Stairway to Heaven

I was given the advice that Machupicchu is best immediately after the gates open, for a view without unsightly tourists. However, those gates open at 0600h and they sit atop an hour of stair climbing - or alternatively, a seventeen US Dollar bus ride. Andrea, a Brazilian guy, Antoine, a Frenchmen, and myself are up at half Four, and probing the unlit stairs by torchlight by quarter past Five.

My plan is simple: get up; get down; get out, and the South American tourist trail is complete. It's soon obvious that the three of us are on the same page. We're powering up the dark, steep and uneven Inca staircase. At the relatively low altitude - less that two-thousand-five-hundred metres- it´s already t-shirt temperature, and at this rate, it's quickly getting uncomfortable. We start to find other groups of young tourists, but our quick march pace leave them all eating our dust. These other tourists don't seem to understand is that this is a race, and there are winner and losers.

At the top, having overtaken every group of tourists until there were no more left, we're quite satisfied with our painful forty-five minute sprint-climb. With the light of dawn, I'm expecting to find a quiet and serene entry gate. I'm not best pleased to find over thirty tourists in a long & wide queue. I'm very-absolutley drenched in sweat. I'm confident this is the most sweat I've ever produced.

The floodgates open at Six and the tourists flow in. I'm immediatley stopped. "No musica", I'm told by Peruvian staff. Apparently, I have to bag check my Ukulele. I am severely offended. Assholes.

The first sight we come to is a misty view down onto Machupicchu city. Out come the many, many cameras, but I give the tourists, the impressive city and the incredible mountain landscape no more than a second glance. The race ends at the top. Stupid tourists.

Photo: wikitravel.org

Alone, and way ahead of the pack, I'm winding up the stairs and paths around Machupicchu mountain. It´s not more than fifteen minutes before I'm at the end of the line. The path is thoroughly cut off by a thick wooden log barricade. The almost vertical mountain stretches upwards for many, many more hundreds of metres. After five minutes of weighing the option to respecting the unmarked, sign-postless fence, and the fact I was promised a mountain to climb, I scale the fence. I scale it very carefully. My feet work up the rickety wooden baracade and my hands tightly squeeze the rocky mountainside. The drop off the right side of the path is at least as sheer and as deadly as La Paz´s deathroad. On the otherside, I find a wooden bridge. It's no more than five or six thin, uneven tree trunks laid long-ways across a three metre gap in the ridge-path that spirals up and around the mountain. The trunks don't feel like they're strapped down well. Again, I'm hugging the mountainside tightly. Farther ahead, the mountainside path turns from stairs to an increasingly thin and barely trodden muddy grass- & shrub-carpeted route. Like in yesterday's jungle, it's starting to seem that I'm not meant to be here. After making a small jump down from a high step and slipping to land my shin on a hidden rock, I decide that there's no way I'm going to make the summit along this route. The spirit of adventure says I should go on, but the spirit of adventure would probably kill me. As I return, across the Inca Bridge, I find the next man up is my race team mate, Antoine.

Photo: en.wikipedia.org, Wrong turn

Back at the site, I find out I had taken a wrong turn entirely. The route up Machu picchu Montaña is elsewhere. The race is back on. Antoine only paid for the city, not the mountain, so I'm on my own, chasing more tourists up more Inca steps. These stairs are gruelling. Their height and width is often uneven and extreme in both directions. The burn is different than the snowy paths of Huayna Potosi. In the increasing heat of the morning, I'm setting another new personal best for most sweat displaced. After discarding ten or fifteen of the tourists who have also made the early start up the mountain, I have two Americans in my sights and in earshot. Over the next fifteen minutes of pounding these stairs, I can almost catch up to them, but I don't have it in me to pass them. I want to stop and rest my aching legs, but I don't want them to slip farther way from me. If they stop for a rest, I can take them. I'm trying to remember the name of the third guy who landed on the moon. I don´t know. Who does know? Who even really cares?

After a full hour of climbing stairs of worsening build-quality, the end is in sight and surely only minutes away. I turn a corner to find the Americans have stopped to take a picture. Fools. I seize my chance to pass them. As soon as I do so, I can hear them start moving again. I'm scared to let my lead slide and up my pace through the pain. I'm on the fringe of breaking into a jog. I can hear the Americans matching my pace two steps behind me, at most. In the final leg of tall stairs, I'm pushing my hands down on my knees for the extra power to get up. In the very last stretch, I know I've won, but it also occurs to me how sorely competitive I've become with other tourists. I fear it might actually a little sad. I was never this competitive before, but that´s probably because my city banker fitness wasn't best-suited to competing, much less winning before. A few steps from the summit, I stop and half-turn to take those final steps with the Americans. After exchanging high fives, we wander to the lower edge of the moutainside. There's a guy sat perched on the tip of the mountain. Another American. Apparently, he crept past the gate for and made an early start on the summit. I guess that makes me Buzz.

The stairs are often so narrow, thin and tall that even the traverse down is dangerous and slow. Back at the bottom of climb, I think I'm finally almost done with Machupicchu. There's another sign pointing down a touristed path. Apparently, it's the Sun Gate. My new American friends are done for the day, but I don´t expect the Sun Gate can be very far down this path. I've got to do it - the only time I'll ever be here. Besides, I've paid for it. I'm still trying to keep a high gear and outpace the other tourists. Ten minutes across the sun-exposed mountainside path and I'm burning from both the sun and the lactic acid in my legs. After five more minutes, I'm getting pissed off. I'm wondering how far could this damn gate could possibly be. Not necessarily under my breath, I'm periodically exclaiming: "Fucking Incas". No wonder their empire fell apart. You're bound to run out of steam when you spend your days carrying rocks up and all around this bloody mountain. Fucking idiots. I eventually ask a passing tourist how much farther it is. The German estimates another twenty minutes. I'm almost ready to turn back. It occurs to me again that twenty minutes is as close as I´ll ever be. If I don't do now, I might regret it later. It also occurs to me, that I'm already heavily regretting this shit show right here and now. Fucking Incas. If only to maintain the tradition of the best of gameshow hosts, I started, so I'll finish. I arrive at the Sun Gate to find it's exactly as crap as I had predicted it would be. Fucking Incas.

Photo: travelwhimsy.com, Intipunku Sun Gate, Total shit

Finally, the tourist trail is over. As the third phase of my plan, Get Out, begins, I find Andrea. After a long journey back, we finally get to tearing into chicken, chips and beer in Cusco.