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Farewell Dinner for the Porters

THANKS to the train timetable, the only cheap train that the porters could afford to travel on departed down the bottom of the valley at five thirty each morning after dropping off the first load of tourists. Obviously no tourist would want to go back to Cuzco in the return journey so there were plenty of cheap seats available for porters. Unfortunately this train was due to pick them up a good half an hour before sunrise. They will need to prepare us breakfast, pack up the entire campsite, then walk briskly down the path I had seen from the ruins yesterday towards the station on the other side of the river in time to catch their train. That meant we had to get up at four o’clock tomorrow morning for a quick breakfast before leaving the camp area quickly to allow them to pack up. That also meant that every other group’s porters had to leave very early, so there was going to be a mad rush down the mountain for them whilst every tourist at this campsite would have to sit up here and wait for the gate to the track leading to Machu Picchu to open.

That of course meant there will be no time for us to say goodbye to our amazing chef and porters tomorrow morning, so Wilbur scheduled our porters’ farewell tonight.

We had dinner, and this was no ordinary dinner. Derek was celebrating his twenty ninth birthday today, so we decided to make a bit of a celebration out of it.

We started with a chicken and vegetable soup served in the small stainless steel soup bowls. This was followed by a main of pizza that the porters had cooked. Then there was a huge platter of rice, another one of vegetables, one containing a large lasagne, a beef casserole, and the last one containing boiled potatoes.

Finally our amazing porters brought in a large chocolate birthday cake for Derek. This was a big surprise to all of us. They had carried it all the way here! Now that was really impressive. Derek came to the entrance and took the cake, with a single candle lit on it and white writing “Feliz Compleano Derek.” He was wearing the trademark floppy hat that he had been wearing throughout the trip. The cake had Turkish delight jelly blocks around the outside and hundreds and thousands lightly sprinkled on top. How the porters had managed to secretly lug this amazing cake over the mountains for three days and still keep it in perfect condition and keep it fresh as well amazed me.

We ate about half of the cake before deciding to give the rest to the porters to thank them for lugging it so many miles here in the far. They had been living in relative hardship cooking all the best food for us and only eating what was left, pitching our amazing tents whilst they slept huddled up in the dining tent at night, carrying all our gear for three days. They more than deserved it.

Once dinner was finished, we went outside the tents to the large space between the large blue tents and the smaller sleeping tents. There we gathered in a circle and under the light of a gas lamp we bade our porters farewell.

We had collected a tip for them earlier in the day. We had paid them pretty generously, but by the time it was divvied up with Wilbur getting the biggest tip, Carlos getting about two thirds of Wilbur’s, Ricardo the chef getting less again, and all the porters getting what was left. I don’t think they got much each. No doubt they weren’t paid much to work here either.

Yet they were very gracious when Marissa presented it to them as we all gave brief speeches on how much we had enjoyed our journey. Of course all speeches had to be translated into Spanish for some of our porters, then again into Quechuan for some of the other porters. Once the speeches were over, we had a bit of a dance to some percussive music put on by some of the porters.

The dancing was short lived though as we all needed to turn in for an early night for the big day tomorrow. We stood in a circle as the porters went around us and all warmly shook our hands to say good bye.

Finally we got a group shot. Sadly the person who took our photo with my camera moved it causing it to blur. One has to hold a camera very still in the darkness of a moonless night.

With all formalities complete, we all hurried off to bed to get as much sleep as possible in anticipation of the big day tomorrow.

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