So, although by the end of our treck all three of us were smelling pretty ripe, Dave gets the blue ribbon.
First, a little background info. For 7 days we had our bigger backpacks carried by porters (or horses in the case of the first 3 days)
These porters are like little super men. At 13,000ft they run up and donw hills with packs twice their own size weighing up to 60lbs all while wearing sandles. Keep in mind these guys have an average height of about 5ft 2in. They are amazing. But believe it or not they work up a bit of a sweat, so when Dave got his pack back on day 7, it came with its own unique smell. Well not so much unique as utterly replulsive. It was described as intense BO mixed with human feces (believe it or not there was quite a bit of this floating around, both Carlyn and Dave had the joy of stepping in it late in the evening of day 6- it still hasnt come off Carlyn shoe)
Some of this horible smell can probaly be explained by an act I wittnessed on day five) As we arrived to camp after exploring an unpronounceable and amazing inca ruin (an again having it beat into us that there were 13 inca kings, the 9th being the most important... and something about a condor, puma, and snake) it began to rain. Then it began to rain harder. We huddled in the dining tent while water poured in around us and we hoped our sleeping tents had their rain covers on (Carlyn and I later found a small swimming pool in our tent, aparently the rain cover wasnt on well enough) I of course had to pee, and durring a break in the storm, I ran to the damas room.
Well, I had to ask if it was the damas room because i couldn{t physically enter due to all the porters huddled in it for shelter. And i wouldn{t so much call this a bathroom, it was more like 3 holes, some doors and a tile floor covered in a mixture of mud and human you know what. These bathrooms created a stench i have never before experienced and hope to never experience again. It was something almost tangible which left you with an empty feeling in your stomach and and an urge to vomit....
So after some broken spanish, i finially figured out that this was indeed the womens room. While I stood contemplating peeing, surrounded by, oh 8 or 9 of my new closest porter friends, I noticed something. Two of the porters had unloaded their packs and were repacking them... they had unloaded their packes (some poor tourists backpack-probably Daves) on to the feces coverd bathroom floor. I just prayed that those bags were not mine, and unfortunately we figured, from the undeniable stench, that one of those packs was Daves)
So even though Carlyn and I were dirty, sweaty, smelly and had been wearing the same pants 7 days straight... Dave took the cake. Between his bag and his birkenstocks the odor was pretty damn impressive.
He took off today to head back home, and it had just gotten to the point when we could bear to have his bag in the room.
We will miss him and his sense of humor dearly. He was a blast to travel with and we will be quoting him for months to come. We hope he has a safe flight home, a lovely 12 hour layover in Lima, and we hope he finds a bottle of fabreeze soon.
