Inca Trail - Day Four

At 3am it started to rain and I lay inside my tent with fingers crossed. It lightened at 4 when we were woken and packed our things. I could see headlights dancing around like fireflies as everyone throughout the campground seemed to be in a hurry today. Indeed Effrey was. Today was the rush to the Sun Gate.

A quick piece of bread and jam and gulped cocoa tea and we dashed down to the line-up. The last check-point did not open until 5:30am. We were about 75 people back out of 200 with 20 minutes to wait. Effrey warned us that people might run up the side of us to get ahead and to keep to the mountain side - just to be sure, "the left side".

Promptly at 5:30, the gate opened and the line started to move. I guess all the rabbits were at the very front as we didn't seem to have any problem with passers. But we also set a pretty brisk pace.

About 30 minutes in, it started to pour. We pulled out our ponchos and kept moving. I had too many clothes on and kept waiting for Effrey to call a break so I could de-layer. But he didn't. I climbed the last steep 50 steps in fleece, swimming in sweat. Bad planning.

In the end, I think Effrey was more upset than anyone about the weather. We waited at the Sun Gate for about 20 minutes, waiting for the fog to lift but it held fast. Then we continued on to the next stop where one gets that famous "tourist above Machu Picchu" photo - same thing there. By now the rain had stopped but the fog refused to budge. We decided to descend into the ruins for the tour portion.

After being rather isolated for 3 days hiking the Trail, it felt a bit of a shock to flow into bus loads of clean tourists and other hikers. So much noise! On the other hand, flush toilets (for 1 sole).

Effrey ushered us around, trying to avoid the groups, but even by 9:00, we were bumping into other tourists while listening to him explain the different buildings. Many people now take the train up the night before and get up early.

Machu Picchu was mystical with the fog lifting, then cascading over the rocks. It is a huge place - I was grateful we had a guide explaining the important areas to us. Some people wandered about on their own with a map and seemed a little disoriented.

I won't go into any detail about the tour and exactly what we visited as Machu Picchu is easy to research. I will say that I was fascinated by the fact that the Incans built earthquake-resistant buildings without the use of mortar. It seemed to me that the Incans were very clever, always testing ways of doing things from growing different crops in the terraces of Moray to leaning their walls slightly to counter tremours. I wondered if they had more earthquakes then so they could test more quickly. Imagine waiting 20 years, or even a generation to see if your hypothesis worked!

After the tour, I said goodbye to the kids and rode the bus with Effrey to Agua Calientes to try to change my train ticket from 7pm to earlier. I was exhausted and it started to rain again, settling in for the day. Now the trek was over, I was anxious to get "home" to Cusco.