Machu Picchu Camino Inca Trail Cuzco Peru 1996* * *
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We lunched at another high spot of 3,700 metres where I gave my boots a cursory glance. They seemed to be holding up OK under the strain. However, my ankles were crimson and swollen where midges had bitten through my socks. As the group reassembled on the summit, we parked our rucksacks and began to play the popular word game. Soon after, porters from another group arrived and mischievously dumped their gear next to ours. It was a provocative act considering we had arrived first, but we had no choice other than to remove our gear or stand sentry over it throughout the meal. K2 laid out his cape on the marshy grass and we positioned our rucksacks next to each other, using them as a windbreak. We lay face down on the cape playing the word game. The porters must have thought we were crazy. Certainly, I was, I had no time for the silly game. |
The afternoon trek was a meandering downhill plod. Salous said the next camp would be easy to find as our tents would be pitched in the compound of the only orange-tiled roofs in the valley, and soon in the distance they became visible. Now, with the end of the trek in sight I suffered my first trembles of stomach-ache and had to pay two emergency visits. Unfortunately, the trail was narrow and steeply inclined, so business options were scarce and the timing critical. It would be an embarrassment to be caught squatting over the edge of the Inca Trail, trousers down in a blustery cross-breeze.
In between visits, Tony passed me moving with a comical walk at pace. His buttocks were clenched like the party game where a coin nestles precariously between the victim's two cheeks. Perhaps there were toilet facilities at the camp. Tony prided himself on the fact that throughout our camping exploits in the frozen wastes of Tierra del Fuego and the shimmering sands of the Atacama desert, he had never once squatted behind a bush. For Tony's bowels the options were simple, it was porcelain or nothing.
Before arriving at the camp, I took time out and finished a roll of film. It was the last opportunity to take shots of the Urubamba's slushy brown waters. The mountains were vast and formidable, the jungle dense and impressive. The clouds formed over the lower reaches of the canopy, seemingly sucked in and spat out by the eucalyptus forest, before they settled flat and even in the valley bottom like layered rolls of cotton wool. Tony joined me on a ledge above the compound and we marvelled at the sight of the world's most dramatic scenery. We climbed down together and celebrated with a few beers. A little girl from the cooking-shed sold beer from a grey plastic bucket. Clutching a bottle himself, Salous exited the corrugated-iron construction where he was supervising the evening meal and joined us on the terrace. Resting his arms around our shoulders and drawing us together, he pushed his face close to Tony's and asked him softly, "Do you like the rustic nature of the mountains?"
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