Peru South America

Cusco and the Inca Trail

We had better seats on our night bus to Cusco, and so I was fast asleep in the morning when one of the other passengers tapped me on the shoulder to let me know that we’d arrived. We stumbled out of the bus into a particularly dusty yard where a guy from the bus company was throwing bags from the bus towards a crowd of people. We eventually got ours, and then a taxi and a hotel and some proper sleep.

When we emerged from the hotel, we found ourselves some breakfast up one of Cusco’s dauntingly steep streets, and went to sit in the Plaza de Armas. And just as I was saying to Sal that we’d probably see someone we knew at any moment, the Canadians we’d met in Lima and again in Huacachina walked right in front of us. Without really knowing what we were getting ourselves into, and still feeling the after effects of the overnight bus journey and the increased altitude, we joined them on a seemingly never ending bus tour around the city and up to the archaeological sites above it.

At the start of the tour, we passed a local with an old camera who was frantically snapping away in our direction. It was only later, when the same guy pursued us half way up the mountain to try to sell us postcards with our pictures stuck on them that I realised why. Of course I didn’t buy the blurry picture of me not looking at the camera, but I did realise that the next time I see someone pulling that trick I should tell him that it’s S/.5 for the photo of the gringo…

Oh, and I had to laugh when the tour guide started telling us all about how old Cusco is–older than nuevo york and washington dc… Well that sort of thing might impress the Americans on the bus, but if we’re having a “who’s got the oldest city competition” then I’ll see your 800 year old Inca civilization and raise you some Vikings and Romans. Stuff New York, what about Old York?

But of course we didn’t come to Cusco just to go on an average bus tour of the city and its associated Inca ruins, we came, like everyone else, for the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu.

They say that the Inca Trail is being “loved to death”, and it’s certainly true that, even limited to 500 people a day, there are lots of other gringos treading the same path as you. Luckily we’d booked our trip through an agency that was happy to send us off in a small group. Well, in fact a very small group, as it was just the two of us, and so this meant we could take our time, letting the other groups rush on ahead, and for the most part we had the trail to ourselves, with just the occasional porter speeding past. I did feel moderately guilty that it took 5 people just to get the two of us up and down a couple of mountains (that’s one guide, three porters and a cook), though. The porters truly are amazing. In the old days there were no restrictions on how much the dodgy agencies could give them to carry, but now they’re restricted to–just–the thirty kilos each. They run past you up the mountain barely breaking a sweat as you huff and puff up the hill (and on the second day, which is the toughest, when the tourists finally make it to the campsite having struggled up the delightfully named “Dead Woman’s Pass”, the porters give them a round of applause, which is surely the wrong way round…)

Inca Trail, Day Two: At The Top of Dead Woman's Pass

On the night before reaching Machu Picchu, we had the “tipping ceremony”, and of course as there were only the two of us in our group it fell to me to handle our part of this. I’m not sure I’m very good at that sort of thing. Adding something onto a restaurant bill is one thing, but actually physically giving someone money is just something I don’t know how to do. I think it’s a British thing. I’m sure the Americans get trained at birth on how to slip a $10 bill to the guy who’s just carried your bags to the hotel room or the Maître di at that fully reserved restaurant, but I’m never quite sure how to do it, or how much I’m supposed to give. At least this time we’d been briefed in advance on the going rate, and having seen how hard they work there was no question of us not tipping at the top end of the suggested range… They seemed happy enough, anyway, after I’d stumbled through some words of thanks and attempted jokes in my schoolboy Spanish (to the Quechuan speaking porters…) and passed them each the S/. 50 notes I’d been saving in my wallet…

(And this was after two amusing conversations with the porters: they’d asked how old I am, and had responded to my treinte años with “oh, we thought you were older, because of the grey hair…” and when we’d been discussing our families with Odon, our guide, who comes from a family of 7 brothers, we told him that we were from families of 2 and 3. “Oh, he said. What’s wrong with your fathers?”)

I think we both enjoyed the trail more than Machu Picchu itself, which was even at the early hour of the morning when we arrived there, already full of fresh-faced and clean tourists who’d just caught the train from Cusco… When we finally made it there, after a 4AM start, a wait in the queue to pass the final checkpoint at the campsite, a 50 minute walk to the sun gate and another hour to the site itself in time for sunrise, we were both too exhausted to do much else. They say you should climb Winu Picchu for the best view of the site, but when our guide finished our tour around the site, we just sat down for a long time.

Still, it was all in all an amazing experience, and certainly something my knees will never forget…