The skinny on The Inca Trail

Hi again! I know, I know...twice in one night?!?

I thought I should do a quick de-brief on the rest of my trip, while the TV is still off! In a nutshell, it was the most amazing thing I've done to date. The Trail itself was incredibly beautiful and wickedly challenging.

I learned alot about myself while I was hiking. Things like:
- the only thing that saved me from my own evil, sabotaging thoughts was to count steps. Seriously! During the really difficult hiking parts (like, three of the four days!), I had all these thoughts that weighed me down. Inner Critic? Perhaps ... or just fear and exhaustion. Anyway, I learned that the best way to stay focused was to count my steps! I tie this back to when I was running all those steps before I left. Remember? I had to reach the goal of 2,000 steps so every time I ran them, I counted. Quite interesting!

- even stale, white bread can taste good when it's slathered with butter, jam or a Nutella-like mystery substance.

- a physical challenge like this has an amazing way of bonding a group of people. On the second day of the climb (called "The Sacrifice when we went from 9,300 ft to 10,100 ft), I hiked to the top of Dead Woman's Pass behind two folks. We were all struggling, physically and emotionally, to get to the top. The motivation for the three of us? Pinky swear commitments to stay with each other and the shouts of congratulations we heard as other people reached the top! For myself, those cheers were like an angel's chorus calling me above the clouds ... heavenly ...

- there is no graceful way to enter or exit a two-person pup tent. You either do it bum first, which is not a pleasant sight for the innocent folks walking by. Or, the other way is feet first, which means crawling out on your bum and getting dirty. By day 4, getting dirty didn't matter to me...nor did having hair that stuck to my head or smelly feet for that matter...just sayin'....

- I have set the standard of physical activity for my vacations. No longer will my vacations just be about vegging. I expect to have a good combination of physical challenge and relaxation. Camping without running water for 4 days, not so much...

There are so many other learnings to share, but I'm starting to feel the need to pop on the TV and mentally check out for the evening. I promise to provide snipets in my upcoming blogs. In the meantime, I've made a Picasso web album of the trip. Feel free to check it out! BTW, you may need to cut & paste the link into your browser to make it work.

http://picasaweb.google.com/114426312429469241773/TheIncaTrailMay2010#
(a) yt xox