Today is the day that Hilbert (our main guide) decided he didn’t like us. He tried to make the group stay together from the get-go, but our group wanted to actually walk and not spend the morning puking, taking breaks, and being carried by porters. We rebelled at the every 5 minute break and eventually he let us go at our own pace to certain check points.
The first check point was a ruin where we spent 2 hours listening to Hilbert repeat himself about Inka history and the fact that we always know which direction we’re going because Mt Veronica, the glaciered mountain, is always in the East. During this time I saw a condor (which Hilbert erroneously dismissed as an eagle even though he didn’t even look at it) and took a siesta (nap). Edison (the other guide) and Jenny did too, and I think this made Hilbert even more annoyed with us. But, we didn’t think it was fair to have a 2 hour repetitive chat in the middle of the day’s sunlight about stories that led nowhere and made no sense.
Anyhow, this day was a fast one and the hiking was pretty easy. We hiked around 6 hours for 16 kilometers and ended up stopping for the day at lunch. This campsite was great, it had a hostel nearby with hot showers and beer. We were in heaven.
We had a few drinks, saw some more ruins, and all got clean for the night. At dinner we all ate and relaxed and finally spent some time enjoying the scenery.
Now Hilbert was a nice guy, but macho, and it was evident that Jenny’s persistent nagging to let us keep walking instead of taking breaks was really getting to him. At dinner, Hilbert cleared all the plates from the table, but left Jenny’s sitting in front of her. This set her off on a tirade (just to us of course) about how inattentive he had been the whole trip. I’m sure the beers didn’t help the situation…
Off to bed again for a 3:30am wake up and the site we were all waiting for, Machupicchu.
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