Dan and I were up and waiting in our hostel at 7:20 on Tuesday morning to begin a three-day trek to Machu Picchu. The most popular trek to the ruins is the Inca Trail, but we discovered too late that we would have had to book that excursion months in advance. After exploring the available options, we settled on the Inca Jungle Trek, which offered a lot of activities in a short span of time. The trek could be done over a three or four day period, and we elected the three day journey.
A half hour after the pick-up time, we were still waiting at our hostel. We had grown accustomed to South American timing, so we were not at all surprised by the delay. Yet we wouldn't exactly have minded the extra sleep. Finally, just shy of 8am, a man frantically hustled into the hostel, apologizing for his timing and asking us to follow him. The man walked us a few blocks to a waiting van. As we neared the vehicle, we could see that it was already full of other trekkers. The man seemed to notice this problem, too, so instead he whistled for a cab. He then hopped in the front of the taxi and told me and Dan to get in the back. At no point was anything explained to us. This would be the first of many problems in the days to come.
Five minutes later, we pulled up next to another van. This one had two open seats, so Dan and I got inside and the man drove away. Everyone sat in the parked van for about an hour as a few people, who seemed to have all the time in the world, slowly loaded the vehicle with biking equipment and other supplies.
Eventually, we took off. At that point, we still received little information on who our guide was, exactly where we were going, or how long it would take. All I knew was that we would start making our way to Machu Picchu by bike on the first day of the trip (I had reluctantly agreed to this after my previous biking mishap, but was more hopeful this time because we would be riding on paved roads).
After driving for a few hours, we got out of the van, formally met our guide, and began to ride. It was a chilly, foggy day and the roads had many sharp turns, but after Death Road, the biking was a breeze. And despite the haze, we did get some good views of the surrounding area.
Unfortunately, about an hour into the ride, it began to downpour. I willed myself on even though I was shivering to the bone. The rain eventually let up, but not after my clothes and boots were soaked through. Soonafter, we got another surprise. There had been a major landfall a few days before, and just as we arrived at the site of the incident, the road was temporarily blocked off to clear the debris. We had to wait an hour and a half in our wet clothes before they finally let us pass through. We then road for a short while longer before the guides stopped us at an arbitrary point, loaded the bikes on the van, and drove us for another hour. It was during this drive that dan and I learned we were the only people in the van who were doing the three day trek (everyone else was doing four days). We alerted our guide of this, who seemed to not have known, but assured us it wouldn't be a problem.
Because of the road delay, our group ended up having lunch at around 5pm in the village of Santa Maria. We were given grilled chicken with a side of, surprise!, rice and fries. After eating, our guide told me and Dan to grab our belongings because we would be joining up with a different group for the remainder of our trek. We said goodbye to our temporary group and then followed the guide through the village. He took us to a taxi and spoke to the driver to inform him of where we were going. Then, he gave Dan an envelope that read "Rene," and instructed us to give the envelope to the man who would be our new guide.
Dan and I sat waiting in the taxi for about thirty minutes. All of a sudden, a woman opened the door and came next to me in the car. She then asked me to slide over--mind you there were already three of us in the back--and a fourth person slid in. Another woman and her baby then filed into the front passenger seat, and finally, the driver sat down. Our seven person clown car then road off to the nearby town of Santa Teresa. It was already quite dark at this point, which was probably a good thing, because it made it more difficult to see the steep cliff that was barely masked by the jungle foliage. The forty minute trip felt like a Disney ride, where the vehicle makes a sharp turn just before teasing the passengers with a drop-off. I nearly left marks in Dan's thigh from clawing at it as we drove along the narrow, rocky road.
Luckily, we made it to our destination intact. We were then ushered to our hostel, where the hostel owner, puzzled by our presence, eventually gave us a room. It turned out that Rene and his group were not yet back from going to the nearby hot springs (which we didn't have time to do because of the road delay). As Dan and I sat and talked in our room, I heard someone call my name from the hallway. Confused, I poked my head outside. It turned out, it was our friends Chloe and Sarah who we had now run into in four different locations! They were in the room next door, and had heard our voices through the wall. It was a small, but welcome treat after a long and troubling day.
We only got to catch up with Chloe and Sarah for a short while before their group went off to dinner. We were left to wait for our new tour group to arrive, so decided to get some pisco sours near our hostel. Just as our two friends were returning from their dinner, our group finally arrived. Our new tour guide, Rene, did not seem to be expecting us. Yet he meshed us in with his own group who we met over dinner. It was an interesting mix of people, and unlike the typical tour groups, included a family of four. We got to know everyone a little bit over dinner, where we had meat with--wait for it--rice and fries. We then went back to our hostel, where Dan and I commiserated over our bizarre and frustrating day.
