Day 237: Too Little, Too Late (22/09/2011)

Rivers feature heavily on the Inca Trail.

Just not through your tent.

The rain in the night obeyed the laws of physics and took the path of least resistance. I was having a nice dream about floating gently and woke to find that I was indeed floating -  on my sleeping mat and directly toward a recently formed waterfall just beyond the goal posts.

We retrieved most of the flotsam that was washing down the hillside, ate our hot porridge and then undertook an act of extreme cowardice.

Some opted for another eight hours of slog – even when offered a brief three hour short-cut.

I only ask one thing – please don’t judge us.

Lares sits at the bottom of a valley at a mere 4,000m and is the largest mountain town on the trail, probably because it has thermal pools. We camped on a small patch of terrace by the pools and were stripped and soothing our aching limbs in the scalding water within moments of arriving.

If the water hadn’t been a suspicious shade of brown before we climbed in, it certainly would have been seconds later as the accumulated filth of three days scrambling across llama droppings began to dissolve in the hot water.

Washed and relaxed, we ambled past dozens of brightly dressed local children coming in the opposite direction to enjoy the pools. I didn’t have the heart – or the vocabulary – to tell them that their weekly swim was destined to be marred by an island of llama guano that was this very minute clogging the filters and spilling into the snack bar.

Punishment for our misdemeanours - if it was deserved - came swiftly.

With food several hours away but bodies already in extreme calorie deficit, despite the short cut, we dived into a homely looking bar and ordered some soup and coffee. Not a complex request, you might think? But yes!

Oh, yes indeed!

Three hours later, having tried every permutation of communication we could muster, the message finally got through and Mama beetled out of the front door.

Soup, as I understand it, is prepared in a kitchen and so her departure was perplexing. Had we offended her? Did she need a permit from the town hall to serve foreigners? Was the stench of llama guano still too strong?

It transpired that the meat and vegetable soup on the menu was, in fact a Peruvian version of Baxter’s Super- Noodles, which she scooped off the shelf in the next door mini-market before adding hot water and bringing to the table.

It was nice but by the time it arrived, we no longer needed it.

We’d eaten Sharif.