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I am leaving for a trip today and I am very excited!   Big thunderstorms this afternoon, hope the plane gets off on time.  3/28/09.    

Three days before departure.   I am commuting an hour to work every day, all for the quest of knowledge, yeah, yeah yeah…..   Last patient before lunch, silvery hair cut short, small rimmed spectacles.  “Vacation “, she says, “Peru,” Inca trail.”   Her face narrows in almost contentment, "Listen to me.  Now this is a trip of a lifetime. Remember and enjoy every minute, EVERY MINUTE, do NOT forget this.  People think they can put this STUFF off 'till they are older but you CAN’T,  no NOT the same.”   “No, I have never traveled.   Watch the Travel Channel all the time.   MIKE, remember and enjoy.”     I have nothing I can really say back to her.  I don’t need to.    

After work I drive home and call my dear friend.  She has been on this part of the Inca Trail before.    I know she has been in the hospital lately but I do not ask her about this, we talk for a while and I think of this many times on the trail.  

Packing was more chaotic then normal.  I'm trying to make sure I don’t under pack.  It is Melissa’s first long hike and I want to make sure it is a good one.  

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  We arrive at the airport very concerned.  Tornados spotted 70-90 miles south of the airport and we needed to make a critical connecting flight in Miami.  Crazy luck!  The plane takes off we make it, Mo and Helen joining us for this trip from Chicago.   Mo barely makes the flight, sprinting 20 minutes clear across the airport.   The flight leaves 11:55 with a 6 am arrival to Lima.   Lima to Cusco should be a 50 min flight.   

 

This does not happen.   We can’t land in Cusco because of weather, heavy rain.  They fly us to Juliaca.   They tell us we will fly to Cusco soon.  Cool. 

This does not happen.

We then fly to Arequipa.  We arrive at 10:00, am sit on the plane till 1:30 at this time they discover a bird has flown and died in one of the engines.  They tell us to get off and stay in this airport room.   We have yet another snackbox.    We sit in the room.  It’s crowded.  The plane leaves. We are not on it.  It is full.    We walk into a big section.  We talk to someone.   We are frustrated.  We talk more. Our Spanish is mediocre.  We are flying now, not to Cusco but back to Lima.   We have tickets, we hope this is real.   We wait, walk upstairs and eat our first meal in 20 hours overlooking dry, grand mountains.  We eat french fries and, “Yes, another plate please.” I eat a bowl of spaghetti.   

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We then fly back to Lima which is not where we want to go.     In Lima we find a hotel, eat chicken, and sleep cheaply.   5 am next morning, we cab it back to the airport and get on the same plane we were on 24 hours the day before, all for this 50 minute flight to Cusco.   Finally, we arrive in Cusco.  

Here we meet up with our two other travelmates, 6 total now, who have been in Cusco and wondering where the hell we have been.   We were not able to call them as our cell phones did not work in Peru.

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Melissa, my new fiancée, is very happy for her break from her anesthesia residency.  

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Melissa my new fiancée is very happy for her break from her Anesthesia residency.  

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Mo, also from Chicago, teaches art and I have known her for many years.  

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I am meeting Ellen and Masa for the first time.   Ellen travels a lot for work; Masa is an event planner and enjoys leading stretching classes before and after a day of hiking.   

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Five females. One male, me.   This is a different kind of trip than I am used to.

We sit in the hotel and talk with our friends, our soon-to-be trail companions.    Here we are informed that vomiting from high altitude has already occurred.    I go to the hotel bar and let the women talk.     I am happy. I am enjoying the 11 am hour with a cold Cusqueno beer.   “Eight soles please” says the very young, well dressed bartender.    “Yes the cold one.”   I reply.

The girls relay the stories of travel.  We had spent some 30 hours in airplanes or airports not including sleeping in Lima.   It all made me sick and I could not sit and listen.  

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From here we travel to our separate hotels.   

The hotel was good, a good view.  Red rooftops dot along very narrow stone brick streets.   The streets are so narrow that single cars were forced inches away from a man walking single file on the sidewalk.  

The hotel gave us good chocolates on our pillows.  This excites Melissa and the crew very much.  Later we go shopping and spend no less then 2-3 hours with candy wrapper in hand on this chocolate quest.   No luck.  

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Later that evening we check in with the expedition center.  Here we met our other hiking partners.  Richard, a short-haired engineer and his girl Iola, both from Wales.   They're friendly and good to have on the trail.   Both were very sunburned from a recent bike ride.  

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A very slightly overweight Cusco native, looking like a crumpled-haired Elvis in a tee shirt is our guide.    His name is Fred.   “My friends, how are you feeling?”   “Vomiting, yes this is natural with the altitude.   Coca tea will help this.”   Fred presents with such seriousness and authority that despite good rain gear, I've made up my mind to pick up a poncho, gloves and more water.   At Fred’s very specific instructions the next morning we passed up a very good free breakfast to avoid altitude sickness.    He presents much like my good friend Nadiem.  

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The next morning, we all pile in a bus with  Fred, and the porters.  We stop off at Ollantaytambo, a small town on the way to the trailhead.   We get off the bus.  Fred shuffles us into a breakfast place.   Most of us eat variations of eggs and toast.   The menu was a full menu with spaghetti Peru-style.  This is what I order, everybody else is finished with their food my food has not come out.   Fred returns and is ready to go.   He enters the kitchen, my food promptly came out.    I eat quickly.   We buy hiking sticks, again at Fred’s directions.   Leaving breakfast to be surrounded by 3-4 women selling hats and gloves.  Beautiful wool.  Soft, mostly in earth tones.  One peddler carries a young girl wrapped in hand woven cloth slung over her back.   Hopeful faces, dark hopeful eyes.  One offers a price; the others cut it in half instantly.  One with dark, long hair is shaking gloves and hats all strung out on a wire at me.   I buy my gloves; Fred quickly hurries us all onto the bus.  

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The breakfast stop being over, we drive onward toward our trailhead.  Mud adobo houses.  Bony dogs with their tits hanging down trotting along the road side.   Cows with rope around their horns, staked to the earth, assigned, their patch to move, their patch to exist.  They eat their grass and leaves keeping an ever-encroaching forest at bay.    An elderly woman with long colorful skirts drives several cows with a stick throughout the town square.  We drive along a great muddy forceful river.  The road is a single lane, gravel, often going within inches of the steep ledge dropping off into the water.  We stop.  The driver hits his horn.   We wait.  The other bus backs slowly up giving us room and we drive on.

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We arrive at the trailhead and stamp our passports at the check point.  We wait, then cross a steel suspension bridge, with muddy water pounding, rolling underneath.   Shortly afterward, a photographer stationed here clicks off our photos as we begin our journey.    The trail grade was flat with some uphill hiking on dirt.   In the daypack on my back carried 2 ponchos, 2 rain jackets, rain pants, sun screen, passports, money, toilet paper, wet wipes, hand sanitizers and usually two sets of long sleeves. I also take 4 liters of water.  I take less and less as the trip wears on.    Melissa took care of the camera.  

I talk with Fred about fastfood.  He loves McDonalds, pats his belly. ”Ya you know why Americans are so fat.”  I say.   

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Fred shows us plants and begins to teach us symbiosis of the jungle.  Fred has attended University in Archaeology.  We call him "King." “Fred knows everything” He smiles he likes this.   We arrive to the first ruins.   He lines us all up sitting, “no talking” “watch my hands” “Now remember this always.”  “My friends look over here.   Please listen to me.”   We were tired.  He described constellations, the Day of the Dead, also the day of fertility, afterlife, the sun the mountains making exact angles lining up through holes in the building at the precise time of the year.    We tried to take it all in.  “OK guys 5 minutes, ok now let’s go.  Packs on!”

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Each hiker carried a daypack.  Hired porters carried our food, tents, and clothes.  They also performed all cooking, gourmet meals, the kinds moms make at their gourmet neighborhood clubs in the suburbs of Raleigh.    With a Peruvian twist, of course.   

First lunch is in a small village.  The table is set up under a dining tent with stools, plates, tea, soup, and a main course.   We wash our hands with soap and warm water laid out in buckets.   Skinny dogs prance around the cooking area.  Chickens peck, three small pigs eat a corn cob.  We relax after lunch. Fred booms out, “Five minutes OK let’s go!”   The trail turns to a mixture of dirt and standstone.  We pass by several small farms, each selling water, candy bars, or toilet use.   We are hiking on their main road they supply themselves with pack animals.   We use our sticks to climb steep steps.  “Horse biscuit!  Tasty horse biscuit!”   I enjoy calling out.    We would pass much  horse excrement.

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The camp was marked and well established.  Our tents already set up upon arrival.   A very soiled latrine which I never braved to enter sat at the edge..

I was tired.  I had packed too much water and was stupid enough to guts it out and not dump.   I kept telling myself “keep it, the extra weight would make me stronger.”   My stomach gets upset.  I leave the dining tent, the Milky Way backdrops the dark looming mountains.   I sit at the edge of our very narrow, well-defined camp.   The view is spectacular.   I look out at the stars and start to feel better. Somewhere closeby some 15 feet away two girls excrement.  I go to bed annoyed.   

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Next morning, “How are you? Drink this my friend.  Coca tea, this will make you better.”   I eat little, skipping a second meal.     The second day I pack smarter, less water.    We head up to Dead Women’s pass climbing 1000 meters to 13,700 ft.   I enjoy this part very much.  There are many people on the trail, currently 200 tourists a day, requiring 300 porters to accommodate us and our gourmet food.   I traveled in a line up the mountain.   This is the only time I left the group.  

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I thought of my scouts, Mt Baldy Philmont NM, the red rock the way you slid back with each step.   I thought of the old trail songs we would sing over and over.  Bits of pop music we thought ridiculous.  We thought a lot of things ridiculous back then.  

At the top of Dead Women’s Pass, in the heat, there is a young man with an oxford sweater, long khakis and a floppy hat.   Very GQ, a girl in a bikini and flip flops, another girl, Korean, in a miniskirt posing flamboyantly supermodel like.   Funny thing though, she was very serious.    

I put on my rain jacket to protect myself from the sun.  Many, many people.   I think these guys are funny.  I sat and tried to make myself comfortable as the rest arrived.  A very different mountain top then Baldy, 50-60 people sat on top of this one.  

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Once we all arrived, inspired by the Korean girl, we all then posed like flamboyant supermodels.  The Korean girl thought this grand, came over and took flamboyant pictures with us.    

This was drier country, we climb down, then partway up a second pass, climb down, climb up eat lunch.   

I eat a little, still not trusting my stomach.   The first 5-10 minutes of every meal starts with full reports from the girls of bowel passing, stomach uneasiness.  Richard and I are outnumbered and keep really quiet about all this.    We eat our three course meal and drink our tea.  Fred Listens to all this talk, “It is natural”   he would lean his head out of the dining tent to bark orders at the porters, who would then quickly make up a soup to fix our problems.  

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The trail at this point was rock, solid rock, like I have not hiked on before.  The trail was paved with rock.   We walked along in file, walking sticks in each hand.   On the trail I try to convince Fred that I am good friends with Michael Jordan.   “You should see his workout gym, big score boards... racks and racks of basketballs.   Mike and I go fishin’ all the time, bass fishin',  you know.  He likes the top spinner baits, I stick with the old fashioned worm bobber stuff, you know what I mean?”    Fred just stands there staring at me.    

He later tells me he was the tour guide for Jack Johnson, a famous singer.   We didn’t believe him too well. 

“What’s with the stacks of rocks?”  Melissa asks, “Well, listen to me my good friends.  This does have meaning.  You take one from the beginning of your journeys; you take a rock, a small rock.   During your travels the rock will soak your sorrows.  This my friends is something you do if you are serious, it is not a joke.  This is the Incan way.”    

 

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We arrive to our camp now crossing from the dry mountain into the cloud forest.  Reports of a good toilet was big news and the subject for much conversation.  I finally brave the crapper side of the latreen, and I tell you, there ain’t no other way to make the stomach feel better.   It works.  I feel much better.   We were in a designated camp site with 4 other crews in sight.   The tents are all lined up.   I eat more and feel better. 

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Porters awake an hour before we do.  They collect water, boil it and make breakfast.    They live off-season on small farms along the steep mountain terrain.  They grow mostly corn or potatoes.  If they grow corn, they trade it for potatoes.  Dark bowl haircuts, big full-toothed smiles, random hat and tee shirts combinations.  Most wore rubber strapped, open toe sandals.  Black feet, heavily calloused, cracked, forefoot and mid foot heavily stretched out taking whatever the ground had to offer.   They did their work quickly smiling, trading punches, running to bring you juices, water as soon as you arrive.  

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