The next day was supposed to bring lower elevations and less rigorous (by comparison) terrain. On the other hand, it was ten straight hours of hiking, starting with a four-hour, 1,500 foot ascent. I was worried that I had used up too much energy psyching myself up for the day before. Did I have enough left to keep going forward?
Of course, there really wasn't any choice at this point.
And so we set off. Staircase after staircase. And every time we'd turn a corner, we'd see in front of us yet another steep set of stairs, and we'd curse those damn Inka engineers. Jose just laughed at us. "The Inkas' revenge," he said.
Eventually, we emerged from the cloud forest again, to the incredible vistas of the higher trail.
This little lake slakes the thirst of llamas, alpacas, deer, pumas,and even bears. We were surprised to learn that this section of the Machu Picchu reserve is home to both black and spectacled bears.
Eventually, we reached the high point for the day. We were winded, but not nearly as exhausted as the day before, thanks to the lower elevation.
But, of course, we still had six hours ahead of us. Starting with a long, winding series of downs.
After a couple hours, though, the trail started leveling out for longer stretches. We passed ruin after ruin, but at this point we were essentially ruined out. While the younger trekkers gladly hiked up steep trails to reach each site, we stoically marched onward, only pausing at those ruins that were directly on our path.
We descended into a particularly lush section of cloud forest. Here the trail was much more finely constructed and flatter. The trail is built straight across the sheer hillside, the foundations sometimes extending ten to fifteen feet down the face of the hill. The precision of the engineering and the amount of work it took to construct using only stone and wooden tools is awe-inspiring.
The forest here was alive with an incredible diversity of life, exotic flowers of every size and color, butterflies, and trees luxuriant with orchids and mosses. The air was filled with the songs of dozens of colorful birds. O asked that we set our minds on seeing a toucan, and minutes later, two were loudly talking in a tree twenty feet from us.
We were liking this new and improved trail. In back of us, the next mountain over is Machu Picchu mountain. Machu Picchu itself is just over the ridge and down. Hours of hard climbing away, but tantalizingly close. So close in fact that we could hear the deep bellow of the train from Cusco as it chuffed slowly down the valley to Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu mountain.
Just as we were getting a little giddy with optimism, the downs began in earnest once again.
Staircase after staircase of them.
Vertiginous spirals of stairs.
Stairs through dark tunnels chiseled through solid rock.
Ten hours had passed. Then eleven. Sundown was worryingly close. And finally, I could hear the sounds of camp. Jose and O were somewhere behind me up the trail. When I reached the camp area, I couldn't see our porters in the confusion of other tour groups, so I sat down to wait for Jose and O. Finally, Jose found me. It seems I had overshot our group by about five minutes. Which meant that, exhausted as I was, I had to climb back up the steep trail in the gathering dark.
By the time I got to camp, after eleven and a half hours of hiking, it was barely light enough to see where I was going.
But the panoramic views of the high mountains across the valley made everything worthwhile.
And we knew that tomorrow we would at last see Machu Picchu.
P.
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