Inca Trail: Styling Fail

Pop Quiz, Jarrod. What’s the first thing most people think when they hear someone is going to South America? That’s right: “oh g-reat… the cliche Facebook profile pic at Machu Picchu is only weeks away.” They’re right of course, most travellers come to Peru wanting to tick that off the proverbial bucket list (and of course, garner a respectable collection of Facebook likes for their trouble) And, yes, I’m as guilty as any of them.

When I met our G Adventures Tour group, almost everybody confessed they’d signed up because doing the Inca Trail and seeing Machu Picchu had been a longstanding dream. They’d done varying degrees of preparation for the trek, from hiking hills at home, to bootcamp to absolutely zip. Me? Let’s see…. oh, this one time, about a week before I left, I walked up a flight of stairs at work, to the FIRST FLOOR, Jarrod, to deliver some paperwork to an office, rather than send it via internal mail. Cardio and altitude, right there. Some were excited about tackling the trek, I was feeling mildly anxious, and Belinda, seated next to me at the briefing confessed that she was ‘literally shitting herself. Not exaggerating. Literally.’ Which frankly, made me wish we had a little more space between us on the couch.

Anyway, I was down for taking up whatever they were suggesting to make the trek easier. After all, it’s 44km you’re walking, up to altitudes of 4200m. I’m not a masochist or a martyr. It’s already Roughing It if you don’t have easy access to a latte in my opinion. We had the option of hiring an air mattress (the alternative being sleeping on the equivalent of a measly yoga mat), a sleeping bag and walking sticks. Yes, yes, and yes.

Here’s the trouble though, you have a strict 6kg allowance for the bag that the porters carry for you on the trail, anything above that you have to carry yourself in your day pack and you want to keep that light. The sleeping bag and air mattress come at a 3.5kg price, leaving you a mere 2.5kg for whatever else you want to bring for the four days. It honestly has you cursing the weight of your toothbrush. Needless to say, it doesn’t leave you a lot of outfit options. Those articles that run in fashion mags that boast “8 items, mix and match for 24 outfits?” Bullshit. This was going to be “6 items, 2 ways, 24 smells – from mildly whiffy to downright pungent to ohgodseiouslyhassomethingdiedandstartedrotting?”

The night before the trek starts we stay in a sweet little town called Ollantaytambo (ha ha, spell check does not know what to make of that, it came up with suggested replacement ‘come on now, are you taking the piss?’) We do a short preparation hike here that does nothing to bolster confidence about the trek ahead because after 45 minutes uphill we are gasping. I would voice my regret about not training properly to prepare for this but that’s ……too… many….. syllables…. and oh….my lungs…. burning……So Belinda and I communicate via rueful head shaking, eye rolling and sighing with hands on hips.

We are though, rewarded with some very pretty views at the top, and when our chests stop heaving and we’re able to lift our cameras to shoulder level, we have a ball exploring and of course, taking some mandatory wistful shots (see last blog entry for explanation).

But onto the trail!

Day One: ‘Lull You Into A False Sense Of Security’ Day

We bus to Km 82 where we meet our lovely guides – Alejandro (yes, he IS sick to death of jokes about the Lady Gaga song) and Eli, and our porters. We’re also issued with our hire gear at which point one major problem becomes apparent: it’s going to be very hard to look foxy on the Inca trail when you’re a) unshowered and b) wielding walking sticks in every photo. Gait aids are not what you would call inherently sexy. Having said that, I’m not unhappy with my effort here, hair looking very nice. Maybe I can make the whole adaptive aids look work?

Stay tuned for my next steamy photo shoot “electric scooters on the salt flats of Bolivia.”

The Day One hike is not too arduous. Around 6 hours, you hike about 11km and ascend a mere 500m. We encounter a lot of donkeys on the track and a lot of donkey poo, which you have to be careful to avoid with your walking sticks, lest you make yourself a little shit kebab.

We’re thinking ‘this really isn’t that bad! What were we so worried about?’ We arrive at camp and the porters, who’ve done the trek in roughly a quarter of the time we took, each carrying roughly 20kg on their backs – have the entire site set up already, and an amazing three course meal prepared. We even have access to a toilet in an adjacent farm house. A real toilet, Jarrod, not a squat toilet!! Five Stars! Spirits are high. Bellies full, thermals donned, we crawl into our tents and retire for the night.

Day Two: ‘Shit Gets Real’ Day

It rains over night so the tent’s wet in the morning. The porters deliver a hot bowl of water to each of us for freshening up and we sponge wash in the tent. I haven’t slept well so I’m hollow eyed and feral looking at best. My roommate on the other hand, looks so fresh and spritely that I suspect birds and woodland creatures have somehow swarmed into the tent without me noticing, and gotten her ready like something out of a Disney montage. I clamber awkwardly out of the wet tent and the soaking tent door slaps down to hit me on the back as I emerge. I groan something along the lines of “fabulous, nothing like a wet flap hitting you in the back first thing in the morning” and Belinda and Leanne, nearby brushing their teeth recoil because apparently there’s “nothing like hearing the phrase ‘Wet Flap’ first thing in the morning.”

Things improve though when we get to the breakfast tent because there are PANCAKES WITH YOUR NAME SPELLED OUT IN DULCE DE LECHE ON THEM for breakfast.

What bliss! I’m simultaneously thrilled to bits and kind of pissed off that my parents aren’t bogans prone to adding superfluous vowels and silent consonants to a simple name. (Why couldn’t I have been a Mheaghan?) I glance enviously over at Gwendoline’s pancake all those letters… all that leche…. but hey, at least I’m not poor Ian. Three letters worth and one of those is just a line. What a jib.

Ok so Day Two is a 12km trek and you ascend 1000m to reach the highest point on the trail, Dead Woman’s Pass, then descend 600m again to reach camp. A group of five of us settle into a comfortable position at the back of the pack and take things at a pace where we can chat and laugh to keep things bearable. We are overtaken reasonably frequently by trekkers grimly ploughing on with their walking sticks, their dead eyed expressions and grunting not dissimilar to the zombies in The Walking Dead and it more or less makes us relish one another’s company even more.

Now Jarrod, I need a mantra of some description for hill climbing, something to motivate me when the going gets really tough, and the obvious choice, particularly with summer on the way is that uphill climbing is going to give you veritable Buns Of Steel. I mean, you’ve seen the infomercials for the Brazilian Butt Lift dvds, with Victorias Secret Models and random Americans talking way, way too earnestly about their backsides to camera, right? Well I decide that the Inca Trail climb is going to be a Peruvian Butt Lift. *Before and after photos to follow.

It gets pretty tough as we approach the highest point, we’re basically walking 30m at a time then stopping for a rest. We’re chatting and laughing but in shorter sentences and (? altitude effects) finding things all round more hysterical as we get higher up.

Our delicate mental state is not helped by the fact that it starts to rain just as the climb gets steepest, and we have to don our genuinely attractive plastic ponchos. We look like we are wearing full body coloured condoms.

Because what you really want when you’re sweating buckets and barely able to breathe, is to wrap yourself entirely in plastic. (If you’re not sure what this feels like, next time you go for a run, just pop a plastic bag over your head). But we make it! Here we are in our Inca Trail triumph shot, aka the “we kicked it in the dick!” pic…

Then it’s a descent in the rain, a long and arduous descent to reach camp, where sadly there is no regular toilet in a farmhouse reserved solely for our group of 9 hikers… just a block of squat toilets that is shared between LOTS of campsites. It’s a blessing to go there in the dark, frankly, and only be able to see the small area that your head-torch illuminates.

Day Three: ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, you thought Day Two Was Bad!’ Day

Okay Day Two was steep and tiring and really hard going, but honestly, I’d do that four or five times again before I repeated Day Three. Day Three is 16km and it just feels as though you’re trapped in a Groundhog Day hike of up and down and up and down that is Never. Going. To. End. Whatever laughter and high spirits we had conjured up yesterday has evaporated and given way to “f$%k this!” whenever we see another climb or another descent before us. Then the “F$%k this!” fury gives way to just dispirited, defeated slumping. Our conversation takes a dark turn, discussing what we’d like to claim from one another’s packs should anyone die in a freak slip/accident. We’re writing virtual wills. It’s decided that in the event of my demise, Karen can have my Jag jumper with the zippers she so likes. Lottie can have my alpaca sweaters. Leanne claims my ipad…

The mood lightens a little when we reach a lake at a mountain peak and the Chong brothers unleash their best wistfuls–

Even Duncan gives it a bash…

But then! We reach the lunch break point and the chef has baked us cake! Cake with a divine layer of jelly icing. Whatever Bear Grylls, have you ever baked a perfect, moist, delicious cake at 3000m altitude WITH jelly icing that you set by immersing the jelly container in a stream of icy cold mountain water? No. I didn’t think so.

So fickle, but we are honestly electrified and rejuvenated by cake. The laughter’s back, our mojo has returned. We head over to use the toilets at the lunch spot.

Now it is nev-er a good sign when you see a fellow trekker emerge from a portaloo with a bandana gag over her nose and mouth, reeling as though she might pass out and dry retching. She pulls down her gag and warns our little cohort that it’s “disgusting in there and we’d be better off going in the field,” before staggering away. We have a brief group pow wow about the options. Field or foul loo? Belinda and Marcus head over to take a peek and Belinda barely suppresses a throw up in her own mouth. Marcus’ need to go overrides his horror and he braves the loo only to whimper and moan loudly the entire time he is in there. (“Oh god, it’s so bad..” and variations on the like). On the plus side, at least while he’s making noise we know he is still conscious. Some of the group elect to just go in the field, in full view of the porters and other hikers approaching for lunch. I elect to just hold on and wait for the toilets at camp.

In the meantime, we hike and hike and hike and take in some fairly magical scenery……

and eventually get to our campsite for the night. Now, the camp squat toilets are shared between multiple groups, probably serving a few hundred people at a time. I use them on arrival and report back to the group that they’re actually “not too bad.”

Oh, how that changes in the space of only a few hours….

I go back to use the squats after dinner and oh, the horror. The horror. Have you seen those youtube videos of that science experiment where people put an entire tube of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke and the Coke just explodes out everywhere? Well I can only guess that someone’s bowels were Diet Coke and they inserted a stack of Mentos suppositories up there because holy crap, how else do you get shit at least a foot and a half up the SIDE WALLS of a toilet??? Up the walls! There’s no a rating on the Bristol Stool Scale to account for that. There’s not enough hand sanitiser in the world to make you feel clean after being in that little box. A full body laser peel, perhaps? That might do it.

So this is a very bad time, a genuinely very bad time, to go into a full squat to do what you have to do, only to have your quadriceps declare “thanks, but we’ve clocked off for the day. Lotta hills today. We’re DONE.” I’m finished and ready to stand, and my legs won’t work to return me to vertical. I cannot move. And there is literally nowhere to put my hands to get some leverage. I am pants down, close to a hole in the ground I really want some distance from, close to tears for several minutes, trying to get my legs to work again. So. Undignified. Eventually, problem solver that I am, I put a hand on the top of each of my hiking shoes and push – more determinedly than any chick in labour has ever pushed, and I lever myself up that way, narrowly avoiding pitching forward into the makeshift pile of used toilet paper in the process. I am like Bambi trying to stand for the fist time, all limbs half buckling and ungainly.

Lurch to the tent and into bed.

Day Four: Machu Picchu and the Massive Styling Fail.

Day Four is the all important day because it’s Machu Picchu and therefore, new profile picture day. I’ve kept a fresh top in my 2.5kg allowance especially for the occasion. A lovely little Gorman number that I’ve had for a while, worn a few times but never been photographed in.

Rookie Error.

We rise early (3:15am) to depart camp and line up pre dawn for the hike to the Sun Gate. The gates for that hike don’t open till around 4:30 and the hike is around 1 and a half hours. People get pret-ty intense about wanting to be first there and some hikers practically sprint to overtake everyone in their desperation to get a photo with no one else in the background. Is it worth it? Do you really think people believe that you were actually at Machu Picchu on the day where there were freakishly no other tourists about whatsoever?

We reach the Sun Gate and everyone dutifully takes their photos of one another with Machu Picchu in the background and excitement is high and we’re all SO thrilled to be there, high fiving, can’t believe that we did it etc etc etc…. and then I check my photo and realise that we have a wardrobe malfunction. My cute little top is in fact really very see though in photos. Hello, here are my boobs, encased in my bra–no nip slip–but here are my boobs at Machu Picchu.

Cue elaborately draped scarf for all remaining photos.

Machu Picchu is stunning, ‘pinch yourself that you’re actually there’ stunning. We have hours to wander around the site and drink it all in. The thousands of tourists who come up on the day via train amble about the site, easily distinguished from the trekkers by their freshly washed hair, their clean clothing, even wearing make up!

So the Inca Trail was simultaneously challenging, funny, exhausting, crushing, disgusting, surprising and amazing. Yes you could get the train to Machu Picchu, but I wouldn’t have missed doing the trek for the world. But I’ll throw it over to you, The Inca Trail: Jarrod, Would You Go There?

Oh, and I almost forgot! The Peruvian Butt Lift. Did the Inca trail transform my backside into a pert, peachy, ‘strangers just want to cup it it’s so damn sexy’ little entity? I’ll let you be the judge of that. Here’s the before picture-

And here’s the after…I think we can all agree it’s honestly a transformation that DEFIES BELIEF!