This morning we awoke early to the sounds of vomiting and growning. Eric was still sick, though it was not his vomiting I had been hearing all night. Alex, the fast one, apparently had gone too fast the first day and ate too much, and was now suffering the brunt of altitude sickness. He could barely walk and looked a bit drunk, even though he wasn’t… I’ve come to the realization that this place likes to knock down the cocky hikers and reward the slow and steady ones, so I was thinking that I should stay in that group.
We met the porters (around 20 of them, the oldest being 60) and the chefs after breakfast and headed out for the trails around 6am. This was definitely the longest day of hiking and the one that kills the most people. It was infamous for being difficult, time consuming, and ego-knocking. It consisted of a 12 kilometer trek involving 7 hours of hiking and two passes. Dead Woman Pass was the first and the hishest, coming in at 4200 meters. The second pass, Runquaracay Pass, was not as well known, but just as high, treacherous, and time-consuming as the first pass.
This day consisted of much waiting around. To my surprise, Jenny and I basically led the group the entire day with Ginger and the German/Italian couple very close behind. Both guides stayed at the back of the pack with the sick group members and we spent a ton of time (around 4 hours total) waiting at check points for the rest of the group to catch up with us. The hikes were difficult and time-consuming, but rewarding and absolutely breath-taking (in more ways than one). I love the mountains and this was just another reminder of that.
Around lunch, we realized that Ray was also sick and not doing well with the altitude. We now had 4 of the total 12 of us that were too sick to hike at a normal pace and needed to have some sort of oxygen and carrying assistance. Not good odds. The healthy drank lots of coca leaf tea and prayed to not get sick as our minds were dulled by headaches. The altitude was definitely affecting some of us, but not all to the same extent.
Eric ended up being well enough to slowly walk the trail today and Sarah did the same. Alex, on the other hand, ended up paying two porters to carry him this entire day. Jenny and I were pretty much disgusted by this and I think that it was probably well known within the group. It seemed pointless to hike the Inka trail if you’re not actually doing the hiking.
After lunch, our newly formed group (Jenny, Vrana, Marco, Ginger & I) quickly set out for our next destination, the camp site for the night. Sunlight was quickly burning up for the day and we still had one more pass to climb and hours to hike. We were concerned about having to hike the trails in the dark, so we pretty much ran the next portion of the trail.
Now, let me preface this by saying that the second pass sucks way more than the first one. It is all tiny little stairs on an extremely steep incline with no room for error. A little nerve-wracking to say the least. When you’re pressed for daylight, I suppose it makes the trip a little worse… Anyhow, the views were absolutely spectacular. We crossed over some of the highest non-glaciered peaks around and lived to tell the tale. And, we made it to camp just before the sun set.
Lucky me, I ended the night by breaking my headlamp and stepping in human poo (because I didn’t have a headlamp to see it) when I went to the squatter stall that night. My group seemed to think that one was pretty freaking funny, though I guess anything is funny when you’ve been hiking for 7 hours, are at 12,000 ft elevation, have only had 4 hours of sleep, and are completely starved. We were slap-happy to say the least…
This was a great day and a huge confidence builder. I’m not nearly as out-of-shape as I had originally thought!
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