Cusco is 3,500 km above sea level and a great place to prepare your body for the dizzy heights of the Inca Trail. We had allowed ourselves four days to acclimatise, which was just as well. By this time I had a really bad back and was wondering if I was going to be able to do it at all.
A seemingly knowledgable Peruvian GP believed I had done muscle damage over many months of bus journeys, bad beds and carrying a heavy bag. He prescribed me some painkillers and we hoped for the best. However, two days before we were due to start the trail, I got a bad tummy bug as well. At one point, we were eating dinner with a nice couple in a Cusco restaurant and I had to leave suddenly with strong fever shakes and a really stiff neck. A bit panicky, we called a another doctor to the hotel, who gave me two injections and a kaleidescope of tablets to take over the next few days. By the next night, my temperature was gone and I felt loads brighter - but then Ben seemed to have got the bug as well. Tougher than me, he dosed himself up with immodium and we packed our bags for the adventure.
At 5.45 in the morning, we left our hotel for the starting point, at 82 kilometres. The first day was, relatively, painless and we arrived at our campsite in Wayllabamba (3100m high) in the afternoon, where the incredible porters had already set up our tents and were preparing dinner. The local men who work as porters do a mindblowing job. They have to pack after you each day, carry (uo to 25kg each) all the tents, supplies and cooking equipment, and then overtake everyone on the trail (running past in just thin leather sandals) to get to the next eating spot or camping place. When they arrive, no doubt exhausted, they have to get to work putting up the tents and making the dinner for all the gringos who wander red-faced into the campo a while later. Sometimes, they do all this for the full four days, catch the train back to the start and begin all over again without a rest. Moreover, it seems they get paid very little for their services and rely almost solely on the tips they get from hikers at the end of each tour.
Day two is the notoriously tough one and sometimes people have to walk, or be stretchered, back to the start if they can't handle it. It involves four hours tough hiking uphill, mainly steps, to the aptly named Dead Woman´s Pass, which, at 4,200 metres high, is the highest point on the trail. I had been pretty worried that I wouldn´t be physically fit enough and the altitude would finish me off, but was thrilled when we both managed it, and in a perfectly respectable time. This slog is followed by two hours of knee-jarring descent down yet more steps, all before lunch. The feeling of elation when we got to the summit, and then to the campsite (Paqámayo - 3500m) made it all worth while and everyone spent most of the afternoon collapsed and sleeping in their tents.
Day three is a really long one and the day I found hardest. We were woken at 6am with the usual cup of hot coca tea and, after breakfast, walked until it got dark, reaching two high passes and stopping to explore a few smaller inca sites on the way. The final campsie is near a sit called Winay Wayna and is packed with hikers. There are hot showers here, which we didn´t bother as we´d come this far without washing (!) and cold beers for sale, which we did bother with.
The last morning starts with a 4am wake up and has you stumbling through the dark for a short time as part of the two hour climb to the famous Sun Gate. The end is a frantic scramble up some up the steepest steeps I have ever seen and then you are looking over the sensational view that takes in Maccu Picchu. One poor woman stumbled at this last stage, broke her wrist and had to be stretchered to hospital. Whether she ever actually saw Maccu Picchu, I don´t know.
The descent into the site takes about half an hour and you, the great unwashed, are then met by coachloads of clean, smiling tourists, fresh off the train. Unfortunately, by this time we were so exhausted that the tour of the ruins was somewhat clouded by the desperate need to lie down and sleep. As far as we were concerned, it was all about the trek and that first sighting, which was a really memorable experience. The scenery on the way was even more breathtaking than the uphill climbs and I definitely consider the Inca Trail to be a highlight of the whole trip. When it was all over, there was rather too much hanging around, waiting for the 6.30pm train, but the bed at the hotel when we finally arrived back in Cusco at 10pm that night was possibly the most satisfying bed ever.
