Pat and Jas World Tour: Inca trek continued...when altitude sickness strikes!

Following on from the last post...we arrived at this little village at the base of where we would be camping for the night to have lunch (prepared by Tintin, not his real name but sort of like the nickname 'Cookie' i'm guessing and easier to pronounce than his real name) before the afternoon's trek through the Inca ruins. Tintin, our cook, was very much the strong silent type but he did a great job with the meals (he made us spaghetti with a choice of two sauces for this particular lunch and no two meals were really ever the same) and was strong like an ox, often sprinting ahead of us with all the supplies and cooking utensils piled up on his back.

After lunch we headed off for the first ruin. The area that we arrived in was according to our guide, Rudy, the last Inca capital before the Spanish finally defeated them. The tale Rudy told us of how the Inca civilisation came to its demise was quite interesting. The brief story is that when the Spanish first came to South America the Incas were in a state of civil war with two brothers fighting over who should be the rightful Inca (King and God on Earth). Both brothers were quite qualified for the job and whilst succession was by blood but not necessarily by age. One was a warrior who expanded the empire and one was an intelluctual. The father chose the intelluctual on his death bed while the warrior brother was away. Upon his return the warrior brother heard that he would be made the Pope (the Religious head of the empire but still second fiddle to the Inca) and declared war on his brother. Meanwhile the Spanish were seen as spirtual beings since they were thought to be part horse, as the Incas apparently did not know of horses. Long story short, the Spanish were few in numbers but made a strategic strike on the Inca, taking Cusco (the Inca capital) and leading the Inca's followers against the Pope brother. The Pope (or Inca now) withdrew to Vilcambamba which we were now in and rebuilt the capital as well as a number of temples. There they remained for 40 years protected by the mountain range and altitude. For the Spanish, attacking this new capital would prove difficult due to its good defensive position and the trouble of carrying heavy armour over distance at altitude.

But enough of the history lesson. We ended up trekking through the last capital and seeing the Sun and Earth (Patcha Mama or Mother Earth) temples. We arrived at our campsite around 6pm and within a half an hour I started vomiting from altitude sickness. After about the third or fourth time (and within ear shot of the dining tent...sorry Jas!) our guide gave me some smelling salts to help control the vomiting. The idea was to pour some in your hand and put it to your nose every time you felt the urge to throw up. That night was most unpleasant for me to say the least. In addition to the vomiting (which i managed to control by putting smelling salts to my nose ever few breaths), the other symptoms included body aches, diarrhea and headaches. After getting through the night (mostly curled up in foetal position), it was pretty clear that I couldn't keep going as we would be going a lot harder and to higher altitudes (4500m!). So we made our way back to village where we had lunch and then back on a minibus to Santa Maria (2hrs back to the hostel where we had stayed). We got back to Santa Maria (1200m) around 12 noon and I slept for most of the day and night, waking up the next day feeling a lot better with all symptoms except for diarrhea gone. While uncomfortable, it was controllable and we decided to do a lower altitude jungle trek to a place with hot springs to camp for a night before heading to Aguas Clientes and Maccu Pichu. The trek to the hot springs was long and we had a few hairy moments where we would cross the river on shaky bridges made from loose branches or on a little tray similar to a flying fox. The hot springs themselves were a god send and seemed like paradise after the day's long hike but the mozzies proved to be very aggressive (as you'll see by the photos). It also meant we (more importantly I) had access to toliets with running water (but alas still squatter style) and my harmonise/anti-diarrhea medicine which i stupidly left in my main bag. We tend to take sit-down toliets with running water for granted but after borrowing the 'toliet' (a hole in the ground with a plastic sheet for a door and flies for company) at the mud-hut homes of the locals a few times you really start appreciating convienences like this.

The hot springs were fantastic...though i'm not sure about the actual hygiene of the water but we were pretty much at a point where we didn't really care. A hot bath was just too good to refuse. After a nice long dip in the baths (i.e. started going pruney so had to come out) we had dinner and hit the sack. The next morning (after a nice morning dip of course) we headed off for Aguas Clientes, the town just below Maccu Pichu. We thought it was going to be an easy case of jumping on a minibus but we ended up riding on the back of a few trucks to get to a train, which then took us to Aguas Clientes. The funny thing is while the PJWT explorers were packed in like sardines in the back of a truck dodging the occasional branch, our guide was riding up front in the cabin. Bastard!