Hiking the Inka trail to Machu Picchu Day 2

All that sleep yesterday paid off!

I've been motoring all along the trail on the way to our second camp. Today, is the longest day on the whole trek while we pass the highest point climbing from 3200 to 4200 metres. We got up super early at 4:30am and left camp at 5:30am, trekking up in the dark, the slowly steepening valley just off the Sacred Valley. 

As we ascended to the first official resting spot the gap between us, and the last people got larger and larger, until we arrived at the halfway point where we waited for the rest of the group to arrive.

We then continued climbing up towards the Dead Woman's pass (or Abra de Warmihuañusca in Quechua). The Dead Woman’s pass is named like that because apparently the Incas could see the figure of a woman in the hills around the pass.

As we climbed further up, I walked ahead of Dan, Ismene and Ioanna focusing on the surroundings around me, and taking it all in. At the end of the climb, I reached the pass first just as the first rays of sunlight were hitting the steps of the Dead Woman’s pass.

The views from the pass were amazing, I was surrounded by huge mountains everywhere I looked and a bright blue sky. Ismene said to Ioanna that the sky ‘looked very Greek’ which made her laugh out loud. I loved trying to spot the figure of the woman in the hills. 

After Dan, Ismene, Ioanna and Mandeep (one of our friends from our group) arrived, we had some snacks and tried to spot the figure of the woman in the hills. We then began the descent down to our lunch camp. The terrain was rocky and as steep as the ascent but, once again, I zoomed ahead meditating and whirled the time away arriving at the lunch spot two hours before lunch was ready. 

We had a great time with Ismene playing among the big rocks and sucking up the sun while waiting for lunch to get ready. Our incredible chefs did their magic again creating platers of food decorating them with animals made of vegetables. They were such fun!

After our lunch, no longer on the Qhapaq Nan, we climbed towards an Inca site that was a chasqui tambo. Chasquis were basically the Inca messengers. The chasqui system was very sophisticated and worked a bit like this: In the Inca times, there was no writing system, so all communication was transferred verbally from person to person.

In these tambos, chasquis would wait for a message to come so they can relay it onto the next chasqui. Nowadays, we know that every chasqui had a twenty to thirty kilometres stretch to run in order to deliver these messages. And they would run this again and again. We also know that only the sons of an Inca noble, from age 15 to age 25, could be chasquis and they would be in training for it since early childhood. After they turned 25, they would do a different job as they were no longer at the right age. Each chasqui would carry a bag, and in that bag, they had two things: a conch trumpet (a shell trumpet), which was used for telling other chasquis that they’re coming, and a kipu, the system Incas used to record messages.

But, given the Incas didn’t have writing, how does a kipu work? Let me give you an example: say the leader of an area needs to ask the leader of a different area for a few things (100 black llamas, a priest, and an army of soldiers). To get his message across, the leader gets his servant to create a kipu. The kipu is constructed with different coloured strings: one string going across and then different strings hanging down. In our example, there would be one black knot, one white knot and a few red knots. The black string would have 100 knots in it, the white would have one knot, and the red would have something like 200 knots. The first string would be black to remind the chasqui of black llamas, the second string would be white to represent purity and remind the chasqui of the priest, and the third string would be red for blood to represent the army. Isn’t this quite an amazing communication system? The kipu was basically like a book for the Incas. Using this system, the Incas could take a message from Quito to Cusco in six days. Amazing right?

After the site, we climbed for a while more to reach the Runkurukay pass. I actually found this harder than the Dead Woman's pass, maybe because we were hiking in the afternoon and I was getting tired. We then began to descend towards Sayacmarca, which was another tambo but this one was not for chasquis. Sayacmarca tambo was amazing and really interesting, but in a very different way from the Chasquis tambo. There was something really beautiful about where the Inkas chose to build it, and the views down to the valley were stunning.  We also learnt a lot about Inka architecture and the way the Incas constructed their buildings. It also had an alter to an Apu, basically a mountain which Inkas believed were god protectors.  

When we arrived at our campsite, we were so happy that the hardest day was finished but we were all so tired. We've got to go for tea now, so I'll see you tomorrow for our third day on the Inca trail!

Ps. In our mind, it seems unbelievable that the chasquis were able to cover such long distances so fast. But JP told us that, a few years ago, there was a marathon organised at the Inka trek, and the winner finished in 3 hours and 47 minutes! Can you believe this? The second runner was a local porter in his 50s and he finished in 5 hours. Amazing!

PPs. On our way up to the Dead Woman's pass, Dan asked one of our porters to swap bags. Our bag that Dan was carrying was about 10 kgs heavy. The porter's bag was 25 kgs. Needless to say that Dan lasted for about 5 minutes! Our porters were superheroes, to carry all this weight while basically running the trek is no small feat!

This is day 2 of four days - see here for Day 1