INCA TRAIL HIKE
Only a few hundred meters to go and we’d reach Warmiwañusqa, or Dead Woman’s Pass. At 13,828 feet above sea level, it would be the highest point of our hike. My breathing was labored, but steady, as my lungs sucked in as much oxygen as possible with each inhalation. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, working harder than normal to circulate blood to my brain and body. I had taken Diamox, a medication used to prevent symptoms of altitude sickness, and my hands were tingling, a common side effect of the drug. I placed my feet, one foot in front of the other, breathing in and out in syncopation with my steps. Some of the paved stones beneath me were smoothed to the point of slickness.
We were on the third day of our Inca Trail hike and had one more day to go before we would reach our final destination: Machu Picchu. That morning, my footsteps joined the millions of others that had walked this way, my boots scraping off yet another infinitesimally small layer of minerals from the surface of the trail. However, unlike past years where hundreds of people, along with their porters, embarked each day to start the hike, this was October of 2021, almost two years into the pandemic, and so far we were the only group on the trail.
The classic Inca Trail connects the community of Piscacucho (also referred to as Kilometer 82) to the citadel of Machu Picchu, an important religious center and place of pilgrimage for the Incas, that was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1983. Today, tens of thousands of people make the same journey following the 26-mile long trail that climbs steadily from an elevation of 9,200 feet near the banks of the Urubamba River, continues past diverse ecosystems like grasslands and cloud forest, and then emerges at Inti Punku (or the Sun Gate) where hikers catch their first glimpse of this amazingly intact ruin.
There are other ways to reach Machu Picchu. The Incas built an extensive network of roads, by some accounts about 25,000 miles of them, to cover their vast empire, which at its peak stretched across modern day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. The other route I had briefly considered was the Salkantay Trek, typically less crowded (although that wasn’t a major concern in our case), and climbing up to much higher elevations. In the end, though, I decided that since this would likely be my one and only time visiting Machu Picchu, I wanted to have the “classic” experience of laying eyes on the archaeological site through the stone gateway of Inti Punku, which also happens to be the original main entrance. I also could have chosen a shorter trek, but I wasn’t in a rush and wanted to enjoy our time on the trail. In the end, our four days of hiking with a separate morning dedicated to visiting the archaeological site worked out perfectly.