A trip to Peru without visiting Machu Picchu is unheard of — it would be like going to Paris and skipping the Eiffel Tower. I was so excited to summit this mountain and overlook the ancient civilization, spending hours observing every single stone. In reality, I played with the llamas and sunbathed on a rock reflecting on five days of hiking through the Salkantay Pass. It was glorious.

Day 1

The alarm started going off at 5 am, which was much too early. It wasn’t my alarm, since I lost my phone in the drunken Huacachina debacle, it was Sanders alarm. All I could do was rollover glaring into the darkness in hopes he would feel my dismay and shut the damn thing off. Unfortunately, our tour group wasn’t going to wait.

I stumbled downstairs with my pack just as our overly cheery tour guide arrived — he was much too energetic for 5 am. As climbed into the bus he explained the day’s itinerary: a three hour ride, breakfast, and a three hour hike to our first campsite. Somewhere in between breakfast and three hour hike my head slouched to the side. I was out cold.

I woke for breakfast as we pulled into a parking lot outside a rickety, make-shift breakfast hall. It was quite clear they brought tourists here in droves — we were packed into the communal seating area like sardines. Despite looking like an old saloon from some old western movie, the food was sadly a typical Peruvian breakfast.

Now, here’s a bit of advice — a traveling tip, if you will. If you are going to travel through Peru, bring your own breakfast food. You see, breakfast in Peru is almost exclusively bread, butter, jam and tea — if you get an egg, consider worshiping the Peruvian food gods. It will prevent you from going mad.

(After six weeks in Peru, I couldn’t touch another slice of bread for a month.)

Sander and I slathered avocados and some strange Peruvian Thousand Island dressing on bread as everyone looked at us enviously — I feared their breakfast wouldn’t bode well for the hike to come. After breakfast, we were alive enough to meet our group.

We met two folks, Petey and Victor, two vulture finger puppets designed to sit atop walking sticks that I accidentally stole. People were just grabbing them so I did as well — I had no idea I was supposed to pay, I promise. Petey and Victor were joined by Melvin (an owl), Daisy (a donkey), and Shanaynay (a llama). They were all paid for.

The three hour hike was quite easy — it was a wide path slightly uphill the entire way. Its sole purpose was to prepare us for the following day, the hike through Salkantay Pass. The trail lead us to our campsite for the night. We were positioned at the base of a huge mountain next to a horse pasture. My stomach grumbled as I unpacked my things into my tent — I was fortunate to have eaten such a large breakfast.

As I walked past another group on my way to lunch, I noticed a girl whose pants were at her ankles. She was pouring cold water on her leg. Her friend had spilled hot tea on her by accident and she was trying to prevent it from blistering. Everyone stared in horror and amusement — she was wearing a thong after all.

Day 2

It was another 5 am morning, except this time it was my bladder doing the alarming. I hadn’t gotten much sleep due to the cold and all I wanted to do was stay warm in bed. My bladder had other things in mind.

Despite being bundled up in a North Fake coat like I was ice fishing in the North Pole, my spirits were extremely high. Breakfast was crepes with Nutella and tea. The hot tea was only bearable because it was freezing. It didn’t even matter that it was so cold the tea only stayed hot for a minute.

Our guide assured us the higher we climbed the warmer it would get. I doubted him at the time — we could all see the snow covered peaks and our own breath. He also warned about the altitude and dehydration. The goal for the day was to climb from some 2,000 meters to 4,600 meters, that’s an 8,500 foot elevation gain to over 15,000 feet.

Now, I don’t know if it was the motivational power of Victor and Petey (that’s what we equate it to), but for Sander and I, the hike wasn’t as difficult as everyone made it out to be. The same can’t be said for others in our group. One man only made it halfway up before having to be given oxygen and taken back down on horse. He screamed racist Nazi comments the entire way, high on life.

As we continued the assent, the lack of oxygen was the least of our concerns, our guide was right — it was hot as hell. The landscape was scattered with boulders the size of cars as if a giant had thrown a handful of pebbles into the air. The path changed between dirt, grass, and deep trenches made by horses. There wasn’t a tree in sight. What made it bearable was the headwind that blew through the maze of boulders.

At 4,600 meters, the boulders subsided. Jutting out from the grassy fields on either side of me were two snow-covered mountains. Salkantay Pass.

The magic of the moment was interrupted by the fact that I had to shit. Really, really bad.

I found a suitable boulder and waddled behind it, awkwardly — no skid marks today. Sander had the brains to bring a roll of toilet paper, bless his soul. As I squatted preparing to let loose I noticed about ten other wads of paper tucked underneath some rocks. Clearly, I wasn’t the first to take advantage of this location.

The girl whose pants were at her ankles last night summited in good time. I have no idea how — she and her friend got food poisoning the night before. While I was tucked into my sleeping back all snug, she was bent over a toilet releasing the contents of her stomach into it. Thinking about that made me shudder in pain. She was a damn trooper for making it this far.

I stripped off my sweaty shirt and lay in the sun, waiting for the rest of the group to arrive and said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Sander lay back crossing his arms behind his head as a pillow and replied, “Nope”.

Day 3

There was a small group surrounding underwear girl as I headed to breakfast. I pushed my head through the crowd to see her ankles swollen and covered in blisters. This girl just couldn’t get a break. A nurse in our group declared it an allergic reaction — to what, no one knew. We were in the middle of nowhere hours from the closest doctor, so she sucked it up and joined us at the breakfast table.

The chef brought out fruit bowls, crepes, and a variety of other goodies. I hadn’t touched fruit in weeks, so I was ecstatic.

I overate, which was beginning to become the norm. The food was so good I felt I was putting on weight. I realize how crazy that sounds, since we were walking almost 10 miles a day, but that’s how I felt.

The rugged path descended through dense bushes that prevented any airflow. It was only 7 am, but I was already sweating from the humidity. We were walking through a cloud forest so thick we couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us. By mid-morning the clouds started to dissipate leaving us with mountains covered with trees. Welcome to the jungle.

The sound of water crashing against rocks got louder the further we descended. The wall of trees in front of me gave way to a sheer drop at least 500 feet below. There were times I couldn’t see the bottom. The river in the gorge attracted a lot of birds, but even more mosquitoes. I spent the rest of the hike playing how-big-will-their-blood-splat-be with each mosquito that landed on me.

My feet ached when we arrived to camp. To my delight, our guide told us tomorrow was a late wake up, 8 am. I yearned for two extra hours of rest, which I never ended up getting.

Sander and I purchased a bottle of Peruvian rum and some limes. We drank it straight.

Our drinking game was interrupted by someone who started a fire. We all crowded around it with our drinks as a musician from Mexico started to sing to the strumming of a guitar. As the fire burned and crackled, I coerced several girls into trying an aerial dance move with me — the back-flip. Their drunken confidence in my ability continued until I was exhausted from all the flipping.

I drifted to sleep that night with the anger of not eating dinner that night drifting with me. The cooks screwed up the vegetarian meal.

Day 4

8 am came too quick. The carbohydrates and water from breakfast didn’t help curve my hangover. Fortunately, I signed up for $10 dollar zip-lining, so my morning was spent not walking. Instead, I was flying through the treetops over a gorge headfirst and upside down.

Honestly, I’ve taken shits that were more enjoyable than the zip-lining. But I’d pay $10 any day to avoid having to walk after a hangover.

For not doing much, I was surprisingly starving. I got served a plate of lentils and salad for lunch. They were damn good. The only problem was I needed another three plates to be full, and I wasn’t the only one.

Sander collected leftover rice and chicken from random plates scattered throughout the restaurant before the waiters took them. He amassed a mountain of food that several guys at the table shared. No one had shame eating leftovers from another person’s plate. It was day 4 and we gave zero fucks.

I left the restaurant still hungry, but by this time my hangover had subsided. It was just enough food for me to survive the afternoon hike along the train tracks. We arrived in Aguas Calientes, our final resting place before Machu Picchu, with angry stomachs.

Before dinner, Sander and I went out for pizza and French pastries. We each had our own personal 12” pizza. For dessert, I ate a slice of cheesecake and a mango chocolate mousse tart. After dinner number one, we met with the rest of our group for dinner number two. I was elated to find out I didn’t waste my money — dinner was spaghetti and vegetables without any sauce.

After four days of hiking, we were exhausted. The most stimulating conversation at dinner was around a girl whose tour company forgot to book her tickets into Machu Picchu — she had to go buy them herself.

Our tour guide warned that tomorrow was an early morning and that we should sleep early. I had no reason to doubt his judgements after correctly diagnosing the heat index on day two, so I called it early. Sleep came before 8 pm.

Machu Picchu

I awoke at 3 am feeling like death. I blew a staggering amount of snot out of my nose before my feet even touched the ground. I had a fever and my muscles were weak — I didn’t come this far to quit.

Underwear girl woke with a migraine so bad she finally had to throw in the towel. It wasn’t the burns on her leg, food poisoning, or allergic reaction with blisters that did her in, it was the migraine. She decided to climb the following day and booked an extra night at our hostel. She wasn’t the only one.

Another guy woke with gallstones and the doctor was coming at 7 am to investigate. He and his girlfriend weren’t climbing either. I wrapped myself in the receptionists’ blanket as I waited for the remainder of our group to arrive. It was cold, even with the blanket and my jacket.

Minutes later I was sucking on a juice box walking down a pitch-black gravel road. We were headed towards a bridge that opened at 5 am, but had to get there as early as possible or we would be stuck hiking behind a horde of people likely slower than us.

The buses were set to arrive at the top by 6:15, which gave us an hour and fifteen minutes to climb a hike that was supposed to take an hour and thirty minutes. That’s over 1,000 steps ascending 2,139 feet in a little over an hour. How hard could it be?

The flood gates opened we took the first step. I started to sweat.

Sander’s cellphone flashlight was the only thing guiding us. Step after step we climbed through the night while the frigid air blew on our sweaty bodies. There was no way of knowing how far we had gone or how far we needed to go — have you ever tried using a cellphone flashlight outside? We could only see five steps ahead of us or behind us at any time.

“Beat the buses, beat the buses, beat the buses,” became my mantra. I repeated it over and over in my head, pushing myself up each step one at a time. Littered throughout my self-motivation were comments such as, “MOVE YOUR SHIT, WE HAVE TO BEAT THE BUSES” or “HURRY THE FUCK UP SANDER, STOP BEING A LITTLE BITCH.” It was as if I was transformed from the snot spewing, sick kid into a monster, Hulk style.

The dark narrow stairway finally transformed into a road leading to the entrance to Machu Picchu. Perched on the entrance were half a dozen people as out of breath as we were. The buses were nowhere in sight — mission accomplished. We did it in only 40 minutes.

The buses started to unload as soon as they opened the gates. There was only a couple of precious minutes to get inside and take pictures before it was overrun. We took every combination of selfie, group picture, and individual picture required before the bus people reached us. When they overran our area, we got the hell out.

We made our way to a remote part of the city no one had found yet to watch the sunrise. The llamas, however, knew this place well. I suspect they came here to hide from the onslaught of tourists and cameras just as we had.

Most of my time at Machu Picchu was spent laying on a rock sunbathing while the llamas walked around precariously close to my head. I lay there reflecting on the past five days, about the experience and the people I bonded with on the way.

As I looked out over the remnants of the magnificent city and the mountains beyond it, the conclusion I came up with was that Machu Picchu is beautiful, but the hike was the best part.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider clapping so more people can see it :)