Inca Trial

No, of course that isn't a typo but instead a rather witty play on words. Oh forget it. I have just arrived back from an amazing four days biking and hiking my good self around Machu Picchu. Brilliant and thoroughly recommended, but let's not pretend I found it all easy. Given that I am more prone to bitching than rhapsodising, let us begin.

As I hurtled down a mountainside on a bicycle that looked like it had been made with bits of scrap from the Ark, I realised absent mindedly that I was paying rather too much attention to the gorgeous Andean scenery and giving too little thought to how to avoid becoming a Wiley Coyote style puff of smoke in a ravine below. Some brilliant person had told me a great story about how a girl on Death Road in Bolivia had breaked sharply at a switchback and been rather disconcerted when her brake sheared off and plunged her headfirst to an exhilirating but messy death below, so I was a bit twitchy to say the least at the first corner. Fortunately the brakes worked and I employed them to great effect for the next three hours, reaching a maximum velocity on corners of 2mph. I narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a boulder when I went through a stream across the road at approximately three zillion miles an hour and was blinded by waterspray. For the last hour or so we were biking on a spine jolting stretch of unpaved dustbowl which, combined with the spray from the rivers, gave me an excitingly literal brown patch on the back of my trousers reminiscent of the figurative brick I had been endeavouring not to excrete for the entire ride. I didn't come last though, which was pleasing, and moreover I was very, very brave.

Back on two legs for the next day and eight hours of hiking, during which I had an epiphany. This is it: the reason I am scared of so many things is because I watch too much TV. The Wiley Coyote thing the day before was but the tip of the iceberg (Titanic). During the course of the day I freaked myself out on a badly repaired wobbly bridge (Indiana Jones), convincing myself I was about to plunge into a waterfall below and be dashed upon the rocks (Emperor's new Groove). I similarly (metaphorically) wet myself on a perilously slender mountain ledge (Last of the Mohicans) and later, as we picked our way across a boulder field in a dried up river bed I decided that I was in grave peril of slipping between two rocks and having to hack an appendage off with a penknife (127 hours). In short, I spent quite a lot of the second day scared out of my wits. Fortunately I took about a thousand photographs as the day is all one long blur in my recollection, except for a part where I stopped for a glass of juice and met an engaging animal called a picaru. This is a sort of jungle guinea pig, cute with a wuffly nose and long whiskers. The woman in the house was fattening it to eat it. I've seen that film too. Over the course of the day I reached two conclusions: firstly, that the Inca Trail really is quite an impressive undertaking and secondly, that I'm not getting a Sky movies package when I get home. In the evening we were given Inka Tequila at dinner (urgh) and then coralled into a very small nightclub with the other 9 members of our tour group, who were mainly French and brilliant fun.

Day three was marvellous: a nice flat walk with wide paths and very few movie connotations. We walked around the bases of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu mountains through the a cool, shady forest and tried to outrun a group of noisy Israelis who were bent upon ruining the experience for the rest of us. They later turned up in our hostel, alas. The walk itself also including a pitstop with hammocks which was an unexpected bonus. We got some sneak peaks at the ruins of Machu Picchu from the foot of the mountains and spent a while goggling at the height of the mountain we would be climbing at 4am the next day. Over lunch we realised that we would be scaling Machu Picchu on 14 July, which excited the Frenchies very much. Our plan was to storm the ruins a la Bastille, sing the Marsellaise loudly on the summit, and then for good measure have a battle between the French and English members of the group. 'Avec plaisir', one of them riposted. Aux armes, citoyens!

Day 4 began rudely at 3.30am as we all set off downhill from Aguas Calientes to queue up at the bridge before beginning our hour long climb (1700 steps, people!). the reason being that they only let the first 400 people up Huayna Picchu mountain, which is the one you can see in the picture. I had already decided that I didn't give a tiny mouse's fart about climbing that mountain so was in no particular hurry, but at any rate was carried along by a tide of head-torched zombies shuffling their way up. I lost Chris early on as he raced with the serious climbers, but plodded on regardless and note for the record that climbing a mountain in the dark with a torch is far superior to doing it in daylight because you can't see how much further you need to go. Somewhat to my surprise the steps ended and we joined a huge sweating throng of people waiting to go in.

I'm not sure I can properly describe the experience of being in the ruins. Firstly, they are huge, much bigger than I had thought. Consequently the place seemed to gobble up all the people who had arrived so that you had the sense of being almost entirely alone on a big, misty, brooding mountainside. Because you've seen so many pictures of it- on TV, in books, and on llama wall hangings in every hostel in the land, it seems oddly familiar. Also, it's not really that old. It is contemporaneous with the Tudors. But it feels really old. And it was only occupied for about 70 years. It was a summer house for the ninth Inca, Pachacutec, when Cusco got too cold. Nice location for a second home but a bit of a bitch to get to, I feel. Anyway, we had a tour and then Chris went to climb the other mountain and I had a nap on a wall. A flock of green parrots flew past my head. 'Ooh look', said an american tourist, 'hummingbirds! 'Don't be silly,' her companion remarked, ´the tour guide said that hummingbirds were like twelve foot long in Peru'. Someone tip that tour guide.

Later in the day the sun came out and burnt all the mist away, and more day trippers arrived, but they tended to congregate in two or three spots, so we really didn't have to try hard to find quiet places to just sit and stare at the place. It was strange really, because Machu Picchu was really the reason we decided to come to Peru in the first place, and now we'd reached it. And then with a last look from the look out point at the Guardian's House, which is where you get that picture that everyone has seen, we climbed back down and began the really long walk home again.