5:30am wake up call.
Good morning, Coca tea! Sugar?
Day 3 was an "easy day".
6 miles,
mostly Inca Flat, and then down down down to Intipata, to camp by lunch time.
This is the day to take it slow and enjoy all of it. I didn't want the trail to end!
We are in the deep Andes now, high peaks, vistas. We can see the big peak Salkantay among the clouds.
This part of the Inca trail is almost all original, not a lot of refurb.
The night before at dinner, Abel conversationally told us about some wild things that have happened on his watch:
One guy was so altitude sick he had to be stretchered out from this camp, using 4 porters! down to the train station.
So the whole day along the trail we were imagining the impossible task of navigating all the downhill with a gringo on a stretcher.
Another story - a woman at night got disoriented after using the bathroom, it was cold and rainy, so she climbed into the mess tent that the porters sleep in (they sleep 6 in a row, packed in like puppies.) They moved over and gave her a mat and blanket to sleep with. The husband woke Abel in the night to say his wife was missing! and find her asleep in the porter tent.
PS Abel is such a good story teller. We were on the edge of our seats as he told us.
We tried to get Abel to say we were the best group he's ever had, because we WERE!
Everyone was so positive and helpful and capable.
But he only smiled.
Getting ready to launch, Andy and Jim tried on the porter's packs to see what it's like.
The porters humor us and just kind of smile while the gringos walk around with the packs on.
I love this whole section of the Inca Trail. It was so mossy and "cute".
Us four hung in the back again. Jose usually brings up the rear, so he was there with us a lot.
Once he had a handful of grass, and we are like "what's that, what's that"
and he's like "you'll see".
It was a chilly start, but as we walked down down down, it warmed up and we shed the layers.
Then we stopped and Jose showed how the Inca turned the grass into rope.
It was amazing! In about 5 minutes he had turned a handful of short grass into one long strong rope.
Abel showed pictures of bridges made of the grass. The bridge would last about three years, then had to be redone.
Salkantay
The view was so pretty. Peaks on peaks on peaks with the morning sun streaming through.
Haku haku
Finally we made it to a major rest stop/cross roads.
This is where the bathrooms stopped being regular toilets and started being a hole in the ground you squat over.
This is where we had the first inklings of cell service. It was a different vibe, and I realized a lot of the porters and hikers were on their phones.
This is where Jim was able to receive word that the kids made it home from Fallon!
I tried not to think too hard about it as I went to sleep the night before, because there is literally nothing I could do about anything, but while we were deep in the Andes, the kids were flying non-rev from Reno to Las Vegas, then Vegas to Bellingham.
Jim had checked while we were in Ollantay - the flights were still pretty open - but what if they got bumped? We had plan b, c, and d with grandma and Sammy waiting to rescue the boxcar children if they got stranded at any time. But WHAT A RELIEF to hear they made it home without much ado.
They are so good at flying solo/non rev this summer.
Here we could see Intipata - so many agricultural terraces! where our camp was.
It looked so close, but it was a much longer walk than it seemed.
Eventually we would be at the base of those terraces and they are much much bigger there than they look from up here.
Also this is when the snowy peak Veronica came back into view.
Day one we started on the other side of that mountain and have walked all the way around.
Down down down these Inca stairs,
to some more ruins. The Inca water systems are so cool.
"we familia...ok team..."
It wasn't at these ruins, but somewhere along the way he told us about their messenger system, and that was so cool.
How do you get important information from Inca settlements that are hours/days apart? They set up stations with fast men. They would sprint from their station to the next and relay the info.
Why don't they just call on the phone?
This next section of trail was just so cool. It felt fake, like a facade for a Disneyland ride.
We made it down to the terraces.
Where Jim is pointing...that is where we came from. That mountain peak is where we were when we found out the kids made it home.
It's just so cool to imagine we are going from mountain top to mountain top, making our way across the Andes.
We were walking in the back, chatting with Abel. Jamie asked him about his childhood?
He grew up in a small village called Matinga.
He told us when he was in elementary school he was also in charge of his family's sheep. On days no one could watch the sheep for him, he would take them to school and set them in a field. He would sit where he could watch out the window and keep an eye on them. If they wandered in a neighbor's field, he would raise his hand "teacher bathroom?" and he would run out and gather them back where they belong.
We came upon some llama poop, and then we walked out of the trees and into this vista:
It was so huge! So many layers!
and a random alpaca!
So we all got pictures with the iconic animal.
It looked like they planted him there just for the tourists.
He just hung out there, enjoying the view like the rest of us.
After a little rest in the terrace shade, we got packs on and continued to camp.
Traffic jam! Move it, alpaca.
This day was so hot since we were so much lower in elevation.
He can't help himself. Must pet.
On to camp! Abel handed me this plant and asked if I recognized the smell?
So familiar! Is it lemon? no. Oh it's citronella!
And boy did I need it. The itchy bugs ONLY BITE ME. I even spray bug spray, they don't care.
I am still itching my legs. I am still putting itch cream on them. If I were to do it again, I would never expose my skin. I wore shorts/sandals for a minute. I didn't have socks on for a minute.
I would never ever show my first world American skin to Latino bugs.
So we got to camp, and it's kind of tight quarters. Our tents were set up and the porters were working on lunch and dinner. We basically had to sit and stare at them. (Or sit and stare at this view! It was so pretty but hot).
While walking back from the bathroom, Jim saw 7-8 Coati hanging around the trees. They are long snout ring tailed animals similar to a raccoon.
Lunch was served. We had the BEST mango ceviche. That was my favorite dish in all of Peru.
When lunch was finished, it was much too hot to sit in our tents, so Abel told us to bring warmer clothes and chairs, we are heading to "Little Machu Picchu" with grass and shade...
Winay Wayna.
The reveal was amazing! I don't know what we were expecting, but we all gasped.
This is for sure the coolest place of all the ruins on the Inca Trail.
There's a waterfall back there that pictures don't capture.
And grass and shade! It was the best place to spend the rest of the day.
We got our team shirts here too.
Waterfall.
Later we realized there is a trail down to the waterfall. Some British girls from another group went down and swam in the water.
I'm glad I didn't know about it until it was too late.
I would have wanted to and it was a thousand million stairs to get there. The girls were so tired.
After exploring, we laid around in the grass. I got eaten by silent killer bugs.
This is about when Henry made a few comments about "hmmm lunch isn't sitting right with me", and he seemed a bit droopy...
We headed back to camp to set up our stuff.
We are in our tent getting situated, and we hear Henry throw up.
.........
I hope you know why this is SEVERELY alarming to us all.
Is the food contaminated? is the water contaminated? are we all going to get sick? We share EVERYTHING. We eat off the same platters.
There are a THOUSAND WAYS to get sick on this trail. The nasty toilets are...nasty. They are right near the running water that the porters use to do dishes. There is Jilly washing out her poop shoe in the green bowls. Here is something true about the Inca Trail: all the "Inca bathrooms" (or the places you go behind a tree along the trail) are covered in human waste and toilet paper. I am sorry to tell you this. I do not know why people don't BURY their stuff or pack it out or WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TOILET EVERY FEW HOURS, but they don't. I've noticed it more and more on many trails. Toilet paper EVERYWHERE.
Anyway, this is all to say - we are immediately on high alert and very nervous to eat.
Which is sad because we sat down to an AMAZING happy hour. The chef had BAKED A CAKE!
How do you bake a cake out here? I don't know. Abel says it took two hours.
Dinner is served. You can tell they had extra hours to do fancy things on this day.
But as we are eating, we are continuing to hear Henry throw up.
We didn't eat much. We all just kind of smiled politely and whispered about norovirus? the wild blackberry he ate?
I had such a knot in my stomach. I set out some barf bags for me and Jim in our tent in case we needed them in the night?
I could not sleep at all. Mostly because I was nervous but also because Henry continued to throw up every 20 minutes so so loud.
Somehow Jamie Andy and Jim slept most of the night.
Besides the Henry sounds, there was so much action going on:
the porters were whistling and shooing the animals out of camp - remember those ring tailed coati Jim saw? They know where the fresh food can be found.
Then there were people walking back and forth, people talking, Jilly talking.
The next morning Abel would tell us they had to bring in a trail doctor from down at the train station.
A doctor and a nurse came and checked out Henry. He was high fever and green, so they evacuated him with two porters to help him along the trail. Jilly also went with them.
We have a 3:00am wake up call.
And then there were 12.
