At
5:00 a.m. we woke up, and at 5:20 we were at the SAS owned hotel meeting the
group, the guides, and leaving behind the duffel bags we had been given to put
our belongings in to send ahead with the chaskeys. The bags could weigh a
maximum of 9 kilos, including our rented sleeping bags and mats. This
left us with more or less 6 kilos of belongings. Having only brought a
total of about 6 kilos with me for the whole trip, this did not pose a problem
for me. I put some sunscreen, 2 granola bars, a water bottle, my wallet, and my
passport in my little day pack (kindly lent by Julia), and sent the rest on.
This way on the hike I was carrying maybe 5 pounds, total. My strategy of
packing nothing was working well. It was the only hope I had of survival.
Everyone else was carrying between 15 and 40 pounds. I hoped that this
would bring them down to my level.
It did not.
We drove about 45 minutes to a breakfast spot where I carefully
checked all items for potential death carrying properties. Most of the
offerings passed muster. We purchased coca leaves, large plastic rain bags, and
water bottles, and continued on our way towards Ollantaytambo.
During the bus ride I was filled with Morning Hate for everyone
and everything and wouldn't speak, so J2 started a conversation with one
of the guides sitting near us. They spoke of many things until
eventually I was ready to speak like a human again, at which point I told him I
didn't expect to live to see the end of our trip. He took this very
seriously and started to become concerned that I would become a legal hazard.
"NO!" he said. "No no. No. You will not
die. No. Don't do that. You are going to be fine. Do not die on this
trip."
We arrived at the start of the trek around 8 a.m., showed our
passports to some officials, took some photos, and headed on our way.
The first day was not the one most talked about by those warning
me of the horrors awaiting, but it was steep enough and challenging enough for
me for sure. After only two hours I was pretty much maxed out physically, and
we still had 10 of our 14 kilometers to go. The chaskeys, on the other hand,
ran past us at intervals, having started long behind us and needing to finish
long before us while each carrying 25 kilos of luggage and equipment.
They raced up the mountain with this weight to set up a tent and set
places for us for lunch each day, and to cook gourmet 5 course meals before our
arrival. Many of us were incredulous.
"How can do they do this physically?" we tried to ask through
labored breathing.
"They start as children," our guide told us.
"They live in the mountains but go to school in the towns below.
They have to run there and back every day."
This seemed ridiculous, but I didn't have the breath to
argue.
As everyone can guess, I was not in the front of this group. I
was not quite in the middle. BUT I WAS NOT LAST. I was not. I was NEVER LAST
Not last.
I was. Not. Last. Ever.
Okay???
Lunch time was mid afternoon in a beautiful grove with some
not-the-worst-toilets-ever in a tent with beautifully set places and little
stools and a multi-course lunch. I rejected many foods for their possible
death properties even though theoretically a licensed tour group that takes
Americans all year round should be pretty safe. CONSTANT VIGILANCE, my
friends. Never trust a cucumber past the Texas border!! Mayonnaise? NOPE.
Tomato? NO THANK YOU. I was a diarrhea free zone!
While expertly deflecting Disease and Death, I got to know some
of our other travelers a little better. Were a few Americans, two
Canadians, and a group of 7 Chinese. We never really learned much about them because
mostly they kept to themselves and spoke Chinese.
After lunch we continued upwards. As people forged ahead I had
plenty of time to walk a solitary journey and contemplate all of the terrible
pain I was in. As we moved forward, every 2 hours or so our guide would stop us
all to point out ancient ruins and other Incan related beauty.
Eventually we made it to our first campsite. I was NOT the
last person to arrive. J2, it must be said, was the FIRST to arrive, by a
long shot. She may have a career as a chaskey. It was demoralizing to some of
the rest of us who might not have been last but were perhaps 13th by a fair
amount.
Tents were all set up for us, including a dining tent where we
were given snack and tea. Snack was popcorn and cookies, and the tea was
amazing, especially as it was pretty cold outside. This particular campsite was
advertised as having a shower. Having not washed my hair at the hostel
due to the cold, and with another 6 days ahead of me, I decided to brave the
shower which cost $1.50 per use and was SWORN to have hot water.
I was the first to brave the shower. I handed over my
money, grabbed my beautiful new camping towel, and stepped into the dirt
encrusted little stall and took a moment to contemplate the mosquitoes
congregating in various corners and around the drain. I started to shut the
door but as I did realized there was no light. I walked back out and
asked the shower owner where the light was. "No light," he told
me. At first I started to grab my headlamp, but then I realized the shower was
probably not the greatest place for a headlamp's well-being. So I got
back in the shower in the total darkness, felt around for the water chain, and
was immediately doused in the freezing cold waters of the Andes.
"Hot" apparently to Peruvians just means "not physically
frozen into ice quite yet." Combined with the 45 degree temperature of the
outdoors, this quickly climbed the charts to make onto the Top Five Worst
Showers I Have Taken Around the World.
Quickly, the previous top 5 were:
1. The first shower I took in Bolivia upon coming down from the
Death Journey through the mountains. I begged a stranger to use her shower
which turned out to be a nozzle hanging over the toilet. I was given a
broom to hang onto to in order to continuously sweep water into a drain in the
center of the floor as I showered, with the windows open, in temperatures of
30-35 degrees, in water that was just barely not frozen while simultaneously
trying not to faint, vomit, or poop uncontrollably.
2. Upon returning from Iceland to France where I stopped in
Chateaulin to visit Alexa's home in the boarding house of her school, only to
discover the heat and of course hot water broken in 40 degree weather whereupon
I was forced to boil water in an electric kettle repeatedly to fill a bucket,
stand in the middle of the bathroom, and dump all of the hot water over my head
in one swift movement.
3. The shower in the hostel in Greece which was in a co-ed
bathroom in which the shower stalls had doors that were not made for people of
any human proportions I have yet seen on this earth which only barely covered
your bits on the lower and upper ends provided no one decided to walk
especially close to your shower or make any effort to peer in from the next
stall. Additionally hot water cost a Euro, which had to be deposited in a
little box outside the bathroom which somehow connected to a certain shower.
So if you pick shower 3, you go outside,
deposit a Euro in box 3 at
which point hot water starts pouring out of shower 3 so you RUN TO IT because you only have 5
minutes of water, throwing your towel off as you sprint and hoping no one
notices. Please don't forget that this was during February one day after a
freak snow blizzard in a hostel that mostly DID NOT HAVE A ROOF. The
bedrooms and the showers had sort-of roofs, but they weren't fully attached to
the walls so while it kept snow out of the beds, it did nothing for the
temperatures. And 5 minutes was not enough for my shampooing so I spent
two days in Athens with the un-rinsed shampoo in my hair causing half my head
of hair to randomly stick up in solid masses because all I had that morning was
a single Euro coin.
4. The shower in my host family's apartment in Toulouse.
This was just a repeated offense over the course of 6 months. This
was not actually a shower, this was a bathtub with a shower nozzle that didn't
work most of the time so I had to constantly scrunch on my back under the
bathtub faucet trying to wash my hair all winter where, again, in 35-40
degrees, the family ALWAYS left the windows open, and there was rarely any hot
water.
5. In London at a hostel a man tried to get into the shower with
me. This had less to do with the shower itself and more to do with the
emotional trauma sustained and the fact that I lay awake with a knife in my
hand that night, but still. It goes on the list. Don't worry though! No
Danielles were physically harmed in any way in the making of this Worst Shower
Episode.
This was my list before Peru. But due to the dirt, the mosquitoes, the total lack of
light and not being able to see anything at all, combined with the cold of the
air and the cold of the water as well as the fatigue (remember I hadn't slept
yet? I remember), the shower of this night definitely bumped #2 from its place.
And it fought hard for #1.
Only one other person tried the shower after that, and he didn’t
have anything good to say about it either.
Once I had gotten clothing on and taped eight Hot Hands packets
to various parts of my body, I was able to enjoy the sight of the night sky,
which was STUNNING. Maybe one of the top 10 most beautiful things I have
seen alive in this world. With absolutely 0 light pollution for billions of
miles, every single star visible from Earth lit up the sky so that there was
almost more light than dark. There was no way to pick out constellations
because every scrap of sky was covered in bright points. It was hard to
believe.
Dinner was equally marvelous as lunch with its 5 courses and
dessert and tea and good conversations, and soon it was time for bed at 8 p.m.
because we were going to be roused at 5 a.m. to eat breakfast and continue
climbing the mountain.
To come in Chapter 4: Dead Woman's Pass, utter despair, an oxygen tank, VICTORY
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