Getting up at 3:30 in the morning is hell under any circumstances. Sometimes there's a good reason for it, like a flight to catch. But not here! We have to get up this early because the poor porters have to catch the five a.m. train, which is the last one for the locals. All the other trains are just for the white-faced gringos. So with terrible cursing we crawl out of the tents in the morning, the porters are tearing the tents down right behind our backsides, we eat breakfast under pressure and pry our eyes open. By 4:30 everything is packed. And now the worst part. From here it's still 2 hours of walking through rough terrain to Machu Picchu (jungle, stone steps, climbing, descending, rain). Unfortunately the gate to Machu Picchu right in the camp doesn't open until 5:30! So we wait for an hour in a room that was still a bar the day before yesterday, and I try to at least partly charge my phone in the former kitchen. I've got a great app on my iPhone called iTrails, into which I downloaded extra detailed hiking maps of the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu in advance, and the app records our exact movement by GPS, average speed, elevation gain, etc. Unfortunately the battery lasts about 1.5 – 2 days and there wasn't much electricity in the jungle.
After half an hour of waiting the guide took us to the gate. Unfortunately he didn't feel like standing in the rain, so there are about 60 gringos ahead of us whose guides didn't mind the rain.
You'd think it doesn't matter at all what time we set off for Machu Picchu. It's been standing there for 600 years, it can wait a bit longer. Unfortunately the truth is different. Above Machu Picchu towers the majestic pointed mountain Wayna Picchu, on which there's a small fortress with a gorgeous view of Machu Picchu. Only the first 400 people who arrive at Machu Picchu get permission to climb it, in two waves (7:00 and 10:00). In the fight for a place among the first 400 we're competing with the slackers who arrive by train at six. By seven it's always game over. When you count that the gate opens at 5:30, there are 60 people ahead of you, it takes two hours, it's dark and raining, and you've got full packs of about 18 kg on your back, it doesn't really add up. Still we're not giving up. At 5:38 we snatch the tickets out of the guide's hand and Miloš sets a pace that takes my breath away. He's simply running ahead of us. At this hour of the morning I could barely swallow a roll with pâté (Miloš pulled it out of his supplies) and the mere thought of chewing coca reverses the direction of the peristaltic wave. So we have to rely on our own fitness alone. Ahead of us are 6 km of narrow trail, mostly with a drop of tens of metres on the right, it's raining, it's dark, the altitude we're moving at is about 2600 – 3200 m. And now we have to overtake those 60 people with backpacks who also want to be there first. If we manage it in an hour, we have a small chance of making it. So we run as fast as we can, luckily the beginning is pretty flat so the running goes well. Where we can, we overtake off the trail, but that mostly doesn't work, so we use a dirty trick. When a group is coming up, one of us shouts "Watch out, porters!". The gringos have the instinct from the last few days to get out of the porters' way, so they get out of the way. Not for nothing do the blondes call us the Czech Porters. Every now and then somebody shouts something along the lines of Machu Picchu will still be there for ages so there's no need to rush. Silly
After a while the climbing starts and there we run into the group of Brits we already had a conflict with yesterday. Yesterday Miloš slightly bumped into one of them while overtaking and she swore like a trooper. When the blondes were overtaking them, the freckled British cow spluttered something like a complaint about Miloš. Claire was done with her quickly though and told her literally "Shut up, it is you who is dragging the poles behind like a retard!". With that, in her own words, she made herself a Nemesis :) .
So now we've got a group of pre-pissed-off Brits here, whose guide told them that whoever is first at the gate in the morning will also be first at Machu Picchu, because overtaking isn't allowed on the Inca Trail. Bullshit. She was dragging along like a bad smell, so I jumped into the dirt to the right of the trail, overtook Miloš and Patrik and took the lead of the strike force. When I got level with the freckled British cow, she decided to block my way with her pole. I pushed it aside and carried on. With her next move she made me upgrade her from a cow to a f...ing c...t. And out loud, too. Because she tried to shove me down off the drop!! That would've been a real neck-breaker! Luckily with the backpack I weigh a hundred kilos, so I held my ground. I was about to unload my stock of English swearwords on her, but I stopped myself in time, because around B.F.C. (British freckled c...) there were still about 15 other Brits. At least I let her have the Czech set :) . She reacted by grabbing the pole with both hands, roaring insults, and swinging it back over her head trying to hit me in the head. The backpack absorbed the first blow and by the second one I was long gone. Meanwhile Patrik and Miloš blew past B.F.C. on the left. The rest of the group put up no resistance, only their guide was still explaining something to us fairly politely.
Right after the duel with B.F.C. we hit brutal steps. Again the kind of climb where the step is 10 cm wide and 25 cm high. After the running and the adrenaline battle I was seriously short of oxygen. Luckily we managed to climb it before the British group arrived and we came up to the fortress the Incas called Inti Punku (the Sun Gate). From there you'd be able to see Machu Picchu in the distance, if it weren't raining and if we weren't in the clouds.
The second-to-last group from the camp was sitting at the fortress, we only blew past the last one inside the Machu Picchu complex. At Inti Punku Miloš felt a great need, which he didn't tell us about, and lost about 200 m by it. The last kilometre or so was downhill, on the way we met two Czechs who had come by train. We ran through the whole of Machu Picchu down to the main entrance and there we found the booth where they were giving out stamps for Wayna Picchu. Right behind us a group of about 8 more people from the camp shuffled in, who also made it. One of them was a guy from the crowd around the red-haired Israeli beauty, who had run out of Colca Canyon in 1:20 while it took us 2:50. This time we smoked him though :) . About 10 min. after us Miloš arrived, having been delayed taking pictures of Machu Picchu. He didn't get a stamp any more. Which means B.F.C. definitely didn't either :) .
We covered those six kilometres in 56 minutes! So now we needed to sit down and catch our breath. For Wayna Picchu they give out tickets either for the ten o'clock climb, but those are gone by six. We got tickets for 7, so by eight we had to pick ourselves up and set off. Luckily we could leave our packs in the left-luggage office and set off with just a camera and tripod. It was still raining. Considering the left-luggage office is opposite the Machu Picchu Lodge hotel, where a room costs 1080 dollars a night, the storage only cost 3 Soles.
Because Miloš didn't have a stamp for the climb up Wayna Picchu, we were racking our brains about how to get him up there. It looked bleak. A gate, a fence, a visitors' book, passport checks, two guards. Patrik and I went through and started slowly climbing the brutally steep steps. After about ten minutes I look back down the hill and see a familiar red jacket.
Miloš, hardcore soldier, simply went around the nearest rock and plunged into the impenetrable jungle. _(In the photos on the right you can see the green spot where he headed into the jungle.)_ Judging by the way he looked, it was an uneven fight. Mud on his back, in his hair, bits of plants sticking out of him everywhere. That's from falling backwards off a rock somewhere. Nevertheless he was of course happy about how brilliantly, in true Czech style, he had outwitted the system :) .
The climb up a 200 m high rock in the rain and after 6 km of running was quite a torment, but we were happy that it worked out.
Up top we waited in the rain at the summit of the fortress for the clouds to clear at least a bit. Eventually it stopped raining and now and then a hole opened up in the clouds so that Machu Picchu was visible. At the top of Wayna Picchu there's a fortress that makes absolutely no sense. Our guide Dominique said the old Inca was probably high on mescaline (a local hallucinogenic plant that can supposedly separate the soul from the body for up to three days) and ordered his slaves to build a fortress on top of that pointed rock over there.
The climb up W.P. takes 45 minutes with no load, all the way up a steep rock into which the Incas carved steps. At the top there's a stone structure the size of a smaller medieval castle plus, of course, loads of terraces for growing potatoes. My head can't take in how they built this. After 500 – 600 years and dozens of earthquakes the walls are still such that you can't slip a razor blade between the stones.
At eleven we started our retreat and on the way down the gods showed us the whole of Machu Picchu between the clouds for 2 minutes.
Until about one we wandered through the endless grounds of Machu Picchu and took photos like crazy.
Because Dominique hadn't given us any instructions except "we'll meet at Machu Picchu", which is like saying we'll meet in Malá Strana, we started figuring out what next. Even in the morning he didn't know when our train back was leaving! It could have been at 10 in the morning (it's already one) or maybe at eight in the evening.
While trying to find the exit from Machu Picchu we accidentally went around another big hill and had a look at the Inca Bridge. We reached the gate at 13:30 and took the bus for 8 dollars to the station in Aguas Calientes.
Surprisingly, a frazzled Dominique was waiting there and was quite relieved that we hadn't fallen off W.P. down into the river (about a 700 m drop :) ). He dragged us off to a pub where we stuffed ourselves nicely and, together with the blondes, Lucy and Brad, knocked back the local Pilsen beer :) . It's sold in litre bottles, so it went down fast. On the way back I sat next to the bigger blonde (Lisa) and in the end I have to admit she wasn't as dumb as she seemed at first :) .
The train was supposed to run for 4 hrs, but after two they kicked us out and we had to walk about 500 m in the dark to a bus, because they were repairing the track. On the bus I fell asleep on the blonde's shoulder, so hopefully she didn't consider it sexual harassment :) .
In the evening we were supposed to meet everyone on the square at the Mamma Afrika bar, but either I got there late, or I was the only one who got there. I ordered a Piña Colada and it scared me quite a bit. It was definitely more than half a litre.
Then I just ran through the rain to our hotel (La Pelegrína, right on the square) and fell asleep easily. From 3:30 to 0:30 a hell of a lot had happened. :)
