INCA TRAIL: day 3 - finally, a rest

On day 3 we woke up at 6 am for breakfast. We were both incredibly sore. I had a blister on my foot that I figured would be fine and my back and knees had definitely felt better. Breakfast was awesome, fried bananas, omelettes, you know, the usual fantastic breakfast. As soon as we started hiking it began to rain again, but we didn´t mind because today was a short day (only 10 km!!!) and we would be able to rest before Machu Picchu the next day.

The day´s hike was a lot of ups and downs on original Inca stonework, which is always impressive. We both agreed that the Inca people must have had tiny feet, because the steps were incredibly short and hard to walk up. Porters came running by us all day, but we were way ahead of the other groups who had stopped after the first mountain the previous day.

We rested at a very cool ruins site and learned all about the history of Machu Picchu. Then we descended another 6 km down the slippery, sometimes imaginary stairway and tried not to bother the porters. The person who hears/sees a porters coming has to yell ¨Porter!¨ as loud as they can and then you have to scramble over to the mountain side and hopefully get out of their way in time. I don´t know how those guys do it. They jump nimbly from rock to rock like mountain goats. It´s incredible to see. Most porters separate and individually arrive at the campsites, but not our red army. They stuck together through the entire trek and in the same order. That way we could cheer on Jose, the head porter and last in line, every time they passed us.

Leah and I plowed ahead of our group in the rush to get to camp and finally take a shower. The others stopped at some ruins, but we figured we had plenty to see tomorrow and we were smelly! We were the first hikers at the camp, but unfortunately, there were still hundreds of people there. They had all taken a bus up that day and planned to make the walk to Machu Picchu the next day with us, which I personally think was pretty lame. We took our luke warm showers (glorious) and realized it was only 11:30 am, so we wrapped ourselves in our tents to read and nap until snack time.

Later on we played cards, and I would like to say that we finally found a game that Phil Alexander sucks at. It´s called Cabeza de Mierda, or Shit Head, and was introduced to us by our guide Alex. It´s pretty complicated, so I won´t go into detail, but Phil Alexander held the crown of Shit Head for the rest of the evening, which was hilarious. I was also able to purchase a coke zero and curbed my carbonation addiction for another day.

At dinner our chef outdid himself by creating a tucan out of a cucumber and a chinchilla our of a giant radish. We took lots of pictures with them, which he found very amusing. Then we had to plan a speech to give our porters, along with a tip, which they greatly deserved. We never would have made the hike without them. It was an awkward but fun time and we actually started to get to know our porters. My favorite was Juan, who served us our food. He was always humming and singing and loved it when Leah and I occasionally broke out into ¨Total Eclipse of the Heart.¨

We went to bed pretty early because we had to be up by 3:30 am for our final day, when we finally reach the glorious Machu Picchu!