I survived the four day trek to Machu Picchu, with several layers of sunblock and insect repellent, as well as my own version of a 5 o'clock shadow (times four days) to show for it.
On day 1, I awoke at about 4:30am, and immediately heard the sound of rain outside my window. The hostel in which I stayed has a courtyard covered by a hard plastic roof, and it sounded like a downpour of biblical proportions. It ended up being not so bad, more a gentle rain than anything else. The tour bus came by a little after 5am; I was the last of the group to be collected. There were 11 of us total: four Australians, two Danes, two Germans, and two Argentinians. With two tour guides, we made for a cozy little group.
The bus trip was, for the most part, relaxing, though matters got more interesting near the beginning of the trail (known as the 82nd kilometer.) Every rainy season I expect there are occasional difficulties with mudslides and such. We fortunately didn't encounter any such problems; however, at one point, just above the Urubamba river (which looked to me like a long series of really-pissed-off-River-God level rapids,) the left lane of the road had actually washed away, leaving a single lane over which our driver expertly drove our bus.
A few words about the bus driver. Near the end of the drive, we actually cruise along some narrow and somewhat rough roads, as you might expect for rural and relatively underdeveloped Peru. For longish stretches of this road, it is impossible for more than one vehicle to pass, which required occasional backing up and seemingly physically impossible squeezing of one large vehicle by another. At one point we were facing a truck, and for about four minutes there was a lot of gesticulating and rapid jabbering in Spanish, before our driver finally gave in and backed up our good-sized tourist bus perhaps a tenth of a mile before the truck was able to pass us. After that, he took off at rather astonishing speed down this bumpy, narrow back-country Peruvian road, driving in such a way as to suggest that going backward again was not even really an option. When the next truck coming straight at us inevitably appeared, I think our driver actually accelerated. The truck helpfully flashed its lights at us, which our driver just took as a sign of weakness. He had remarkable faith in the braking system of our bus, which indeed did not fail when he decided to use them about ten feet away from the bumper of the other truck. As you might expect, the truck was the one who ended up backing up.
Day 1 of the hike was probably the best, in terms of weather. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and the clouds cleared for most of the day. I put up a scant few pictures on my flickr account, and in one of them you can see the peak of a mountain off in the distance. Pretty stunning. The one downside to the day - to the whole hike, actually - was that I was apparently the only one who had to haul just about all of his belongings himself. Nearly everyone else carried day packs, as they had hired porters ahead of time. The option of hiring a porter was not one offered to me by the company through which I booked the trip, and I get the sense that a great deal does depend on which agency you choose.
But the views were amazing, and while the hike was pretty rigorous on the first day, it was manageable. We stopped around 1pm for lunch, which, in a pattern that was to be repeated for the next few days, was better than just about anything I've eaten for weeks here. And not just because I was hungry. The rain started up again around lunch time, then slacked off immediately after - the timing couldn't have been much better.
We reached the campsite about three or four hours after lunch. The nights get pretty cold here, but my sleeping bag was up to it. The night sky was mind-blowing, as there was no artificial light for miles around. The Milky Way looked like very finely spread dust; it was possible to pick out even the dimmest stars within it.
I'm going to cut this short for the moment. More later, probably - the music in this internet cafe is getting to be a bit much.
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