What Goes Up, Must Come Down...

I´m back in Pichilemu and I have finished the Macchu Picchu hike. It was a lot of fun to wander around an area so pristine and severe. The mountains are rise quickly from the base of the valleys so the hiking was pretty up and down. What was surprising though, was how easily my mom and I got through everything. I had been told that this is a very difficult hike, that you go from very early in the morning (which is true) to very late in the day (not true, at least for us). Apart from the first day, we got up early every morning and finished early. On the infamous second day, which is the hardest day (with an exception for my mom and I, but I´ll get to that later), we got into camp a few minutes before 1 in the afternoon, and that included a 40 minute break for tea while we were going up the mountain. It was a difficult day, as it´s uphill the whole way, but having all that time in the afternoon gives ample time for recovery, stretching or whatever is needed for the next day. On the longest day, my mom and I got in at a hair past three and that was including an impromptu inaccurate history lesson of Peru that lasted about a half an hour in a cave while it rained pretty hard.

I was right to believe that the trail wasn´t as hard as I thought it could be, due to the lack of real hikers that do it, but I hadn´t imagined that the trail would be as easy as it was. I guess some people handle the elevation and the hiking differently than others. So while some people get a sense of accomplishment from hiking the 4 days at Macchu Picchu, I did not. It was a more pleasurable experience that really, for me, didn´t warrant a sense of accomplishment. It was a great time to wander through these gorgeous mountainscapes with my mom, a chance to roam through a unique ancient civilization´s ruins and wonder. It gave me time to just be, to think and relax. The thing that gave me a sense of accomplishment, ironically, was scaling (or better said, descending) Wayna Picchu, the short little hike on the steep mountain that sits behind the city of Macchu Picchu in the photos.

I had been told how beautiful Wayna Picchu is and I was already decided in my intent to go up to the top of the mountain and look over the city of Macchu Picchu. Just like Forrest Gump, I figured since I had gotten that far, I might as well keep on going. My mom knew this, and despite being tired from four days of hiking, she figured she´d go up there with me.

It was a pretty steep ascent, but with the ropes to pull yourself up and the shortness of the ascent, it was much easier than anything we had done during the hike. It didn´t take us more than forty minutes to get to the top. However, once we get to the top part, my mom starts to get a little nervous. Not really nervous, but enough where I see that she is, in fact afraid of heights. She handles it well though, and we ascend the last twenty meters without incident. It was not until we got on top, that I fully understood the depth of my mom´s fear of heights. On solid rocks she doesn´t even stand up and forces herself to do a weird crab crawl thing across. I am amused by this, but I don´t say anything, I think it´s just a normal fear. Then she looks at me, with the complete fear of god in her eyes and politely asks ¨Breene, can we please get down from here?¨ And so I immediately, take a picture of this. I´ll have to show it but its of my mom half smiling and cringing as she´s laying on this rock and the whole of Macchu Picchu is in the background. It´s a great picture.

Still not completely understanding what my mom is going through, I promise her that we´ll start our descent down. So I walk the circle, with my mom crabwalking behind me til we get to this little down step. Up until this point I hadn´t seen my mom deal with any descent so I am now about to realize how scared my mom is. The step that she is attempting is literally an eight inch step, that is cut from a sloped rock. Something that no one has any problem with, and it takes her about two minutes just to go down one step. Then we get to this little chute that leads to the main stairway down. It´s probably only 8 steps but it takes my mom five minutes to go down this little part. The worst part is when this goofy assed english guy blurts to his wife (I would have used ¨said¨ instead of blurts but this is one of those guys that can´t contain any of his thought and has a sort of word vomit thing going on, or as my old friend Train would say, Diarrhea of the mouth, so blurt seems to capture the manner of speak this guy has) about how if somebody fell it´s probably about 1000 meters to the water. Thanks, asshole, can´t you see my mom is taking half an hour on a 8 stair staircase. I of course don´t say this but, as politely as possible, ask him to just be quiet. He still doesn´t get it and says that he´s not rushing us and follows that up with some more word vomit about the height of the mountain. Miraculously, he decides to control his diarrhea of the mouth and my mom finishes her panicked, muscle twitching 8 stair descent to the main walkway. When we get down, there is a little break from stairs and it´s just a little path to the other side where there are more stairs. Of course my mom is hanging onto the wall for dear life as we go around. When we get to the next steps I let her go first, so I can guide her down. The steps aren´t very wide, probably about a meter, but they aren´t too narrow either. They aren´t even big steps, maybe only a foot down a peice. However if you look off to the side of them, there is an easy 300 meter shear drop. My mom has managed to keep herself in a state of controlled panic slithering backwards down the steps slowly, one by one. I´m carefully guiding her down, it´s not too bad because there is this other mother/son duo doing the exact same thing. It´s maybe 70 steps so it takes us a good while to get to the bottom. But before we get there, one of the rocks sticks out maybe 8 inches (an ENORMOUS distance for my mom at this point) forcing my mom to squeeze around it. We get to the bottom and my mom takes a break while I go to figure out the best way down. It´s just around the corner but this staircase is really steep and very long. I´d say it contains a good 150 stairs (small and narrow stairs). No one is behind us so we give it a go, this time though (At this point I´m trying to figure out the best way to guide my lovely panic stricken mother), I decide to go first, in the same fashion as my mom, slithering backwards so I can guide her every foot and give her some comfort of me being right below her to help her. It seems to be working, and we are making slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

Of course, we aren´t fast and it´s the middle of the day, so within 15 steps we have twenty people behind us. I tell people as kindly as possible, that they can´t pass while my mom is on the stairs and we´ll get out of their way as soon as possible. The guy that is right behind us (you in the orange shirt and dark beard, I will forever be thankful for being so kind) tells us not to worry and he proceeds to give my mom plenty of space and even make sure that no one passes him. There are little shelfs next to the stairs, like big stairs but they are about two meters high and wide, so I´m looking to get my mom on one of them to let everyone else pass. We get to the point where it´s completely safe to get my mom over there and I simply tell her that we are going to move to the left side and slowly slide off the stairs to let some people pass us by. ¨I am NOT going left!¨ my mom says. Okay so maybe we´ll just keep going then. I look up to explain to the guy behind my mom and before I can get anything out he says ¨no worries, take your time.¨ I was so happy to not have that chronic word diarrhetic hurrying us with his estimation of the distance of our possible fall. Especially since the stairs get even narrower. Now they are only two feet wide at the most and they have slightly broke from the wall giving the stairs a sense of being floating, which I correctly guessed was a bit disconcerting for my mom. But she maintains her poise, in midst of fright, and keeps slowly going down with my help guiding her. We finally get to the bottom of these steps and though I know that a lot awaits us, I am happy that my mom has safely descended the steepest part that doesn´t have any cables to hold on to. We drink a little from our water bottles and let the 30 or so people who have built up behind us pass.

It´s a good point because my mom can sit in this crevice and kind of get back her breath (even if she can´t let the terror go). I see a good size break and tell my mom that we are going to start up again, with me leading (because we have had the best succes, read least fear in my mom´s eyes). The first part is really steep, but it has a rope, so I go down and my mom slowly, but obviously more comfortable because of the rope, scales down as well.

This second part is decidedly different, consisting of narrow switchbacks instead of the direct downward descent of the stair. It also has a bit of bush to block the view of the potential fall, but with the mud it adds enough of an element of fear that my mom still is locked into the crawl mode. At this point we have found a rhythm though, and I am completely sure that we´ll be fine. I go down first, in the style that my mom would and then tell her what to expect. This part also offers a bit of room inbetween the steep stairs so that people can pass with some frequency and the building crowd won´t pressure my mom. So even though we are still going slowly, after a couple of switchbacks my mom is starting to relax (she isn´t relaxed though, but is less tense) and we are making good way. The cables are also giving her an added boost of confidence and two thirds of the way down the hill my mom is going down the hill forward and standing up like every one else. Still nervous and hesitant, so we don´t rush anything. We finally get to the bottom and my mom starts to cry. It´s definitely a unique cry, as it´s a combination of released fear, happiness of being down the hill, a sense of accomplishment for overcoming her fear of heights and a gratitude to me for being patient and positive with her the whole way down. I just hold her for a second, letting her catch her breath. I too am relieved, but since I´m not much of a crier, I just let out a couple of huge deep breaths. I then promise to never take my mom up a place like that again, and we both laugh.

It was weird how something like that, added so much to the trip. And although I never want to put my mom through it again, it was something completely unforgettable that allowed us to bond so much more. It added an importance or an urgency to the trip that hadn´t quite been stamped into the trip until that point. That part of the trip became so much more, like it was it´s own trip, separate from my living down here in Chile, because of those horrifying, amazing and special three hours.

Macchu Picchu

Tomorrow is a big day. My mom and I start our hike to Macchu Picchu bright and early in the morning. I think my mom is a bit more nervous than I am about the whole thing. I know that it's going to be long and tiring but I don't imagine it to be that mentally difficult, something that you just kind of keep plodding. I mean I've grown up playing golf and thirtysix hole days have to be just as tiring if not more so because you are carrying a bag of metal sticks on your back. I'm not trying to take away from the trip but I just think its going to be more beautiful and intriguing than challenging. This is also easy to say because my mom has hired extra porters for us and I don't have to carry any of the cooking gear (although it should be noted that in my extra porter bag is just my sleeping bag and the rest is my mom's stuff). There is also the great chance that I get to the end of everything and am cursing myself, but it just seems like it'll be a tiring couple of days but that there is little chance that I don't make it.

The reason I say all this is because of the people that I have seen walking around town talking about how they've done on the trek. And for the most part, I would say that there doesn't seem to be that many serious hikers. It seems like the majority of the people talking about it are backpackers/travelers and I haven't been that impressed by the fitness of many of them. My mom and I sat at this table for dinner the other night and the couple next to us had just finished the trek a couple of days before and they were gracious enough to spill some of their wisdom to us. My mom was soaking it in like a sponge, because she has been a bit worried, but nothing they said seemed that shocking. It was basically: Drink water (um, really?), bring snacks on the way and eat them (profound!) and don't try to go too fast. On top of all this, the guy had more excess body fat than my mom, me and his wife/girlfriend combined. So naturally I became even more relaxed. Who knows, maybe this is hard, but it seems a lot less daunting being here.

And Here´s the Pitch

If there is one thing that Chile has in abundance it´s swell More than any other place that I have visited, Chile has the most consistently large waves I´ve ever seen. And with that one adapts to these swells. I´ve found that over the last few months there hasn´t been any times where the waves have scared me, until yesterday. You see, the waves here are big, but relatively friendly. The bigger the wave gets the mellower it seems to be. When the waves are head high out here at La Puntilla or Punta de Lobos, you can easily find some very hollow waves. However as soon as it gets over double overhead (which happens more often than not) the wave backs off and becomes a big wall of water. It´s fun to cruise on but doesn´t provide much of a scare. And with that, it is really easy to get accustomed to big waves.

Yesterday was a bit different. It has been big the last few weeks, since my parents have left and so I´ve been paddling out on my 6´10´´ lightning bolt. It has more foam so it allows me to paddle into these bigger waves. Yesterday it looked like it would be a bit of fun so a group of us (Chris, Brian the Lion (the only selfgiven nickname to stick, plus he´s bald), Brian the Painter and I decided to go for a surf.

It was pretty fun when we first got out, a little windy but once on the waves it was well groomed and they were long. I got the first wave and rode it almost all the way into shore. I paddled back out and realized that the wave I had caught was really only a little inside wave and so I had to take a hand ful of even bigger waves on the head. That really doesn´t bother me too much. I´ve gotten used to getting rolled around in the whitewash here, I just duckdive, bearhugging my board once underwater, and I know that I´ll eventually cork up.

So I finally get all the way back out and am sitting much wider in better position for the sets. It´s a weird place for me, due to the swell angle, I wasn´t used to surfing out this far wide. It was incredibly difficult to get into the waves because of all the wind and I started to realize how steep the waves were. I miss getting into a couple of waves and then I finally line up for a pretty good size set wave and I´m paddling hard down the face, but the wind won´t let me get in and suddenly I´m stuck in the lip of the wave with nowhere to go. And for the first time in a long while, as I stare down the distance to the bottom of the wave, I´m scared. I ended up being alright. I took the punishment that accompanies getting stuck in the lip (the worst might be having to paddle through the remainder of the set, because you never get stuck in the lip on the last wave of the set), and I paddled back out and even though I´ve taken far worse beatings in my life I was all jacked up on adrenaline. I actually felt really good. But a few moments later, I began to realize how shortlived the adrenaline can be and even though it was still there, pumping, I felt how quick it seems to diminish. It was fun for me to get something a little be out of my element, it´s been a while since that has happened but I think that the better feeling for me is just getting the stoke of a good surf, not necessarily of a huge wave. I´d much rather have surfed La Puntilla a few feet smaller yesterday, and gotten a few barrels and played out there than getting the feeling of survival.