Days 62 & 63 - the Inca Trail fiasco.

Am awoken by a terrific racket just after 6am; it sounds like someone’s trying to break down my door. When I open my eyes, the big white cat is in the room and I have no idea how he got in. My room at the Casa de la Gringa is a quirky little hole atop a tall ladder; mind you, there’s a gap above the door that a cat could just about squeeze through…
The cat decides to join me in bed and lies on my stomach, purring. So much for sleeping in.

Have a morning Inca Trail briefing at the Q’ente office. There are three other people there – all my age and all American. Apparently, we were supposed to be joined by two more people, but when they found out that it’s a 5am departure on the first day, they cancelled their booking. Fruit loops. Our guide is late. Almost an hour late, in fact, and I pace the room and fidget.

The two people manning the desk are pretty useless; it shouldn’t take two of them to deal with one customer. When it’s finally my turn to pay for the extras – my own porter, a single supplement for having my own tent, and upgrade to the Vistadome train – it turns out that the boss won’t accept my South American Explorers club card (5%) discount). Given that it would’ve meant a discount of $4 and considering that I should’ve gotten the single supplement for free anyway, since they can’t make you share with a stranger of the opposite gender, I’m not impressed. He’s getting an ad worth £500 for a trip worth $390. Miser.

When Miguel the guide arrives, we go over the map of the Inca Trail, and he tells us how many hours we’ll be walking each day, where we’ll be sleeping, what we need to bring... Dismayed to find that drinking water is not included for the first two days, and that we have to provide our own. By the time the briefing is finished, it’s almost lunchtime.

Check out the contemporary art museum on the Plaza Regocijo. It’s one of the places that you need the boleto turistico for (the all-encompassing tourist ticket that covers all the important Inca ruins; they throw in a few forgettable city attractions as well). The museum is hit-and-miss; one hall’s devoted entirely to one local guy, and all his paintings look the same; none of them grab me. The second hall is better: psychedelic representations of llamas; haunting, metallic faces; a painting of an ukuko at the Ausangate festival…

I’ve sufficiently recovered from jungle belly to go and haunt Cicciolina and gorge myself on their imaginative
tapas (battered prawns with roast sweet potato and wasabi mayo gets my vote) and tiradito – the Peruvian version of sashimi (better than sashimi, in my opinion).

Off to the market to find items needs for the expedition. It’s great – musty, full of funny smells, fruit and sugar cane stalks piled high, herbal potions and assorted jungle medicine for sale, dried out llama foetuses to bury under your new house for good luck, colourful ponchos, necklaces made of seeds, bags of coca leaves, juice stalls, insalubrious little eateries, hunks of browning meat attracting flies…

I’m soon the proud owner of a bag of coca leaves (the woman didn’t have the thing that you put under your cheek for maximum energy, though), a kilo of passion fruit, a baseball cap declaring that Che Guevara lives (I left my favourite hat on the bus from Manu), and a bunch of llama toenails tied together with colourful string (possibly used for decoration or possibly as a rattle).

Am driven nuts by the intermittent wi-fi connection at the Casa, so spend time at the SAE clubhouse trying to make arrangements for later on in the trip.

Print, sign and scan my Lonely Planet contract and email it to the commissioning editor. On Choquechaka I stumble across Prasada - a vegetarian hole-in-the-wall and before I know it, I’m eating falafel perched on a stool next to pierced and dreadlocked types. Why is it that vegetarianism and saving the planet often goes with matted hair and reggae beats? The falafel’s good, though, and so is the homemade ají and something resembling raita. The American girl next to me proceeds to educate me about the different Inca trails she’s done.

Am having a nap when one of the Casa’s staff knock on my door. It seems we’re leaving at 1am, not 5am. Why??? Something about trouble with trains. Don’t manage to sleep at all before I get picked up. Miguel informs us that there’s a strike and that they’re blocking all the roads out of Cusco. I snooze. Wake up to find that we’ve been returned to Cusco because all the roads are already blocked. Quite happy to return to bed.

Another meeting at the Q’ente office at 9am. It’s not clear how long the strike will last; it may be over by tonight, or it might not. Q’ente need to verify that our trekking permits can be changed to the next day. The Americans have to fly home on Saturday, so they have to find out whether they can change their tickets; otherwise it’s the three-day option, which compressed three days’ hiking into two – ten one day, fifteen the next, all at an altitude. That doesn’t sound terribly enjoyable.

We agree to meet again at 3pm when all options have been considered.

I really shouldn’t have gone for Bread & Breakfast at Cicciolina - not because their gourmet breakfasts are not good, but because it’s a wasted meal; regardless of whether I eat breakfast or not, I’m always hungry by lunchtime anyway.

Very productive morning. I visit the Pre-Columbian art museum, with its fine collection of Nazca and Mochica pottery, ornately carved Mochica ceremonial staffs, small stone carved llamas, and other Inca crafts. Then it’s the Inca museum, with more pre-Inca pottery (the animal representations are particularly good), dioramas of traditional Andean life, miniature pottery and tiny metal llamas, to be buried with important bodies as offerings to the gods…You’ll be surprised to know that the most compelling exhibits for me were the trepanned and ritually deformed skulls, and the superb collection of mummies – all placed in a ‘homely’ setting, eerily lit by red light: a baby mummy seems to be looking up at the adult mummy, and another adult mummy is for some reason sticking its head out of an oversized clay pot, bit enough to hold a human.

Outside in the courtyard, indigenous women are weaving colourful cloths using traditional equipment. The crafts on sale are of excellent quality, but I remind myself that I have absolutely no room in my luggage.

After these two museums, the Museo Histórico Regional is overkill; it also showcases pre-Columbian arrowheads and pottery shards but it does also display Inca weapons and has an excellent section on Inca jewellery and offerings to the gods. I breeze through the post-colonial painting section; I’m afraid that the chubby cherubs, the gaunt Jesuses and the pious-looking saints all look the same to me. Am struck by the savagery of Spanish conquest – they completely ignored the complex art and local culture and completely ravaged the place – stealing all the gold and melting it down, and having Tupac Amaru publicly drawn and quartered when he refused to reveal the whereabouts of the legendary ‘city of gold’. Europe, the centre of civilisation, my hind foot.

At 3pm, we find ourselves sitting around for an hour (again). The Americans can change their tickets, if need be, and they’d prefer to do the trail in four days. I waver, having been told that it’s perfectly doable in three, because it means losing time on the way back (I lose my Vistadome ticket and have to take the 9.30pm departure from Aguas Calientes), which means I have no time to see Ollantaytambo that day, and so on, but at the same time, I do want to enjoy the Inca trail rather than have to death march it.

I shamefacedly admit that I’m drawn to the golden arches in the main square. I happen to have a craving for French fries. There’s a whole bunch of gringos there, many on their Apple macs. I refuse to believe that so many people need them for work. Welcome to the digital age, when one can’t travel to Peru without popping to the local McDonalds to check one’s email.

I redeem myself somewhat by stopping at my favourite antichucho stall. I figure that when you have your favourite heart kebab place, that’s when you practically count as a local.

Now it’s a question of waiting and waiting. I’ve just been told that we’re going to leave at 1am again, so it may be a repeat of this morning…