Weather: There is nothing worse than being woken up at 3 am in the morning by the rain pounding down on the tent. Well nothing worse than waking up at 6 am to discover said rain was actually snow, and a healthy inch deep blanket is now covering most of the ground.
Llama Count A healthy 0... Am deep into mule country instead. Having fun trying to guess what is mule and what is pony, the line is quite blurred out here. All could be cousins of Zebadee.
This was the hardest day. The guide didn't really seem to have much faith in any of us completing it, even the super keen north face contingent, and was strongly advising everyone to hire mules. It would have made a good photo, especially with the addition of the word fail scrawled in black felt tip pen beneath it. Certain members of the Dutch speaking contingent spent most of dinner heckling a man they had seen take a mule in a trek near Arrequipa the previous week, the poor guy did most of the Salkantay trek with 'mule man' ringing in his ears. Consequently no one in our group hired a mule.
In the morning we climbed up to the mountain pass that skirts below Salkantay, which is the biggest mountain in the area and coincidently also the most revered god. The mountain pass was a cool 4629 metres above sea level, which was a challenge for my boggy fenland lungs. Not quite sure how but somehow I made it, despite hail, rain, sleet and snow. The awful weather was probably my fault, the Salkantay God's revenge for the amount of swearing I was doing in my head that I didn't get round to booking the easier Inca trek.
Peruvians are a bit more clued up in the tourism stakes. Apparently some guides study tourist psychology at university, which I imagine is a crash course in how to deal with a grumpy sugar deprived OAT. One particular family had camped at the Salkantay pass the night before in order to sell souvenirs. An impressive feet in itself.. before I add that they were wearing sandals.
Julia and I came up with an ever changing playlist to reflect the mood of the group and weather. I am not sure that the rendition of The Eagles Take it Easy, and The Beatles Here Comes the Sun won us many friends.
After climbing up to the bottom of a glacier in the pass we descended down into a valley, which looked to me exactly like Scotland. It was rocky greeny, grey, there were sheep, it was raining, and the mossys were hungry. The clouds conveniently hid the fact that these mountains were probably double the size of Ben Nevis, and we walked through a Scottish wonderland in horizontal rain until lunch.
At lunchtime finally the sun arrived, and it became apparent that we had walked into Jurassic Park. Cue Julia with the Jurassic park theme tune for a good forty minutes. Saw a few dinosaur fleas, which could perhaps have doubled as caterpillars in another life.
We finally reached the camp site after almost a ten hour plod. Exhausted we are forced to defend the tents from a couple of rampaging local chickens. Everyone heads to bed at 8.30 pm, the poultry finds revenge for its previous affront, and the cockerel crows three times an hour for the rest of the night.
This is extreme trekking.
No comments:
Post a Comment