dead womans pass | Tiara in Transit

Day 2 – 11kms, uphill for 4 hours in 4200 metres above sea level altitude.

They say that the Inca Trail brings out your true self, and hours into day two as I struggled to find oxygen in this ultra thin air and lift one leg in front of the other, I realised that I wasn’t a very nice person at all, wishing hateful shit on anyone who ever said a good word to me regarding this experience.

I couldn’t believe that I had paid money to go through this torture. I was having all kinds of pathetic thoughts, like if at this moment someone would somehow mistake me for wilderbeast and shoot me, I could be choppered out of here, it would end my suffering, and it would be an admirable excuse to not finish the Inca Trail. Win/Win as far as I was concerned.

And what was with the big steps? The Inca’s weren’t a giant race?! If they were really innovative wouldn’t they have just built a tunnel path through the mountain?

At this point I couldn’t even be bothered to take any photos. I didn’t care about the ‘God-like’ scenery, it wasn’t impressing me as much as my arse was. To be honest, I didn’t care about anything anymore. I wanted to DIE. Or at least sprain an ankle and be back-packed the rest of the way to the lost city of Machu Picchu.

The dry grass down the sides of the mountain did look soft and inviting, I bet it wouldn’t be too bad if I just rolled 4200 metres down the mountain ..

If a porter offered to piggy back me the rest of the way I would shamelessly accept and pay big money for this experience. A less painful experience..

After a relentless morning of what seemed like millions of steps, and being in the potential heart-attack risk category, I see the first pass, accurately named Warmiwanusca, which translates to Dead Woman Pass, and is about another 100 metres of vertical Inca steps.

Oden, shouting from the peak – ‘C’mon honey, you can do it!’

Argh! Quads cramping.The pain. I wish these people would just shut up and let me die in silence.

I couldn’t believe it, I was so close to the first pass where the hardcore-fit people were waiting, cheering me on, watching me, and now my legs were cramping up and I was going to have to roll around and have a seizure in front of everyone.

With that scary image in mind, I pulled the final ounce of strength out of me and did a slow and steady, mechanically stiff robot up the remaining steps, collapsing to the dirt ground at the top while everyone cheered. Then sat up immediately, grabbing my lower abdomen in pain.