A Magical Journey: Dia Tres

Hello! Apparently my parents want me to finish writing about the Inca Jungle trek so I guess I will have to. Incidentally you will note that my experience of the Inca Jungle trek was quite different to Ro's. Long story.

Well. After the monkey shenanigan it seemed like nothing would ever be exciting again but I was incorrect. That night over dinner (spaghetti Napolitana for the vegetarians, much like the spaghetti Napolitana we had eaten for lunch that day in fact) our guide Frank told us that we had two options for DAY THREE. The typical trek involved walking for a couple of hours along a road to the hydroelectric station, then another couple of hours along a train line to Aguas Calientes, the small town that acts as a base for all tourists to Macchu Picchu. Our other option was to take a collectivo (small painful bus) to the hydroelectric station before hiking along the train line and arriving at Aguas Calientes around 2 or 3pm. We could then spend the next couple of hours climbing up and down a mountain called Mt. Putucusi in Aguas Calientes to get our first glimpse of Macchu Picchu at sunset, from an angle most people don't get to see.

This was clearly a more enticing option. As we sat on the collectivo it was evident we weren't missing too much. It was dry and dusty and not overly jungly and if you don't think "jungly" is a word then I suggest you consult the Scrabble dictionary where you will find it along with "junglier" and "jungliest." The walk along the railroad was nice, though. A lot junglier, though not the jungliest place we saw.

Eeeeeeeeeentonces we got to Aguas Calientes and dumped our backpacks in the hostel and got READY TO RUMBLE. I try not to swear in this blog since my mum once told me she read it to my nana but just imagine I am about to swear now. HOLY SNOOT it was a tough climb. It was really really tough. It started out with some steep stairs. Okay, we thought, this is not so bad. We are tough and can handle it. There were only four of us by that stage, excluding our guide, and we had been powering along the railroad like nobody's business, so we thought we were pretty intense.

One thing about Mt. Putucusi (this means "Happy Mountain" in Quechua, a fact that I find simultaneously pleasing and untruthful) that nobody told me is that the path includes seven vertical ladders with steep gaps between the thick wooden rungs. They also failed to inform me that apparently over seventy-five percent of people who begin the climb decide to turn back once they hit the first of the ladders. Actually I am glad I didn't know this. I assumed I was just being a big pansy. It wasn't the scariness of the ladders that scared me, you understand, but my general unfitness. I haven't been jogging in South America, you know. So once I was halfway up the first of the ladders I thought to myself "Holy snoot, this is probably going to kill me, but I am going to have to continue because it will hold everyone up if I slow down." The longest of the ladders is over 100 feet.

I recommend you click here to see a picture of the nasty thing.

Our guide Frank scampered up there like he did it on a weekly basis, which of course he did. We took probably an hour and a half to get up there as a group, which actually wasn't too bad, although it didn't feel brilliant after seeing Frank rocket up like a sherpa. The vertical wooden ladders stopped after about 45 minutes, but the climb along the Inca trail (not the Inca Trail(tm), but one of many Inca trails) was still steep and vicious with huge crumbly steps and loose rocks. We were simultaneously discouraged and encouraged by passing about ten people from another tour group, the only other people we saw on the mountain, who each invariably told us we were "almost there" and it was "worth it" and a splendid view of Macchu Picchu was "just around the corner" and gave us wildly different estimates of the time required to make the summit (two minutes; fifteen minutes; eight minutes). But when we got there... ahhh. We really had been almost there, and now we were there. And it was worth it.

It actually made my eyes water a little, the combination of exhaustion and thrill. From where we stood we couldn't see a single tourist. Just beautiful expansive terraces sprawled across the side of the mountain, and Huayna Picchu, the mountain that you see in every picture of the ruins. We were so excited to have made it that we were jumping around and whooping and high fiving and just exhaling with pleasure at the sight. I felt like an Inca.

On that note I'm going to leave off for now. I'd like to write more but I have places to be. Tonight we get on a bus to Lima, a real twenty-four hour mare. ("Mare" is a really ridiculous phrase we learnt from Rosie and Anna, our English parters-in-crime from Bariloche and beyond. It means "nightmare" and I don't really know why I just decided to use it.) We're indulging in Cama mode, though, because we've trod much of the terrain before and it's hideous. Cama mode means your seat goes back really far and is nice and wide and sometimes made of leather. They often give you wine and whiskey before bed. Probably not in Peru though. You can also get Semi-cama, which is tolerable, and Classico, which means it goes back just a tiny smidgen and is probably a bit like being in hell. Semi-cama is standard. In Cama mode they show Slumdog Millionaire and in Classico they show films that are written by, directed by and starring Nicholas Cage. In Semi-cama it can go either way.

(When we were fledglings, we took the 32-hour trip on deadly boring Ruta 40 from El Chalten to Bariloche in CLASSICO mode. We had no idea what we were missing out on. It wasn't even that bad a trip, but you wouldn't believe how much mileage we've got out of this story. Whenever anyone tells us about their nightmare bus trips we can crap all over them.)

So I suppose I will finish this tale of wonder later. I'm more likely to remember if you pester me so if you want to hear how it ends then shoot me an email.

Love love love
Lion