I climbed up Macchu Picchu a few weekends ago. And I hated every minute of it. Macchu Picchu itself was obviously beautiful and wonderful and astonishing and all that, but getting there was even harder than I expected, and I expected it to be freaking hard!
We left our hostel at 4:30am, a half hour early because they promised us sunrise on top. About 5am we made it to the gate at the base of the mountain. From that point on it was stairs. 2 foot stairs up for 400 meters. It didn't take long for me to feel like I was dying. I quickly fell behind my group, which was better than the humiliation of them waiting for me over and over again. One housemate, Alejandra, stayed behind with me and told me to shut up every time I said sorry for being slow. About half way up, our tour guide was waiting for us with the girls in the group. The guys had continued on. He said we were only 20 minutes from the top. I assumed that meant 20 minutes at his Peruvian pace. I convinced Alejandra not to wait for me at that point. Instead, Monica, who had kept pace with the others most of the way was starting to feel the effects of the flu she had had the few days prior to the trip walked with me. We worked together to get up the mountain....cussing it out the whole way. Incas, while an intelligent and advanced civilization, are not my favorite people. Around 6:30am, Monica and I finally made it up to the top.
We were working so hard to get to Macchu Picchu, we were so excited (in our exhausted state) to finally reach the top! Only to break through the tree line to find the bus stop. In hindsight I suppose its kind of funny to expect to break through and be atop MP. But that's what we were expecting.
Finally with our group again, we all sat down at the bus stop and ate our well-thought-out-packed-lunch (at 6:30am). Guess we didn't think it out that well. MP has a concession stand, but just like concession stands all over the world, its exorbitantly priced and we wanted to avoid having to buy food there. After morning lunch we went into MP. And it was magnificent. We didn't have a guide at that time (he showed up in the afternoon) so we didn't really know much about what we were looking at. Our escort for the weekend (not really a guide) rushed us over to Hyanapicchu to start on that climb. I kept telling my roommates that I didn't think I could do it, that I didn't want to do it. And they all wanted me to go for it. Total peer pressure.
I started Hyanapicchu with a bad feeling, and was unable to shake that feeling the entire way up. It was so freaking hard. It was stairs like Macchu Picchu, but narrower, steeper, and all on precarious cliffs. Monica stayed with me again, encouraging me. At some points I would walk up three steps and have to stop. It was like hiking while hyper-ventilating. A few times I had to stop and have a little break down. It felt very very similar to my first cross country race, if you know that story. I had a whole team of friends waiting for me, who were proud of me and cheering me on. Which is both heart warming and humiliating. It is so hard to deal with that kind of emotion. You are grateful for their support and know they just want you to succeed and are proud of you. And yet, at the same time, it feels degrading and humiliating to need it. What this trip did for me was knock any kind of pride I had straight out of me. A very humbling experience.
It took nearly two hours to make it the 300 meters up Hyanapicchu. The top of the mountain was like a cruel joke. Every time you think you're there, you find another set of giant scary stairs. One of the last false finishes led me angrily take a seat and yell out "oh, F no. F that." Much to the other climbers delight or dismay. Finally after many false finishes, we heard our housemates calling us from far above. We finally found them. To get to them we had to crawl through a tunnel where we had to take our packs off our back to slide through the muddy crevice, then climb a ladder up what were just giant boulders, balanced atop the mountain.
I had finally made it. My housemates were proud. Unfortunately, even though I logically knew I would regret it, I could not bring myself to enjoy being up there, I kept thinking about how hard it was going to be to get down. Down is always harder than people expect. Monica snapped one pic of me sitting on the boulder, but I could barely manage a smile. It's annoying when your emotions over rule your logic. I have to say, I don't think this happens that often to me, but in this instance it did. I was so pissy and negative. I'm sure I was a joy to be around. After about 15 minutes on top, I convinced my housemates that it was time to go. We started making our decent which took about 45 minutes. The cruel kicker is that when you get to the bottom, you have to go back up a bit to get to Macchu Picchu. Not all that much, just enough to make me curse out the Incas a bit more.
Feeling like we'd been climbing all day, we realized it was only about 11:30am. We went out to the overly priced concession stand to buy lunch. Suddenly we didn't mind paying 20 soles (about $8) for a water. After lunch our guide showed up and we had a two hour tour of Macchu Picchu where they shared the history and all that, which I previously posted. We left MP around 3:30 and had to walk back down the mountain to Aguas Calientes. I was a bit demanding and told my roommates there was no way I was going to take the stairs back down. We weren't in a hurry (our train didn't leave until 9pm) so I was going to walk down the road the buses take. It was an 8km (about 5 miles) walk zig zagging back and forth, but completely worth it for the sake of my knees and quads.
We got back to Agus Calientes around 4:30pm, exactly 12 hours after leaving. We collected our things, had a nice dinner, when waited for our train. We had to take a train to Ollytambo where we were taking a bus back to Cusco. Our train arrived at 11:30pm, and we found our bus easy. However (as a side story), there were 4 English girls who were not with our group, but apparently had signed up for the exact same tour. They were on our bus and our train, they were at MP, they were on the train back, and they got on our bus back to Cusco. Until the lady in charge of the bus KICKED THEM OFF. Apparently, she had sold their tickets to 4 random Peruvians. Their Spanish was pretty good, and they tried to reason and argue with her. But she wouldn't listen and literally slammed the door in their faces. All of us stuck on the bus, unable to do anything (later we realized that we could have had the two guys and two of the girls get off and give them our seats, at least that would be safer. But even then, there's no way to know if we'd have been able to make it back to Cusco that night). It was nearly midnight and this lady stranded 4 innocent girls in this tiny town that maybe would have had one hostel...if it was open. Probably not even a police station. I was sickened by this women. I really really hope that karma comes and bites her in her ass. The happy ending to the story is that we ran into those English girls on the street in Cusco a few days later. They said they managed to convince the last bus leaving to let them sit on the floor. They went back to their travel agent who booked the trip and his response was "well those kinds of things happen here." At least they made it home.
We finally made it home around 2am, after the stupid lady wouldn't drop us off at our house and made us walk 15 minutes home. Even more intense shit happened when we got home. After being out of contact for the weekend, Monica, the same girl that had stayed with me for most of the hike, received a text message that one of her best friends back home had passed away. The 7 of us sat in the hallway and tried to comfort her as best we could. It hit me kind of hard. I have a tendency to imagine what if someone I loved died while I was away (morbid I know) and it didn't take much for me to realize that that could have been any one of us who got that message. To Monica's credit, she's a trooper. This isn't the first of her friends to pass, and she has handled it better than I ever could have. We found out in the morning that her friend died of Sudden Cardiac Arrest. The same thing that killed Sara.
I went to bed grateful for everyone in my life, and grateful that I had the chance to experience something as amazing as Macchu Picchu, even if I hated most of the day.
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