I’m lying on a tropical beach being fanned by a cohort of 7 adoring blondes and as I go to take another sip on my mojito, bang! A light shines blindingly into my eyes. What’s happening? Am I being interrogated by the Thought Police? No it’s Nic (well kind of a Thought Police I suppose :)). She’s looking particularly dashing wearing her head torch following another restful night’s sleep on the hard ground and she’s saying “get your lazy arse out of bed! it’s 4 o’clock already”. Being violently wrenched from a dream, particularly one involving 7 blondes, is never a good way to start the day and the next half an hour is like a blur; within minutes of being woken our things are packed, we’re out of the tent (which the porters have already started to pack away) and breakfast is literally being hoovered up.
When I finally come to my senses it’s a about 5:00am and our troop of 6 is lined up at the Wiñay Wayna control gate. Our guide Coco’s just left us, likely to ensure an easy passage through the control and there we are wandering how it is that at least 70 or so other muppets have made it to the gate earlier then us this morning? Guess the fact that Machupicchu is still 7kms away (or approx a 2hr walk); that most people tend to come up by bus from Aguas Calientes where buses start running from 5:30am; that there are only 400 tickets issued a day for Wayna Picchu (the best lookout for Machupicchu); and that likely only the top finishers are going to get a ticket, is sufficient incentive to have everyone up well before the crack of dawn.
As we anxiously follow the procession of hikers on this 4th morning of the Inca Trail, the dawn slowly breaks only to reveal a thick fog blanketing the lush rainforest we’re marching through. The pace starts to quicken and we manage to pass a first group of other hopefuls who’ve had to slow down. We pass another, and then another before reaching the Monkey Stairs and as others stop to admire the heavy fog at Intipunku (or the Sun Gate) – the other and probably most famous vantage of Machupicchu – we shift gear. Carrying full backpacks and now moving at ‘porter pace’ I hear a sad voice call out “don’t end it badly” as I dart past the decrepit farker. Slowing down for a second to see where the rest of the group is, Ryan the 20 year old California from Santa Cruz runs past and as Nic chants “we’re not going to make it anyway” I declare “It’s just for sport now!”
Not quite able to outpace the young lunged American (he had a smaller backpack than me the bastard :)) I come in second with Nic closely behind. To our delight the whole of our group has matched our pace and despite a lengthy queue at the Wayna Picchu gate somewhat denting our optimism at a quarter to 7 in the morning, we’ve won the race and are duly rewarded with a ticket to climb to the lookout at 8:30am! It’s not likely that we’re going to see anything given the heavy cloud but we’re still going to chance it we reckon – I mean it was only a light run this morning and we could all still do with another 400m vertical ascent :). (It did obviously clear up once we reached the top - ref title photo).
Of course the preceding days on the trail weren’t nearly as rushed. Nor were the couple of days prior in Cusco for that matter (or Qosco as the locals prefer to refer to this once Inca capital and thus “centre of the world”... the conquistadors thought instead to rename it Cusco meaning “small dog” in Quechua). The town of Qosco, destroyed by the Spanish and subsequently rebuilt on top of the remaining Inca ruins, carries such a strong sense of history – not just for the remaining ruins but also because of the many 16th century buildings (including some amazing churches) that were built atop of this once grand Inca city. And a visit out to the Sacred Valley; the ruins of Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Chinchero, provide further insight into the scale, beliefs, social structure, eventual disbanding, etc, of what between the 12th and 16th centuries is thought to have been the largest empire in the world.
However, walking the 400 year old stone path that was reserved for the Inca nobles is obviously the best way to experience what this world was actually like. To think that messengers would relay information across this 42km trail within hours while it look us 4 days to walk is amazing. So too of course is the magnificent landscape of the mountains, cloud-forest and rainforest that the trail meanders through, and it has to be said that for all our recent hiking, this has to be up there as one of the best.
It’s most astonishing however that although the Spanish are known to have walked through the valley below the city of Machupicchu this jewel was never found and thus remained so well preserved until its discovery in 1911. Even more so is the fact that, as the Inca’s knew (and as is reflected in the designs of some of their structures), the area is prone to seismic activity and despite the efforts of curators and academics to preserve the site the fact that it sits directly on a fault line is sure to eventually destroy it. (Is this the real reason why the Incas abandoned it?)
At the risk of killing you with endless useless facts however, I’d best get back to the real Amazing Race. You didn’t think it was just going to be about Machupicchu did you?
A few days before setting off on the Inca Trail I get an email out of the blue from Tony (not quite out of the blue as I’d written to him sometime before but still a pleasant surprise). As I’m responding to his email, or more specifically justifying how it’s not in the budget, that it’s off our route, that given the timing of the Inca Trail (which we had to book 5 months in advance) it was late season, etc, it hits me like a solid left jab straight in the nose: We’re not going skiing? What do you mean we’re not going skiing? This can’t be! We love skiing!
Now, sure we’re here on the backpacker route, acting all experienced, only a step away from sporting happy pants (it’s a farken big step! but I did buy an Alpaca jumper that not even my dad would wear – guess we’ll see at Christmas though won’t we :)) and still pained with being removed from the heavenly bliss of life in Val d’Isere (we miss you guys back there loads too) we thought we’d try to forget this skiing obsession of ours. You know, we thought maybe we should pursue other interests. Perhaps basket weaving? (Perhaps not! :) – sorry AJ we just couldn’t do that sort of shit to ourselves). And as for this hiking thing that we’ve started to get into... sure its good to go for a leisurely walk in the mountains but you gotta be kidding if you think this is some kind of sport! C’mon, you can only walk up so many faarken hills before you have to start skiing down some of them!
Right, with mission in hand and one Inca Trail to get in the way of planning time we had no time to lose! We were going skiing, no matter the distance, no matter the cost (within some semblance of reason) and completely foregoing that we had initially planned to spend 2 weeks in Bolivia... who gives a shit about Bolivia right? There’s nothing to see there anyway! Well, perhaps just a couple of things... mental note; just add a couple of things to the plan... maybe... if there’s time that is :). And given that my all too conscientious research assistant Nicola had just discovered that it’d recently dumped 1.5m of snow, we now had our objective firmly in sight: Get overland from Cusco to Las Lenas (only some 2000kms away) through Bolivia (seeing stuff?) before the snow melts and go skiing!
The Amazing Race had just begun!
Day 1:
10:00pm: Freeze your arse off on an overnight bus from Cusco to Puno.
Day 2:
6:00am: Arrive in Puno.
9:00am: Take boat out to Uros floating islands.
9:30am: Wake Nic as she falls asleep during crappy demonstration of how islands were made.
12:00am:Try to avoid getting sick off lunch.
2:00pm: Board bus to La Paz
7:00pm: Watch bus as it nearly sinks trying to float across the lake with our luggage.
11:00pm:Find dogdy hostel.
12:00pm:Sleep.
Day 3:
9:00am: Wake up.
9:05am: Try to shower. Oh that’s right there was only enough ‘aqua caliente’ in the whole of the hostel for one Goulasz to take a shower this morning. (I didn’t need to shower anyway!)
9:30am: Do La Paz!
6:00pm: Board overnight bus to Sucre.
Day 4:
7:00am: Find another dodgy hostel.
8:00am: Have breakfast and do the tourist thing again! (Remember to happy snap all the pretty colonial architecture).
2:00pm: Bored!
8:00pm: Brave some pizza.
2:00am: (Nic) Wake with chronic indigestion!
Days 5 & 6:
Embark on 36 hour transfer from Sucre to Salta in Argentina... Very long! (Of course made somewhat more interesting by having one last bout of that mystery rotten egg gas burp stomach bug thingy).
Day 7:
Have a well earned bottle of Malbec on the main square in Salta :) Feel free to eat street food again! (You really can’t go past the Lomitos – or steak sandwiches... yummy!)
Days 8 & 9:
Take final 28 hour transfer to Malargue through Mendoza (pen this amazing post :)).
Race successfully completed, we were ready to take our just reward of 3 days of skiing in Las Lenas – one of the premier ski resorts in South America :))!!!
The next morning, with packed lunch in hand we arrive at Las Lenas about 9:30am (we’re transferring everyday from Malargue which is an hour away) and given that the condition of the 50% ticket discount that we’re after is that we hire our skis and boots at the resort, we head straight to the rental shop. Seeing as we’re so keen to get out there (it’s a beautiful sunny day and there is no time to lose – we only have 3 days remember) we take the first pair of boots we try and without even noticing that there is no wax on the skis we’re given we march to the door in true Slavic Warrior (over-excited) fashion with a couple of pairs of Salomon X-wing 8s. As soon as we actually manage to pay for our rental (this is no mean feat as they won’t accept Visa and that’s all we got) – and go through a similar ordeal getting our lift tickets – we head straight up to the highest lifted point, the top of the Marte chair.
As we try to put our first turns in down a little blue run however, both of us seem to be finding this sport incredibly difficult? Feeling very uncoordinated and not willing to accept that we’d both forgotten how to ski after a couple of months of hiking (damn this quasi sport... I knew too much walking wasn’t good for you :)) I finally decide that these skis have a dodgy tune (did I mention they hadn’t seen wax in months) and desperately need a service. Instructing the service guy that the edge on a set of skis needs to be de-tuned by half a degree for them to be ski-able (not easy when you don’t speak much Spanish – but it did seem like he knew what I was talking about... I think I’ve had this problem before you know... though just a couple of times perhaps :)) we head off to have our sandwiches and a couple of beers. We return a half an hour later with renewed enthusiasm and are ready for the afternoon session!
With the weather closing in and with both of us having even more trouble trying to carve these skis than in the morning session it soon becomes clear that either his hand-file tuning job on these skis made them even less ski-able then before or just that Salomon has managed to produce another shit pair of skis! Likely a bit of both! And not being able to stand my own whinging anymore (skiing’s about carving not whinging kiddies!) we do the only thing we can... trade in the top of the line Argentinian rental gear for a pair of Atomic Izor 7.5s for Nic and Rossi 8S Oversize for me. Having wasted nearly a whole day on some really shit skis we now have skis that do what you tell them to and are finally ready to really take on the mountain!
To our good fortune the bad weather that afternoon results in 30cms of fresh snow overnight and the following day is just amazing; we start with carving out fresh lines in 5-10cms of powder on top of the groomers, then get some real leg burn trying to float carve skis in some deeper snow off the back of the Marte chair and finish with a great afternoon work out carving up the pistes again. And just when you thought it couldn’t get much better than the day before, the colder temperature overnight dries out the snow a little for our last day which is as near a perfect day of skiing as you can have – a bluebird, with hard packed perfectly groomed pistes first thing in the morning, followed by some fresh lines off-piste later that morning (so accessible too... fantastic) and ending with skiing the groomers until both of us are so exhausted we can barely put a turn in.
What a wicked couple of days skiing! And what a fantastic little resort Las Lenas is; with literally everything from great long pistes for carving; to easily accessible steep couloirs and powder bowls (for the brave) – you just need to luck out on the conditions which I’m glad to gloat that we did :).
In keeping with the themes of ski resorts and wine regions we’re now off to San Raphael and Mendoza for a few days of wine tasting. Life is hard :). But only for another month or so :(.
Ciao
