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Heavy Rain at the Campsite

IT WAS quarter to five in the afternoon when suddenly the thick scrubby bush cleared in front of me. Just a few metres ahead to the right of the track was a large clearing where I saw the Conchamarca campsite, instantly recognising our tents. Several of our porters who were working nearby preparing our dinner turned around and gave me a standing ovation. Their standing ovation was somewhat a little wearied this time around, but given the cold rain and the fact that they would have had to hurry over the pass through rain and hail to get everything set up in time for us, I still very much appreciated the welcome.

Our tents were on the first small flat area next to the track and the two large blue tents were on a slightly higher platform. Across the track about thirty metres distant was a stone toilet block. Further up the flat to our right were more terraces with more erected tents belonging to other groups.

It was still raining, but fortunately the clouds had lifted to about half way up the surrounding hills. It was a real relief to get my daypack into my tent which was still completely dry inside. I then walked the ten metres to meet some of the others who had not gone up to Sayamarca and come straight here. As soon as I sat down on one of the plastic seats Ricardo served us a large plate of popcorn. The rest of the group who had lingered in the ruins in the clouds arrived five minutes later. Another half an hour passed before Amy, Derek and Avani arrived just as the overcast sky was beginning to get dark with the onset of night. They hadn’t had the time to explore the ruins in the mist, plus they were too exhausted to explore them anyway.

By now it was raining heavily outside. Thankfully we had very good tents, and thankfully we had very professional porters who had packed them very well and erected them before our arrival in such a way as to keep them completely dry. The porters told us (in Spanish - Carlos was interpreting for us) that the other group who had stayed at our campsite last night become rather wet because their porters and equipment weren’t as good as ours.

The porters brought in another large platter of popcorn and pastry wraps for us to eat. It was a rather late afternoon tea, but we had been walking constantly since lunch time.  Wilbur briefed us on tomorrow’s hike whilst we were eating. We will be crossing the third and final pass about an hour after leaving the campsite, although there will almost be no climb at all up to it. Then it will all be downhill for a couple of hours to the next campsite. We had hiked eight hours a day on both days so far, but tomorrow will only be about four hours. Tomorrow’s campsite will be only two or three hours away from Machu Picchu. That meant we had already covered two thirds of the trail. I wasn’t looking forward to the long downhill though. I recalled from memory that Machu Picchu was about 2400 metres above sea level, and we were a good 1300 metres above that. It was going to be a long way down.

Upon finishing afternoon tea, the rain briefly abated, so I photographed the gloomy mountains surrounding us, all enshrouded in thick cloud as the tropical alpine sky above continued to quickly darken. By now the rain had stopped falling and the clouds were at about the level of the conical peaks surrounding us. The slopes coming off the peaks were very steep, but grading into a level terrace upon which we were camping for the night. Below the terrace the valley dropped sharply for at least a vertical kilometre.
It was completely dark and raining again when we wandered back into the dining tent for dinner. On what should have been an absolutely miserable night, we were served with yet another amazing meal that kept our spirits elevated.

Despite the gas lamp giving off a fair bit of heat, we were all (including the Londoners) rugged up in our thermals and woollen hats.

We started off with a small chicken and vegetable noodle soup. Then the main course came out on several platters – baked potatoes, a very nice alpaca casserole with large pieces of alpaca meat, rice, and quiche. Michael was again given a special plate of food, though today it resembled something a bit closer to what the rest of us were eating as he was starting to feel better. He was definitely a trooper having climbed the two passes reasonably well given his stomach condition and the lack of food he had been eaten since the Amazon. For desert we had a large flat fruit pie.

The rain stopped falling as we ate. After dinner, we went outside the dining tent in the total darkness and did some stretching exercises. We didn’t do them adequately yesterday, so we decided to make up for it tonight by doing them properly. We were led by Kristen who worked for a large well known dieting company in Australia which apparently included a fitness program. Whether or not that qualified her, she was very good at leading us up there in the total darkness despite us falling over ourselves a bit.

Once stretched, we retired for the night as rain started falling again. I crawled into my sleeping bag and almost instantly fell asleep.

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