Inca Trail Day 2 - “Welcome to my gym. Only cardio!”

At 4:20am, there was a knock on the tent.  “Buenos Dias senior!  Coca tea!”  Believe it or not, I slept fairly well.  Probably due to being exhausted.  It was a cold night, but the sleeping bag was warm.  The porters brought us hot water to wash up a little, and then we frantically packed up our belongings and sleeping bag and it was off to the breakfast tent.  Fresh fruit, apple crepes, and quinoa porridge with cinnamon today.  I’m going to need to find an apple crepe recipe.  We started on the trail just before 6:00am, and it was uphill all the way.  And I mean all the way.  Three and a half hours up uneven stone steps, and at pretty high altitude now.  It was very, very hard.  This was the worst leg of the entire hike.  Your legs are burning, you have to stop regularly just to catch your breath because you’re huffing and puffing and can’t breathe.  I probably looked like half the students who walk up all four floors to my office. 

Finally, I made the summit (4,215m/13,828ft) at 9:30am.  It was rough.  But, I made it there in 6th place out of 14 of us, so I felt alright about that.  Not to belabor the point, but it was painful, folks.  Unrelenting steps and decreasing oxygen in the air with every meter.  The whole group was struggling.  The guy first to the top is one of the gym guys.  He’s in great shape, but he’s also 62 years.  The guy is a machine.  

[Photos above:  Finally made it to the summit (Dead Woman’s Pass)]

After half an hour at the summit, which was just under 14,000 feet, we started the trek down to lunch.  This was two hours of uneven steps down.  It was easier than going up, but challenging in its own way.  You had to focus on the next step constantly for fear of rolling your ankle and falling down.  I ended up walking with the father and son from The Netherlands, which turned out to be really fun.  We talked about history and politics, and that made the time fly.  But, my feet and ankles are hurting!  We showed up at the camp for lunch (chicken, pasta, potatoes, and quinoa), and it was excellent again.  I don’t know how they put such good meals together on this environment.  The chef, Maximo, is doing the trail with us while carrying a bunch of cooking gear!  Turns out, Maximo is a professionally trained chef but can’t find a job in a fine restaurant because of discrimination against Andean people in the finer restaurants in Lima.

The afternoon was rough again.  Two hours uphill with very steep, high steps.  After the second pass, we went down for another two hours to the campsite.  Today was a very challenging day, as promised.  Dinner was chicken, rice, potatoes, and beef stew, and Maximo made us an orange cake.  He even decorated it in his cook tent way better than I could ever do in my kitchen.  We also got to see the Milky Way!  This is the first time I’ve ever seen it due to never being in a place that was dark enough.  It was kind of dim, and I couldn’t get a photo, but it was cool anyway. 

I was in bed at 8:00pm.  We’re waking up at 4:00am with coca tea, breakfast and then we leave at 5:15am all the way to Machu Picchu.

[Photos above:  Various shots along the way on Day 2.  I didn’t take as many photos today because I was trying to not die from lack of oxygen.  Also, you can’t tell how bad the steps were from a photo.]

My favorite overheard conversation of the hike was today (Dirk is in great shape, but he struggled badly with the altitude):

Dirk: What’s your average heart rate?

Blake: Don’t know.  How about you?

Dirk: 152

Blake: That’s not too bad.

Dirk: Bullshit.

Daily step count:  A very painful 29,662 steps.  Almost none were on flat ground.