6am or so. 2nd day of the Inca Trail. I am aroused by the slowly approaching yells: Mate amigo? Mate amiga? has nothing to do with killing. They´re just waking us up by loudly brining hot coca leaf brew. (If i decline the brew, can i sleep longer?) the brew is good and warm and makes getting out of my semi-damp and semi-freezing sleeping bag much easier. (by the way, the second night i had been told the temperatures drop to a few degrees below freezing, and i am terrified of how this bag will hold up if it performed so poorly in the mild weather of the first night)
I am generally pretty retarded in the morning and it takes me a while to wash my face (with my drinking water--i was cursing myself for bringing 3.5 liters on the first day) brush my teeth repack the pack and get out to breakfast, so by the time i make it to the mess tent everyone is already there AND on like the third course as it appears. Did you know there were COURSES to BREAKFAST??????? I know i didnt!! So I quickly get a bowl of oatmeal, a boal of fruit salad and a pancake shoved onto my lap in different plates. Mind you my lap is not big enough for three plates. And the table is one of those foldeable thingers so whenever you put a plate or a cup on there it leans towards the middle threatening to spill whatever it contains into the middle of the table. Aside from the acrobatics of managing my three plates and attempting to eat at the same time and downing a cup of coffee and another one of something or other, hot chocolate, mate de coca, whatever, i really must say i was amazed about the huge quantities of food i was capable of shoving into myself. Oh and there was also bread and butter and jam. lest i forget.
Also in the morning we were told that for about 10 bucks we can hire a porter to carry our packs for the moslty upward trail today. Yes, yes i am a wimp. Yes my tent and food and stove etc are already being carried. And yes i fell for the porter. Best decision EVER!!!!! I was in such pain by the time I got to the second camp site, I couldnt even think of what it would´ve been like with the extra weight of the pack on me. Fine, call me a wimp. I´ll live.
Our guide described the meeting point at which our group is supposed to re-collect and get a "snack". Well, having ditched my backpack I decided that I would be warm enough walking so all i really need with me is my raincoat and some snacks (just in case) and the water obviously. And how happy was i that i didnt take anything else when i was scrambling to lift my weight from one stair that was at knee-height to the next.... and the next. and the next... and there was no end.... and then when i thought i was going to sit and cry for a bit before moving on i finally got to the snack site. A couple people from my group were there already (well, the ecuadorian stopped at the same time as me, without a pack, and a sweizerdeutcher had arrived earlier... WITH a pack). There was no sign of porters but a couple people who looked like they were organizing stuff for our group looked like they were boiling water. Which was a good thing for a while since i started shivering pretty much immediately after getting to the site, and for a while i tried to not get away from the boiling water for more than a couple of centimeters. Then of course the rain started. I looked around and noticed that other groups had gone into tents. We had no tent. We had no porters. We had no guide, who was doing the sweep at the back of the group apparently. Basically, it came down to us, sitting in our waterproofs, slowly getting wet wherever the waterproof didnt reach (in my case my pants) and freezing our respective rears off. I got desperate enough to start asking for clothes from the people that carried their packs, which helped a bit. Afterwards, when my pack arrived, along with a billion pounds of other stuff that porter was carrying, I was able to get my own clothes out, but the pants were still cold and wet. At least they didnt smell like wet dog.
About an hour or so of such sitting around and our porters made it to the site and set up a tent, into which we huddled to refill our cups with hot water over and over and over and over and... oh damn, where´s the bathroom?? Thankfully there was one on the site. God knows there wasnt anywhere to stop on the endless stairs that we had to cover before the end of the day, what with a sharply rising cliff on one side and a sharply falling cliff on the other. Not your prime bathroom territory you know.
When I finally got to the end of the climb, my hips were screaming curses in languages known and unknown to man, and had declared an ultimatum and then fulfilled it before i even had a chance to think about it. The view at the top was.... nonexistent. Everything around was covered in clouds so you couldnt see anything. I hung around for a long time, waiting for the weather to clear up, since it´s supposed to be rather finicky in the mountains anyway. But wait as i may, i only got colder, and only got closer to running out of cigarettes.
Thankfully the rest of the way was all down, although a bit of a scary down with really steep stone steps, some of which were very slippery but as far as i am concerned going down beats the crap out of going up, and i dont know what the hell those people who knock going down are complaining about. How many breathing stops do they take on the way down versus the way up? huh? huh? exaaactly!!!!
The downward trail went past a bunch of waterfalls, so i whipped out my trusty camera and kept shooting away up until i got to the campsite and realized i needed to shoot that too. The next morning the camera didnt work. The rain. stupid stupid rain.
I thought i was the first person to hit camp for a while, and was pretty bored, but then it turned out the guy with the backpack who showed up the first at the snack site also showed up first and was too occupied taking a nap to socialize with the likes of me.
Socializing came later, around 8, after everyone had eaten dinner (yes, multicourse) and the couples had rolled off to bed, and there were about 5 of us left looking for a party. No party for us though, everything around was quiet and dark. What a gip. We tried making our own party by gathering around the kerosine lamp and expecting it to generate heat. i think somebody took pictures so i expect to be eventually able to show how pathetic and sad we looked. There was no heat at ALL generated by that thing, but we figured if we waited long enough maybe.....
Finally everyone got cold enough to go and try to sleep. Have you ever tried to sleep in a bag that leaves you shivering in warm weather when it´s below freezing outside? Well, i didnt have to. One of the guys had been the best or worst packer ever, depending on your perspective. From mine, he was the best packer ever. He had two sleeping bags. one that he rented and one that he owned. He tried them both the night before and said they were too hot, so he let me borrow one to use with the one i had already. I was warm and cozy and had the best sleep ever. I was probably the only one in our camp to make such a claim the next day, so for the fear of having wet donkey poop thrown at me i just kept quiet.
By the way, INCREDIBLE amounts of horse-and-or-donkey poop on the trail. The most memorable encounter with one of the poop producers for me occured when i had accidentally bumped into a pig that was being carried by a horse that made such a squeal i thought i must be a criminal. The indian woman accompanying the animals just laughed, but apparently when a similar thing happened to Will, who had hit the pig with his pack, the humans of the party were nowhere near as amused and cursed at him (or at least that´s what i assume they did) in quechua.