line behind me.

From what I could gather, an older gentlemen was having a heated discussion with a much younger man about the younger man's child stroking his cat. What made the argument stranger was that the older gent insisted on calling the younger man "youngster", which coupled with a unique-sounding voice, made you wonder at first if it was someone pretending to be much older and stuffier than they really were. Either way, the young man was getting more enraged and kept telling the older gent to "f***ing turn around and mind your own business". And as I say, there was some argument about stroking his cat -- the young man apparently being angry the older gent hadn't let his child stroke the older gentleman's cat, and the older gent clarifying something along the lines of anybody was welcome to stroke his cat who asked. Perhaps the strife was over not asking permission first -- is it bad manners to touch someone else's cat without seeking permission first? -- or perhaps the child had gone into the man's garden to stroke the cat. I couldn't tell how this related to the older gent being told to mind his own business, perhaps there was a second, more private argument going on at the same time?

A concerned counter clerk shouted over to ask them if everything was OK, they seemed to dismiss her at first, but then the older gent -- whom I then got to see was dressed like a rambler and was carrying a hiking pole, much like the ones I used in Peru (and which don't actually do the same job as a walking stick) -- approached the counter clerk and told her he wanted to make an official complaint. I'm not sure complaining about another member of the public is really very effective. But despite her asking helpfully if everything was OK, she admitted to not having any kind of authority to be able to do something to help, such as calling security or taking the details of the complaint. Instead, he was instructed to go to the Bureau de Change desk for that. Which makes complete sense.

I'm going to be extra careful about stroking other people's cats now, it's clearly a minefield.

In other news, I have a job interview this week. A job doing communications within the public sector, and for which the recruitment process has been ponderously slow -- I was first contacted about it weeks ago, while I still had a job. I have mixed feelings about the job, part of it seems much too junior for me in terms of admin duties and placing stationery orders, but it would be in London and on more money than I was on before, and a job is a job right now.

While I'm out of work, I am trying to see what training I can get on to. I have expressed an interest to the powers-that-be in learning web design, graphic design, digital marketing and while we're learning stuff, I'd like to speak Spanish. It's not often you have the opportunity for free training, and I could potentially come out of this better qualified. On top of all of that, I am also looking at volunteering opportunities -- some local charities need PR, I need something to do. And finally I am looking at giving some time to volunteer at the hospital, being nice to people who need visitors and that kind of thing. It's a role I could potentially keep on even if I get a job quickly. I think I need to do more and be less self-involved.

The Inca Trail: Day 3 KM 82 - Wayllabamba

I suck at updating the "travel blog" section here, I apologise profusely to anyone left reading! However, in a gesture of goodwill I have found my paper journal and gone back to the earlier posts and added in the scribbles.

Day three started early, with an alarm call at 4.30am. My phone shows a text sent at 5.37 to the girl, just before we were leaving the hotel. I'd already been up for an hour, and it was another hour before sunrise.

This was to be day one of the proper trail: no more hotel beds, no gentle walks across countryside, instead we were going to be camping in the mountains with no mobile reception for three days. The next time anyone heard from me would be after Machu Picchu, whether I made it on foot or not. We piled into two coaches for the 3-hour drive to the start of the trail, known as "KM 82".

I slept a lot of the journey, and woke up shortly before we stopped in a town called Ollantaytambo. The town itself was still waking up, but the people eager to sell to the tourists were already up and waiting -- people selling scarves and hats and walking poles and any number of things. The walking poles were beautifully carved and painted, I started to wish I hadn't brought my hiking poles from home with me -- but I'd needed my poles for all the walks back in England, and they were adjustable to different heights, making them suitable for both uphill and downhill, which you couldn't get with the wooden ones.

We spread out through the town square, some people were buying agua de florida -- a kind of cologne that you splash on your hands, clap together and then inhale deeply, which was meant to help with altitude sickness. I was more interested in finding a scarf, less for the cold nights and more for protecting my neck from the sun, it was something I'd forgotten to take along. I walked from one traditional shop to the other, giving a bueans dias to the shop keepers and just smiling politely if they tried to make any further conversation. In each shop there would be shelves from floor to ceiling with ponchos and sweaters, blankets and scarves. I found a scarf I liked and bargained, although only briefly, with the shopkeeper for a good price.

It was still early and so still cold in the town. I was wearing my beanie hat for warmth, and my wide-brimmed hat on top of it as much for convenience as anything else. Occasionally, someone would stop me and try to sell me a hat. I knew they couldn't speak English, but just the same my response was always the same: I'm already wearing two hats, do I look like I need a third? I think they understood the gist of it, even if not the exact words.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a parade appeared. There was men banging drums and playing trumpets, and most disturbing lots of men in scary-looking masks that resembled devils. They marched through the town holding their banner and banging their drum and then they were gone again. We never did find out what it had all been about -- none of the locals seemed to pay any attention to it -- but apparently the masks date back to the time of the conquistadors. We were told that the conquistadors had forbidden any traditional celebrations, and so people wore these masks to hide their identities.

Soon, we all piled back into our coaches for the rest of the journey to the check point at the start of the trail.

The Peruvian authorities are very cautious now about protecting the Inca trail, so numbers of people walking it are very tightly controlled and all groups have to be authorised. It wasn't enough to just be a registered group saying how many people you were taking on the trail -- everyone was listed by name, and had to provide their passports at the check point so they could cross-reference the names on the list with the names and pictures. You did get a stamp in the passport for it, though.

The train to Machu Picchu runs alongside KM 82, and everyone turned their noses up at the idea of being "a tourist" and just riding the train to the lost city -- where is the challenge in that, where is the adventure if you haven't hiked for days to reach the goal? Just the same, I think all of us felt just a little, tiny bit jealous. Nobody there would have chosen the train, even if given the option at the last minute -- it was about the trail for us, not just the destination -- but seeing it there made you stop and think about what lay ahead.

This first day of walking was still, by the trail's standards, gentle. We crossed the Urubamba river and followed alongside it for several hours, until lunch. The rest of the day was a steady climb, looking down on terraced hillsides and the ruins of Patallacta.

I spent most of the day at the back of the group, as you might expect from my injury so was one of the last to arrive at the camp. At camp in Wayllabamba, the porters had put up all the tents for the group -- neatly separated into the three sub groups, named Condor, Puma and Pachamama. Not only this, but they were already busy preparing the evening feast, and had set up the three communal tents with hot drinks and bowls of popcorn.

As was to become the standard, the evening meal was a carb-loaded three courses, starting with bowls of soup, before offering plates of white rice and chicken and potatoes alongside more traditional dishes and vegetarian options. After the early start and first day of walking, we all went to our tents fairly soon after dinner -- besides as soon as the sun went down at 6pm it became very cold in the mountains, and I was glad for my poncho. The group leaders laughed at it, but I was warm and that was what mattered. It also made a very good improvised pillow for sleeping in the tent.

The sleeping tents we all shared with a tent mate, who had been previously assigned as our hotel room mates, too. I got a young guy called Joe who was a musician. He was nice enough, but strangely reminded me a lot of someone I had gone to school with -- except almost ten years younger than we are now. It wasn't long that we were in the tent that Joe mentioned not feeling great. I told him he'd probably feel better after a trip to the toilet -- that I'd felt a bit off colour myself for a little while earlier, and it would be OK.

And so it was that our first night camping in the mountains of Peru was punctuated by Joe frequently getting up to loudly vomit outside our tent. If he wasn't actually being sick he would be asking me what I thought he should do, should he see the doctor again or just leave it. After my initial mis-diagnosis, I generally told him that he should let them know. He'd see them, get a shot or some tablets or whatever, then go back to bed, only for the whole thing to repeat again. It went on all night, and I genuinely felt more sorry for him than I did feel any annoyance at not getting sleep. We'd been advised before we went to bed that if you needed to get up in the night to unzip the tent and leave it open until you returned: that way the whole camp wouldn't be kept awake by the zip-zip, zip-zip of you opening it, and closing it and the zip-zip, zip-zip when you returned again. Nobody needed to worry about that when there was a guy being very loudly sick in the camp.