I woke up apprehensive about the day and my ability to do the climb. I couldn’t catch my breath and the altitude was affecting me. I decided to take the horse up and hike down. Our whole group of 8 did the horses. I watched people climb and I knew I made the right decision. It was steep, rocky, and people were struggling. It was weird because the horses were on the same path as the trekkers and it got tight at times. People would stop and try to catch their breath and a pack of horses would get right in their faces. I could see they were frustrated but there was little we could do, these horses had minds of their own.I told them I was inexperienced, not a lie, so the guy walked and guided my horse so I didn’t have to deal with the horse going the wrong way, biting other horses or people, sprinting, or going close to rocks and getting dragged off the horse, all of these things happened to my fellow trekkers. I was able to semi-relax and take in the views which were mind blowing!
The climb down took about 7 hours and was brutal. I had trouble catching my breath and really struggled. I couldn’t even eat lunch. I was exhausted and nauseous. Erik our guide found me some grass to lay on. He hooked me up to oxygen. It helped for a short time but then back to not being able to catch my breath. The climb down with various sized rocks, the steepness and then sandy rocks made it very challenging. My thighs and feet were starting to hurt. As the hours passed it got increasingly harder. It was not how I had been envisioning this adventure. I felt weak and it was a very humbling experience. People were very supportive and encouraging but it really didn’t help because I just felt like such a failure. All these young European kids would come up behind me and try to pass in these tricky rocky spots and that were like bottle necks. I would always move over when I could to let others pass. I was taking baby steps like Tim Conway because it was so steep. Enough about that! We didn’t get to camp until 7 pm and it was very dark. We went to our jungle dome, showered, and went right to bed. To say we both felt terrible would be an understatement!!
Somewhere in this time Erik said he would arrange a car to drive us the next day. I realized that the hike was pretty much over for us/me at this time and I had conflicting feelings about it but realized there was literally NO way I could continue hiking. Here I had been planning and envisioning this for half a year and it wasn’t the way I pictured it. I had been training for months. I was doing cardio with biking and eliptical, hiking with a weighted backpack, and hiking. It was PLAN B and I had to reframe how I felt about that. I needed to find a way to give myself grace and accept my new reality. The way I have been able to make peace with it is framing it in a way that my dream/bucket list was to see Machu Picchu, not necessarily doing the Inca or Salkanty Pass, those were just the means of getting there. It has been hard getting to this point of acceptance and it has helped being able to process this with other trekkers who like me had to take PLAN B. I will still be proud of what my body allowed me to do with the first two days of hiking. We had a blast with our Texas friends and others who did PLAN B with us.
Leave a Reply