Jungle trek to Machu Picchu

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Before I go into a frightfully long narrative on the jungle trek, let me get out an important piece of advice for any folks planning to travel to Peru, especially those who want to hike the famed Camino Inca.

For the last two years or so, the Peruvian government has put a limit on the number of people who are allowed to make the hike on the traditional trail. The number, I think, is around 250 a day, and these spot fill up quick. During the busy season, you have to reserve your spots about six months in advance. We had talked to a friend who did the trip several years ago, and she had been able to reserve just days before, but all that has changed. We couldn't get on, and many firms have started offering alternatives to satisfy the overflow.

We joined one of these, which we booked at a Lima agency through one of Cusco's myriad outfitters.

The night before our departure, our guide came to our hotel in Cusco to meet us and give us a briefing. I think he was a little disturbed looking at my ragtag family -- my sister is deathly afraid of biking, and the first day involved biking down a mountain; my dad was very concerned about having enough walking sticks to support his ailing knees. Our guide, Yjeguel (an uncommon name, patterned off the German "Hegel"), asked several questions about if we had done long walks before, etc. He later told me that it is rare to have hikers who are out of their 20s.

I won't say that the alternative trek isn't worth doing, but from what I have read and heard about the Camino Inca, it doesn't even compare. There are just a couple pretty modest ruins along the way. The natural beauty of the second day is stunning, but a day and a half of the trip is on roads, not real trail. Another half day is on the railroad tracks. Also, though, from what I hear, this hike is much less physically demanding than the Camino Inca. It is certainly a second choice.

Day 1: Buses and bikes

A taxi retrieved us from our hotel and took us to Cusco's bus station. We were looking for our guide, who we thought was meeting us at the station, among a huge crowd of Peruvians jostling to get on the bus. Another woman from the agency led us onto the bus and sat us down, the only gringos on the local bus, which appeared to be a recycled tourist bus.

As we started the trip, a woman stood at the front of the bus, and began chanting her life narrative in an interminable, psuedo-rhyming singsong. From what trickled through my best attempt to tune her out, after a life of drug addiction, she was offering us salvation if we gave her money from candy, which she later wanted back.

The bus winded around narrow, climbing roads. I wasn't sitting by the window, but my mother and sister were terrified as the tires passed inches from thousand-foot drop offs. Despite questionable things we did later during the hike, my mom was convinced throughout that the bus ride was the most dangerous part. Yjeguel boarded the bus in Ollantaytambo, in the middle of the Sacred Valley.

We climbed through the clouds, and the bus stopped so that guys could get out and pee off a cliff. I was tempted, but didn't. After everyone was back on board, we continued along the steep roads to a tiny town called Santa Maria. There, we all got off the bus and Yjeguel started assembling the bikes. As soon as one was ready, my sister started wheeling awkwardly back and forth while Alfamayo's native children gawked. Unfortunately, Yjeguel had a flat tire. Another guide, Freddy, had started the trip a little higher on the mountain with two married Italian doctors, Paola and Lorenzo.

While our guide worked on his bike, we joined Lorenzo, Paola and Freddy to begin the trip down the mountain. The roads were a little rough, but we kept bumping our way down hill. My sister started to gain some confidence on the bike and actually got a ways ahead. I caught up and stopped her. We were a ways behind, though, and were racing to get to Santa Maria before dark.
I split off from my family and got well ahead with Lorenzo, Paola and Freddy. As it started to get dark, I told them I would stay behind and wait for my family. Freddy warned me that if I didn't see them in 15 minutes, I should keep going, and quickly, because they would probably have to find someone to give them a ride to town because it would be too dark. After about 10 minutes, there was no sign of them, I kept going alone and caught the Italians shortly before they arrived to Santa Maria.

Like many small Latin American towns, Santa Maria was painted a ubiquitous teal. The main, dusty rode was home to a couple of restaurants that catered to backpackers, a pharmacy that would end up being important and a couple of stores. I wandered up the road with a little kid to his family's hostel. I left my stuff, and walked back to the main street to wait for my family. I saw our guide first, and he told me that my sister had crashed. She was sitting on a bench while my dad, an M.D., tried to procure gauze from the little pharmacy. My sister had a wide rip across her pants, and a good gash into her leg. 

I led my family to the "hostal basic," which surrounded a little courtyard. There were a couple shower stalls with bathrooms in them. A clothes line crossed the courtyard, and bikers scrubbed their clothes by hand in a concrete sink. Our room had four single beds squeezed together, without a foot between them. The mosquitos were horrible, and they drank our repellent as an aperitif to slurping down our blood. Still, loaded up on Benadryl, I managed to get some sleep until the roosters started crowing well before dawn.

Day 2: The bugs avenge the Incas

My sister's injury was a blessing in disguise for my father, who was convinced that the jungle trek was a plot to kill him off and collect life insurance (he would have further proof for his theory throughout the hike). We started early because the day included a rather tough eight hours of hiking, not including lunch. My sister couldn't do the walk because of her leg, and my dad was glad to accompany her on the combi ride to the next town. We all had breakfast together, then Mom and I set off with Yjeguel, Freddy and the Italians.

The first hour of the hike followed a road along the river, lined with buildings never rebuilt or destroyed after the 1999 flood. We split from the Italians and Freddy for a while, and Yjeguel led my mom and I down a path and into a terrain that started to look more and more jungle-like. Yjeguel knew a lot about the flora lining the trail, and about there native uses. There were certain plants used for dyes, others for medicine. He grew up in the jungle, and lived there until he was about 15, living for the most part off the land, eating snake and monkey. We also passed countless coca fields. In the Cusco region, the plant (but not cocaine) is legal. Tea, candy, and leaves for chewing are available all over, though leaves are not supposed to be carried into the cities unprocessed.

The walk was beautiful. We climbed about two-thirds up a mountain and looked down upon a white-water river. Much of the hike, especially the steepest parts, was along an original Inca trail known as the Antisuyo, with anti meaning jungle and suyo being the name for the Incan territories.

At the highest point, we stopped in a shelter outside a family's house. They sold some soft drinks and gave us bananas (fruit literally falls on the ground here, though it is technically owned by someone, there is more than needed). Mostly, we play with their pet monkey, named Jacinto.

The mosquitos swarmed in black clouds, and even when I was out of breath from the hiking and the altitude, I had to keep moving. Thinking of the heat, I made the grave mistake of wearing shorts. My legs were already swelling. Smaller and faster than Midwestern mosquitos, these also had a nastier bite. As soon as they bit me, I started bleeding.

We climbed down a hill to a little restaurant for lunch, and to buy water. Even though it was Peruvian winter, the weather was steamy; probably in the low 90s with high humidity. With lunch, we took about a two-hour break.

For much of the afternoon, we skipped from rock to rock near the river. We climbed through a small swamp, crossing on stepping stones. The day also included a number of river crossings, made on generally sketchy bridges that would have made my dad even happier to have missed the hike. A couple were just made of sticks somewhat bound together, and high enough above the river to be a problem if they were to break. Another was a long cable bridge built after the flood and not repaired since; in a few years it will start to look like Monty Python's bridge of death, but as of our crossing it seemed pretty steady.

Then came the surprise of the afternoon: the cable car. One steel cable spanned from cliff to cliff, about 150 yards long and a solid 50 feet above the river. A little wagon hung below it, with two wheels on the cable. The bottom of the car was big enough for two people to squeeze in sitting Indian-style, and was made of wood planks. There was a small bar for railing, about inches above the planks. A long rope was tied onto the car, and looped through metal rings.

I am afraid of heights, though I try to ignore it. I wasn't the only one.

"I have vertigo. I have vertigo," Lorenzo said. "This is impossible!"

As Lorenzo confessed his fear of heights, I noticed two or tree painted wooded crosses sitting just below the cable car platform -- painted with names, that is. Lorenzo noticed them as well, but with an exchange of glances we decided not to ask. My mom boarded first with Yjeguel, and they went zipping across the cord. A little after halfway, the car stopped, having finished its downhill descent. Yjeguel, sitting in the front spot, pulled the car the rest of the way across using the rope. We yanked the cart back to our side, and I climbed in with Freddy, gritting my teeth as we sailed across the abyss.

It was fine, at least until we hit the halfway point. But after we had stopped moving forward, we begin rocking side-to-side, which I didn't care for. Finally we got across, and we waited for Paola and Lorenzo, who ended up loving it.

Another 45 minutes of hiking took us to Hot Springs (oddly named in English, but pronounced as if it were Spanish). There, my sister and father waited. My dad complained about the mosquitos from his 45-minutes downhill hike from Santa Teresa. By this point I looked like I had a bad case of chicken pox, and I was less than sympathetic. The natural hot springs, though enclosed in concrete swimming pools, provided some relief. Well, the mosquitos couldn't bite me while I was underwater, but the hot water actually made the bites swell even more.

Our hostel in Santa Teresa was a bit questionable -- it was decorated with odd posters of the cardiovascular systems and other internal organs, like it had been a crappy hospital or fourth grade science lab. We again dined with the Italians, and had a great time. At dinner, I asked Yjeguel: "Now that we're safely across, and it's behind us, you have to tell me, why are there crosses by the cable car?" He laughed, and explained that there were crossed up and down the river marking lives lost in the 1999 flood. Tonight the Benadryl was overpowered by the greatly increased number of bites, so I started the next day short on sleep.

Day 3: Waterfalls

Yjeguel outlined the plan for the day at breakfast. Beth was still too sore for hiking, doctor's orders. All of us, he informed us, would start the day with another cable car ride. On the other side, my dad and sister would catch another bus. Unlike the first car, this was had a long wait. About 25 tourists, plus locals with huge sacks of goods and construction materials, sat on boulders as the car shuffled back and forth. Also unlike the first car, people were not crossing two at a time. Four people were crowding onto a car the same size, sometimes standing up and holding onto a bar above the cable. Many had giant backpacks hanging off their backs, pulling the hikers terrifyingly toward a 40-foot fall. Here there were even more crosses.

I told Yjeguel that there was no way I was going to cross standing, and he agreed. Still, four of us huddled onto the wooden planks, trying to squeeze knee-to-knee inside the railing. My dad was decidedly not happy, but we all made it across. Dad and Beth stayed behind waiting for a bus to take them halfway, to a town called Hidroelectrica, which is named after the nearby dam. Yjeguel stayed with my sister and dad, and Mom and I went with Freddy and the Italians.

Once we were comfortably back in Cusco, we took Yjeguel out for dinner. On the first day of the hike, I had told him that if he made it through this whole hike with my family, the Vatican would make him a saint. We were having a laugh about this, the trek now done, and I asked him what his thoughts were during the first briefing. He said, "You know, as a guide, there are certain lies or things that you say to your group to get them through the trip. Like, Tom, when you asked me about those crosses at the cables cars after the first day? I knew that the next day, the first thing we had to do was cross a cable car. So I couldn't tell you that those are actually there because of the cable cars." Yes, people had died on the cable car, having had the cable run over their hands causing them to fall off the back. Still, I was comforted that the cable had never broken.

Back on the hike, the third day was again steamy hot, and we walked a slight uphill along a dirt road. After about an hour and a half, Freddy said we were making good time and asked if we wanted to take a 15-minute detour to shower in a big, cold waterfall. I was already drenched with sweat, and the thought of soaking my mosquito bites in icy water was exquisite. After a steep climb through a fruit-laden jungle, we came to the source of a stream that rushed downhill alongside the path. A waterfall shot downwards like a shower from almost 20 feet. I arrived a bit ahead of the group, and kicked off my hiking boots and clothes down to my boxers. As everyone got there, I was ready to race across a pool and into the waterfall. Freddy wasn't far behind.

Dripping wet, we all dressed again without drying before heading back down the hill to continue the hike. As we scaled switchbacks on the road, Beth and Dad rolled by us on the "bus," actually a panel truck with dozens of people crammed into the back. They walked back from the train-stop town of Hidroelectrica to a fork in the road, and we hiked together to a stunning waterfall that we had seen in the distance during much of the hike.

After lunch, the entire walk was along the railroad tracks, and except for the parrots and flowers, was nothing special. My feet hurt from walking board to board. We were again passed by my dad and sister, though this time though were riding in comfort a bright blue Peru Rail train. Finally, with my legs tired and swollen with red lumps, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, the touristy basecamp for Machu Picchu (and maybe the most expensive place in Peru). Hot and dirty, though, I was more than happy to trade a little authenticity for a hot shower. We went to bed right after dinner; the climb to Machu Picchu was to start around before 5 the next morning.