Sunday, May 14, 2006

Tomorrow is the big day, the beginning of our Salkantay trek. The bad news is I wasn't feeling well on the day we were supposed to hike with the Belgians, and ended up staying in bed all day. Michael said I should try to power though. He pointed out that if I felt that way during the trek, I'd have no choice but to walk anyway. Which is so true. However I was not in the mountains, I was snug in my bed, and I chose to stay there.

Yesterday I felt better. We ran into another gringo-trailer in the street, Jessica, whom we'd first met in Alausí and whom Michael had run into briefly in Cuenca. (She had decided to skip the fake bus train too.) Jessica was shopping for a trek and was in the same position we had been in a few days ago. We told her we'd decided to go with United Mice and she went to sign up.

We're definitely ready to get out of Cuzco. This neighborhood we're in, with its charming colonial buildings and endless tourist facilities is like an amusement park. The rest of the town is less Disney, but not especially special. So we were happy to go to our "briefing" at United Mice tonight, where we learned all about what to expect for the next five days.

The first thing we learned is that they're going to pick us up tomorrow morning at 4:00 a.m. Four in the morning! And all this time I'd been thinking it would be 6:00 a.m, which is bad enough, but not as bad as 4:00. We met most of our group, who seem nice enough, and met our two guides, Mithon, in the front, and Joseph, in the back.

Milthon suggested we purchase coca leaves, and told us to make sure we get the catalyst, or the coca leaves wouldn't do any good for altitude sickess. He said to ask for "lyphta" and they would know what to give us.

We had gone shopping for supplies during the day, but tonight we ran around buying last minute items - coca leaves and lyphta, an alpaca hat for me, etc. And now we have to divide all our stuff into two daypacks, a pack for the horse, and the packs we're leaving behind. It should be simple, but there seems to be stuff everywhere, trekking poles and Snickers bars and thermals, and I don't know how we're going to pull it all together in time to get enough sleep to be fresh at 4:00 a.m.

At one point we panicked that the bag to go on the horse weighted more than fourteen kilos. (The metric system may be easy, but it still takes time to learn to feel how many kilos are hanging over your arm.) And we don't know what's going to happen if we go over the limit. Will we be expected to transfer the stuff to our daypacks, or maybe pay extra for another horse? I don't want to pay extra, and I don't want to be weighed down too much. So we're going to have to take things out, but we don't know what. Where did we get all this stuff from?

 

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The "Big Pac" - Alpaca burger from Sumaq Misky, Cuzco.

Streets of Cuzco at night.

Provisions for Salkantay.