14th DECEMBER 2003 - The Inca Trail

Just got back from the Inca Trail which is hard to describe... it’s ludicrously inadequate trying to convey the beauty of it by merely changing case, but it was SO AMAZING! The mountains are just so huge and imposing, there are forests and waterfalls and craggy slopes and views that leave you speechless, and suffice to say that I know now how Adrian Mole felt in that bit in his diaries where he’s trying to describe some scenery and uses the word ‘majestic’ fourteen times in one paragraph, or something. Anyone else remember that? No? I’ll get my coat…

You pretty much have to pay for a guided, catered tour these days as they are much more controlled re numbers etc. It’s expensive, but worth it – you get a guide, plus all your camping equipment and meals provided (and carried by porters)… in fact, it was a liberal’s worst nightmare... smiling brown people constantly on hand, waiting to take your cup, offer you more food, carrying and putting up tents… the shame! We tipped them fairly heftily at the end but I still blush to recall how we struggled up the mountains cursing our expensively padded backpacks, while stepping aside every few minutes for one of the porters to whizz past, bent double under loads twice the weight of ours and secured by twisted bits of cloth… none of them have any rainproof coats and most of them wear sandals despite the rocky paths, and all this for a few pounds per day.

Our group of six (we all got on really well, before I start slagging them off… our English accents and expressions provided endless amusement, and Mischka’s filthy jokes went down a storm) included a couple from California who weren’t actually called Barbie and Ken, but may as well have been, and two guys from New York, one of whom was really cool, and one of whom was really fat. Like, about sixteen stone. And he’d never been hiking before.

The Inca Trail is *difficult*. Most people of average fitness can cope, but the second day, for instance, consists of four straight hours of heartbreakingly steep uphill (but you climb higher than the clouds and feel like King of the World!), followed by two hours’ downhill, which I actually found harder because it’s just hundreds of really steep stone steps and murder on your knees and calves. Ricardo (the pieophile) really, really struggled that day, and the third day he came into camp at lunchtime several hours after everyone else, collapsed onto the heap of rucksacks outside the tent (cheeky b*gger) and eventually made it in, refusing all food in favour of just rocking back and forth, breathing hard. His friend started doing a cruel but excellent impression of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, rocking back and forth mumbling ‘Definitely Machu Picchu. Definitely four thousand five hundred feet’ etc, as we all fell about. This briefly lightened the mood, until Ricardo reclaimed the limelight by staggering outside the tent, falling to his knees in the mud and rain and vomiting copiously in a great lion’s roar for about five minutes. Nice. (Just to finish with him, three of the porters, who we overheard referring to him as Jumbo, carried him to the end on the last day, and he was last heard of moaning, of all things, about losing his appetite. Anyway we’re seeing them all for dinner tonight so presumably he’s got it back.)

Sadly, it being the rainy season and all, when we got to Machu Picchu it was really misty and we couldn’t really appreciate the classic view you see in the postcards. But we spent a few hours rambling about in it and it was worth all the effort. I have just realised how huge this e-mail is, so I’d better leave it here, but I’ve got loads of pictures to bore you all with when I get back, so don’t fret. :o)  Oh, and how annoying is this? Despite spending the whole day praying for the sun to burn away the clouds, it didn't oblige.. but it managed to burn our faces instead. Would you f*cking believe it.

Off to Bolivia via Lake Titicaca next… really looking forward to seeing the Fatherland again.