Machu Picchu: Chapter 5, In Which We Reach the Promised Land

At 3 a.m. we were all awakened and NOT given tea, which was unpleasant in the extreme.  We were told the early hour was partly in order to make sure we reached the famous Sun Gate before dawn, and partly for the chaskeys. Aguas Calientes is a town made specifically for tourists a 25 minute bus ride down from Machu Picchu.  It's like base camp.  It has a train station that leads back into civilization, which is how people who don't want to hike get to Machu Picchu. It would seen that there is an expensive tourist train that runs periodically throughout the day, and a cheap local train which only leaves at 5:30 a.m. This means that in order for the chaskeys to arrive back at their place of employ in time they either need to be on that train, or, if they miss it, walk all the way back.  

We were rushed through our breakfast and our tents were dismantled around us, which was unfortunate for J2 who was continuing the descent through Dante's 9 circles of Hell.  We pulled on our headlamps and trekked off into the darkness. 

This day I was near the front of the pack.  Unusual, surprising even.  The way was “flat,” so it was easier to keep up the breakneck pace. 

The final obstacle was called The Monkey Steps, and was a short but steep and narrow series of stone ledges wide enough only for toes and fingers and necessitated crawling up with care.  Once at the top, you could look out below at the ruins of the Incan city of Machu Picchu still covered in shadow.  All 20 of us sat quietly with a few dozen other hikers and watched sunlight sweep inch by inch through the mountain tops and over the stones. 

Once the sun had completely illuminated the ancient city, we started descending.  It was farther than anticipated, and by the time we arrived I felt like maybe I would just never walk again. We shuffled around the ruins in the warm sun as our guide gave us a tour of the highlights.  Then it was time to split.  Everyone doing the Huayna Picchu hike except for my people went to do that.  Our tickets somehow were for the following morning.  At this point it seemed pretty improbable that I would ever move again, but I decided that somehow by the next morning magically I would be capable of hiking the steep and notoriously treacherous cliffs of Huayna Picchu.  The Chinese group vanished, and the others wandered off in different directions.  The plan was for everyone to meet at 1:00 at the SAS run hotel in Aguas Calientes for lunch and goodbyes.  We took many photos and pointed vigorously at a number of llamas before getting on a bus to take us down to into town. 

Once at the hotel, we stopped in our rooms to take our first shower in 4 or in some cases 5 days.  I happily stepped into the nice clean private shower IN OUR ROOM and immediately shrieked because there was no hot water.  I danced in the ice water for two minutes as I tried to wash my hair, but once I got out I discovered that I had only washed the shampoo out of the left side of my head.  I was faced with the choice of returning to the ice water or going another 3-4 days with dried shampoo in my hair. 

I returned to the US with that shampoo in my hair. 

We regrouped in the common space downstairs and enjoyed a lunch buffet, most of which I refused to eat because it contained uncooked vegetables and meat that looked suspiciously like llama.  After lunch, the Chinese group left, but the rest of us were staying the night in the hotel.  The others all left in the morning, and we were set to head back to Huayna Picchu.  The family of women went off to do things like shower and change, Two of our guides left to return to Cusco.  J2 had been kind enough to offer Guide1 a bottle of his favorite liquor which happened to be Jack Daniels whiskey, and starting at 2:00 p.m. 7 of us sat around the table and passed a shot glass around in a circle over and over.  You may be thinking, Danielle HATES whiskey.  Danielle HATES shots. Danielle is not the type of person who starts drinking liquor at 2:00 in the afternoon! But you have to remember the situation.  I had suffered some serious doubts about my ability to complete this trek alive.  I had taken that insurance policy out on myself with real concern. I had just completed the hardest physical challenge of my life and I WAS INVINCIBLE.

The whiskey was followed by wine to celebrate the Canadians’ engagement, which had occurred at dawn as the sun rose over Machu Picchu.  No one could refuse that. 

The wine was followed by pisco sours, because pisco is the THING to have in Peru.

By the time we finished the pisco sours, Guide1 had told us he knew THE place to get passion fruit sours, the best drink in the world.  We all agreed that this was the best course of action, so we grabbed a few others and left J2 to recover in a bed, and zigzagged our way through town to a bar that made us sit outside.  We ordered a round of passion fruit sours and sat around talking for what seemed like a very long time. Also drinking.  Admittedly things are a little blurred. At one point J1 and I went to the bathroom, and I got locked in.  This was unfortunate, as they were little individual bathrooms with strong, sturdy wood doors. 

“J1…” I called timidly, suspecting she had already long gone.

“Yes?” she answered from right outside the door.

“I’m locked in the bathroom.”

“Ah,” was all she said.

I waited for a bit.

“Should I do something about it?” she finally asked, as though the idea was outlandish.

“No,” I said. “But if anyone wonders what happened to me, you can explain that I got locked in this bathroom and can’t get out.”

“Okay,” she said. And left.

It is worth noting that J1 does not remember this happening at all.  It is even more worth noting she does not remember what happened later, which I will detail shortly.

Left alone in the bathroom, I tried clawing my way out with my nails, which was as ineffective as you are all thinking. I finally managed to scrape the lock free, though in doing so tore a gash across my finger, which I noticed later covered in blood.  I returned to the merriment at our table outside, where the two men with us were doing something called “leg wrestling” on the sidewalk.  This was a fascinating display of manliness that involved lying on their backs and hooking their legs in a strange imitation of arm wrestling. 

Finally, I turned to M. “Ohmygod we have to go to bed I’m dying what time is it like is it 2 a.m. we have to get up at 6 a.m. and hike this godforsaken extra mountain it’s like 2 in the morning we have to go what time is it.”    She showed me her watch. “Ohmygod it’s 7:55 it’s not even 8:00 why is this happening I have to go to bed right now you don’t even understand how is it not even 8:00 at night.

“We started drinking heavily at 2 in the afternoon,” she pointed out rationally.

“I’m going to bed right now,” I declared, and everyone else agreed it was time to go back.  We had a raucous walk back to the hotel where stopped outside to say goodbye when all of a sudden our Canadian shouted at me, “YOU’RE A FENCER?”

I have no idea how this came up.  It might have been a delayed reaction from the previous day. “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I was. A long time ago. I WAS IN THE JUNIOR OLYMPICS.”

“Fence me now!”

“We don’t have swords.” He put up an arm with an open hand and got in fighting stance.  “This is a terrible idea,” I said, mirroring his position. “One of us is going to get very badly hurt.  I am going to get very badly hurt.”

“No,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.  “Okay then.” 

Remember the effects of altitude on your blood? Combined with alcohol?

I got him gracefully right on his sword arm as I had been trained.

“AGAIN!” He said.

“Don’t punch me in the stomach.”

“I will not punch you in the stomach.”

He got me real hard in the stomach and I doubled over. “AGAIN!” I shouted. “THIS TIME FOR MY HONOR.”

I have no idea who was paying attention and who wasn’t.  It would seem no one, because later no one else understood exactly how I came to be lying on the ground. 

We feinted back and forth for maybe three seconds, at which point I decided the best course of action was to full out charge in what could have been a beautiful fleche if I had a) been actually holding a sword, b) not been starting from such close range to begin with, and c) not been incredibly extraordinarily intoxicated. 

Instead of receiving stunning punch in the chest, our Canadian sidestepped, caught my arm in his and our inside legs tangled. My momentum kept me going, the leg tangle  spun me, and I pitched directly backwards down the sidewalk, which was on a sharp incline.  Because I was drunk, I did not put my arms back to stop my fall which means I did not break my arms or wrists. Because of the incline, my head came down last.  In fact, my head didn’t come down at all.  The entire force of the fall to the cement came down squarely on my butt.  Not my tailbone.  Just my butt.  I lay my head down gently on the pavement as everyone fluttered around yelling but I was too stunned to understand English anymore.  I didn’t even try to get up, just lay there on my back until exactly one thing registered.

“I DID NOT HIT MY HEAD!!” I yelled at everyone in the vicinity.

“ARE YOU OKAY?” they yelled back.

“I DID NOT HIT MY HEAD!” I repeated excitedly.  “I DID NOT HIT MY HEAD AT ALL.  I DID NOT EVEN HIT MY HEAD.”

Sensing I was not planning to ever take further action other than to continue shouting this over and over, My opponent reached down and scooped me up new bride style and set me on my feet.  He was extremely contrite. I reassured him, “I DIDN’T HIT MY HEAD.”

Probably it sounded a lot like I had hit my head.  But it was true, my head had not even grazed the pavement until I laid it down, stunned, in a miracle of miracles.  My butt, on the other hand, felt like it had been removed and then sewed back on without anesthesia.

I reassured everyone that I was completely and totally fine, laughed it off, said goodbye to everyone, barely climbed the stairs to the room I was sharing with J2, and began to sob uncontrollably.

“Oh my god what is wrong?” asked J2.

“I DIDN’T EVEN HIT MY HEAD,” I explained to her.

Head spinning, butt pulsating, I went to bed.

At 6 a.m. I woke up feeling fantastic.  My head was steady, I felt no after effects of the alcohol at all.  My muscles all continued hurting from the hike, but the only thing left from the night before was the gash on my hand from the bathroom luck and my butt.

My butt had swelled.  I was unaware that butts could swell.  Mine had swelled so much that it affected my walking.  I could barely shuffle.  Hiking to the top of Huayna Picchu seemed less and less attainable.  I looked over at J2.  

J2, having managed half of our 35 miles through mountainous wilderness, STILL AT THE FRONT OF THE GROUP and STILL CARRYING A PACK, had decided that this, finally, was the moment to give up on life.  I like to think that had J2 been in any shape to continue onward,  I would have taken my swollen butt and crawled up the final mountain.  I was wide awake and feeling good at the 6 a.m. departure time, which was itself a true Christmas Miracle.  My legs were weak but my knees were stable, and I was pretty sure nothing on Earth was too much to conquer.  But as it was, I gave J2a once over and determined that it was neither kind nor prudent to leave her alone for 8 hours, because no one should have to die alone.

J1 and M headed back towards the mountains, and I got up and stared for a good while at the shower.  Deciding maybe I’d just never take a shower again, I sat around eating beef jerky until around 8 a.m. at which point I headed to a pharmacy to bring some important items back for J2.  I headed for the pharmacy, where people spoke less English than you might think in a town made for western tourists, retrieved the items and delivered them to the sick room.  I ate some more beef jerky, and took another walk through town. 

I passed the day this way, wandering in and out, making sure J2 didn't die without anyone noticing, wandering through the sunlit streets of town, passing in and out of the hostel common room. At some time in the afternoon J1 and M returned exhausted and we all had lunch and headed for the train station.  I was a little apprehensive, remembering the train I took through Bolivia from the Salar region back to Oruro, but this train was beautiful.  The were wide windows, the ceiling was glass which made for very nice views, everything was incredibly clean, the seats were comfortable, and we had attendants walking through at intervals with drinks and snacks and very expensive merchandise.  It was more luxurious than any train I've ever been on. 

It was several hours on the train back to Cusco, where we were picked up by an SAS van and taken back to our hostel.  This time we asked for a room on the back of the property, farther from the noise of the bar/club which we still did not have the energy to go to.  J1, M, and I barely had the strength to drag ourselves out in to the streets looking for dinner.  J2 stayed in bed.  A woman found us on the street and herded us into her restaurant which was not amazing but not terrible. 

It should be noted that by this point both M and J1 were now also suffering from certain common South American gastro issues thus making me THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS TRIP NOT TO GET SICK AT ALL.

CONSTANT. VIGILANCE.

We went back to the hostel where M took a shower and informed us of how cold the water was so I continued to not take a shower.  Then we went to bed, and I slept all through the night.