I´m writing this from an Internet cafe in Ollantaytambo, which the eagle-eyed among you will note is not Machu Picchu, where we are supposed to be. Katie is on another computer to my left. The reason for our location is that I unfortunately managed to get quite sick. The short version is that I am now taking antibiotics and feeling much better. The long version follows.
As I noted in my last post, I was not feeling entirely well on the day before our planned trip to MP, and that night I didn´t get much sleep. The best that can be said about it is that I have never been kept awake by such a range of noises in a single night before – people ringing on the doorbell, banging on the door, music playing, people talking, a TV blaring. We had to be ready for collection at 6am, and in the morning I felt much worse. The timing was awful. I really wanted to go. I really felt I couldn´t. I couldn´t even eat anything.
Every instinct said to let it go and go back to bed, but then the bus pulled up with the other people on it, and I got something of a rush of blood to the head. I told the tour guide I was sick but that I wanted to give it a go, and would I be able to go back if I just couldn´t make it? He said I would. So I hopped on with Katie, and more or less instantly fell asleep.
It was about a three-hour drive to Ollantaytambo (where I am now writing this), the last stop to buy stuff before the hike. We bought walking sticks and I got a sun hat that makes me look even more ridiculous than usual, if such a thing is possible, but does offer splendid protection. From there we went another hour or so to the beginning of the trail.
At that point it became clear to me just how much we would have to carry – our backpacks, as previously noted, but also a bedroll and a sleeping bag. The combination was heavy. And it was pretty hot. And I was feeling consistently worse. But we struck off anyway.
The trail opens with a sharp-ish incline for a while, then levels out. It winds its way directly up the Sacred Valley, and the landscape is dreamlike, imaginary. Wafts and tufts and bands of cloud hover over the mountains, and the green hillsides interlock into the distance. It was beautiful, alien to anything I had seen before.
Alas, though, I was not enjoying it much. We got to the place we were to have lunch, and it turned out we had quite a long wait there. I made sure every inch of skin was covered with clothing, lay down on the grass, put my new sun-hat over my face, and went to sleep. They woke me up to eat (which was a three-course extravaganza, unexpectedly) and I went back to sleep again after that. I was tempted to turn back, but decided to give it one more shot.
Back at the entrance to the trail, the lead guide had not been able to come through with us due to an issue with his ticket, and he had to sort it out at that end, sending us off with the junior guide instead. That meant we were three hours at lunch waiting for the lead guide to re-join us. That in turn meant we were a little tight on time to get to the campsite before nightfall, and therefore we moved at quite a pace.
Even at the time I wondered about how honest I would be on this blog about what that was like, but I may as well just be blunt: it was misery. The last few miles were almost all uphill, and even though the slopes were slight with only the occasional steep part I found it very difficult. I was covered in sweat – the back of my t-shirt under the rucksack was as though someone had tipped a bucket of water over it. The straps of the backpack were digging painfully into my shoulders. Every now and again I thought of the heavy SLR camera inside and fantasised about throwing it off the mountain.
The last few hundred yards were the worst. I was miserable with the sickness and very, very tired. It was consistently uphill. I fell further and further behind the group. I knew at that point I had no hope whatsoever of doing another day. The first day is the `easy` day, compared with the climb of the second day. When we finally got to the campsite I just threw off the backpack (camera be damned) and stood there and leaned on the stick. One of the porters saw I was not in the best of states and showed me how to unroll the bedroll to sleep on. I lay down gratefully. It had all the comfort benefit of spreading a table-cloth on the ground and then sleeping on that. But I slept anyway.
Through all of this Katie was fine, and thankfully not feeling any hint of my dose. Apart from the two of us there were five Australians on the tour, all of who were lovely – three brothers in their early 20s, and an older couple with grown-up children. All of them found it pretty do-able, and I have no doubt Katie could have made it all the way to the top relatively easily. The others were very nice to me when they saw I was pretty far under the weather, and the Australian man even gave me some antibiotics to ´get a head start on the thing´ as he put it.
I slept in the tent for a few hours until dinner was ready. I went out to try and eat it, but was hardly even able to sit up. I went back to lie down again. Katie brought me over some of the soup. Despite buying a torch specifically to bring to South America, I had forgotten to bring it for the trail, which is the only time I am likely to need it. So I sat in the dark and tried to eat the soup and shivered from the fever and I felt, I must admit, very sorry for myself indeed. Katie brought me a sock (clean, I assume) drenched in cold water for my forehead after dinner, and that helped get my temperature down.
That night was one of the longest I remember. I was shivering pretty badly – I must have had a significant temperature – and I could´t get comfortable on the thin mattress. I passed the night spending a while on my left shoulder, a while on my right, then front and back , and speculating on what types of diseases I might have managed to pick up. Ebola was high on my list of contenders. It´s as sick as I have been since I had swine flu.
In the morning, I confirmed with the guide I would have to go back. Katie was to come too. In retrospect it was a pity that she didn´t go on, and she would have loved to, but we were afraid that I would actually end up significantly ill or in hospital. Towering above us was Dead Woman´s Pass, the most difficult part of the trail. When I looked up it I knew I had no chance, but I think when Katie saw it, she saw a challenge missed. We will have to come back and take care of that unfinished business.
So we said our goodbyes and everyone else set off up the trail, and Katie and I headed back down. One of the porters, with a name something like Vincenzo pronounced with a B instead of a V, was to guide us. He carried an _enormous_ bag also, full of stuff they wouldn´t need for camping when we weren´t there, and also containing my backback, so I had only myself to carry, as it were. His bag was probably about 1.5 metres top to bottom, so it went well over his head. I had a chance to lift it later on, and I could just about do that. I don´t think I could have got it up on my back and taken a step with it. We saw Vincenzo changing his t-shirt at one point, and he was built like the proverbial little brick house.
I can hardly conceive of how someone can be that strong. Lots of the porters carry that much, and they move up the trail much faster than the tourists. The Incas used to run up and down, I read a while back, and I thought that was unlikely at the time. But Vincenzo and his ilk could run up and down all day if they weren´t so loaded down.
The walk back down for me was mostly fine with one agonising climb in the middle. On the previous day it had been a long downhill run from the ruins of Inca towers to the level of the river in the valley below. On the way back, it was very, very tough for me to get up there. There were sighs. There was colourful language (muttered). There were repeated promises never to go near another mountain as long as I lived. It didn´t help that Vincenzo wandered up there with his massive burden as though out for a Fifth-Avenue shopping stroll. But we got there. The last hour or so meant passing seveal groups getting started on the trail going the ´right´way, and seeing the amused glances of the porters as we passed them. Sick and all as I felt, there was stench of failure about the whole thing, no doubt.
Vincenzo came with us all the way to Ollantaytambo, taking us on the local bus. I was still feeling very rough, and rested my head on my backpack for much of the time. The radio was playing mostly English songs. At some point the fact that I was close to a bed and to sleep came home to me with a wave of relief, and at that moment the song happened to be the German version of 99 Red Balloons. I will always associate that song with that bus.
Once we got to the town Vincenzo showed us where to go to a doctor. It was a large medical facility, pretty clean, with lots of people waiting around. No-one spoke more than a few words of English. A doctor saw us both in a small area partially closed off with metal filing cabinets and a curtain, but still open enough to let anyone curious have a look in. He took our blood pressure (we wanted to get Katie checked out too), and I pointed to the various bits of my body which were malfunctioning, which felt like most of them. He then took us back outside and we paid 20 soles to a woman behind a counter, which was a rather unexpected stage in the process to do that, and were then sent upstairs to another doctor who did a more thorough examination. He pronounced Katie to be fine, but me to have inflamation in the tonsil areas (I don´t have any tonsils) and a fever, though my chest was clear. There were much nodding a smiling and pointing to get all of that across.
We went back downstairs again and the first doctor gave us the necessary pills for my prescription out of a large metal press – antibiotics for the infection, and paracetamol for the random headaches that come with it. Three soles for the lot, roughly E0.75. At each stage in the process we skipped the queue, which I felt bad about, as some people seemed to have been waiting a while. The end result was we were in and out pretty quickly.
From there Vincenzo took us to the station to buy train tickets to MP for the 12th, which is now tomorrow, so that we might be able to see it even if we couldn´t hike it. Then we said goodbye to him and handed over a solid tip, and Katie and I went off to find a hotel. Given that I at least would be spending a lot of time there, we went for a pretty nice and relatively expensive place in the centre of the town. How I had been dreaming of a bed with clean sheets, and what a pleasant feeling it was to finally lie down in comfort. I think, though, we are the only people staying in the entire place. For the Stephen King fans among you, I have taken to calling it the Overlook.
I am feeling much better today, though I am still not able to each much. We had breakfast in a little cafe on the square, and then went for a wander around the town. It´s touristy in the centre and local at the edges, with a few Inca sites within easy reach, though they are up too many steps for me to take on at the moment. Lot of cops are scattered here and there; probably good for business to keep the tourists safe.
There are open streams of water running in channels beside many of the streets, and I am not quite clear if that´s the main source of water or not. In the spirit of science we followed one of them back to its source, and found that it comes from a stream that flows out of the rainforest proper. We were on our own at the end of a long alley with high walls on either side at that point, and though it feels safe here we didn´t linger long.
That brings us pretty much up to date. I will admit that being in the tent on the mountain and shaking with fever, knowing that another miserable walk was ahead of me before I could get to a doctor and rest, was not one of the most pleasant experiences of my life. Even though it was definitely in one of the most amazing locations. But I guess the whole point of travel is to experience things out of the ordinary, and not all of those things will be good.
Tomorrow we´ll be at the train station at 5.30am. The train takes two hours to get up there, and then we have the whole day at MP. Tomorrow evening we´ll go back to Cusco, and we´re in the process of working out what to do from there.
Stay safe out there, and talk soon.
