Don´t let the title decieve you - I had the best time EvErRrRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I´m gonna cover the four days, three nights in one entry so I´ll make it brief and not concentrate too much on my vomitalicious moments.
First of all, my group was hot hot, yes hot like birds! And thus, on the first day I suggested we call ourselves Team Hot Birds. While this proved to be enormously popular with the chickies, the boys of the group protested in disgust. But Team Hot Birds we were, and Team Hot Birds we shall continue to be.
We gave ourselves special Inca names so the group was: myself aka Nancy (I´ll explain why later. I did not enjoy Nancy, it reminds me of this little thing called a Knitting Nancy which I used to try to play with when I was younger but my dexterity was not what it is today - though young Lachlan may disagree with that comment - and it still gives me nightmares. I´m exaggerating massively but I still do not like the name Nancy.), Michael aka Micky Red (or Big Red or just plain Red. This is because of his fondness for everything red and his talent to colour coordinate an outfit. By wearing red from top to toe. And he bought, just quietly, the ugliest red hat I´d ever seen. Though I will admit I had grown quite fond of it by the end and did not like to see Micky Red without it. Micky Red does not like the name Micky and would not say why but tonight he is getting slaughtered and I will get the story out of him. Fingers crossed. I will update later.), Janelle aka Candy (Micky Red´s daughter and quite possibly one of the funniest people I have ever met. I am going to video her telling one of her stories and broadcast it on the internet so that others can develop the stomach muscles from laughing that I have.), Michael numero dos aka Tank (though I felt that, by the second day which was HARD he should have been called G.I.Joe. He wanted to do the second day again. We told him to shut up.), Neesha and Ferharna aka Neenee and Noonoo (because they were cousins and joined at the hip. It was difficult to tell where one stopped and the other began.), Kim aka Cindy (I think. This name was used rarely.) and last, but most certainly not least, Jess aka Trixie (again, not used.)
I have forgotten the guides!!!! Our group guide was Juan aka Giggles (he had possibly the best laugh EVER!!! I have recorded it and will most certainly share it with the world). He was 31 with an 11 year old daughter (also named Angela. And this is how the name of Nancy was born. He said that he didn´t want to associate his daughter with someone with such vulgarities as those that come out of my mouth and so hence rechristened me Nancy.) I will admit that I developed a schoolgirl crush on him. I felt like I was 13 again. He was just so funny funny and he would hug me occassionaly and I was so affection-starved that I´d be like ´oh do it again!´. Then there was Manuel aka Superman (he would just suddenly shoot off out of sight) who was our tour guide and the best looking Peruvian guy I´ve ever seen. We all wanted photos with him and told him he should be a model. Poor Manuel got all embarrassed. And ol Julio aka Giggles Junior (my creativity was most certainly being challenged at this time) who was the assistant guide.
We set off on the first day super dooper dooper early. Bought our walking sticks (which makes me sound like an old granny but rest assured everyone uses them). I searched high and low for one with a pink or purple handle but could not find one my size so settled on a deep red which I ended up liking more anyway.
Did the trek, blah blah blah.
About the title, yes I vomited and vomited. And did I mention I vomited? I was a sick little lady. The second day was really quite difficult - it was about 6 hours of climbing up at an inclination of about 35 degrees. This gets harder when you´re 3-4 kilometres above sea level. It was also made harder by the fact that I vomited up everything I ate. Every time I quietly walked to the side of the track, put down my bag and crouched down, Juan would come rushing over to hold my hair back and make sure I didn´t fall off the side of the mountain. He said that he´d never seen such a pretty waterfall of such a rainbow of colours on the Inca Trail (when I vomited up my fruit salad breakfast) and that it was also the first time he´d ever seen acid rain on the trek (when I vomited up some orange juice). As such, I would usually end up laughing as much as munting.
The second day was probably the hardest of my entire life. I´ve had harder longer periods of time but as a single day I probably can´t remember anything harder. Never have I felt so incredibly drained for such a long period of time. My eyes were having trouble staying open. I´ll admit that I wanted my bed and mum looking after me more than once. I wanted to take photos but didn´t have the energy. (Though I got the Tank´s photos later on but then realised I couldn´t really distinguish the scenery from one day to the next!! So no great loss.) But looking back it wasn´t so bad.
I think I may have lost about half of my body weight over the past four days. But worry not Christopher, my tuckshop lady arms are still very much in tact and send their love.
The food was excellent. I thought that we´d get to camp each day, have to pitch our tents, eat some crackers or whatever and then sit around singing songs to raise moral. But we´d get there, have all tents set up for us, incredible meals waiting and then be so full we´d all fall asleep.
Janelle taught me a lot. She has this real spiritual sorta take on the world and is really into getting in touch with your own energy and utilising it to make yourself the happiest person you can be (is that about right Janelle?). She´s given me a lot to think about and I want to investigate a lot more when I get home.
I think that the trip made me mature. At home, I used to hate people going out and having fun and if I couldn´t go or didn´t feel well I´d really feel like I´d missed out. But I think I´ve gotten over that and I just wanna do what makes me happiest. When I get home, I´m making a vow not to go out when I feel buggered just for the sake of not missing out on fun to be had.
I was also thinking a lot about knowledge. Is having an extensive amount of knowledge a good thing? Some people seem a lot happier when they just don´t know stuff and others seem to always be craving learning and exploring. I think I´ve decided that it´s all to do with mental capacity - the greater your mental capacity, the less satisfied you feel with not knowing stuff because you know that the knowledge is there to be had, you just don´t have the time or are too lazy to absorb it. But I think sometimes knowing too much can just confuse you and it´s nice to live with simple thoughts.
Before I start on the funny moments, I wanna put in three that I really enjoyed and made me happy.
The first was on the second day when I´d been really sick. Manuel came to my tent and said that I had to eat something even if he had to shove it down my throat himself. Though not in those words. I eventually made it to the dining tent where everyone was already tucking in and they all clapped. It made me feel so much better that I managed half an orange. Mmmm that was a damn good orange. Jess said later that she wanted to wrestle it out of my hands. I would like to have seen her try...
The next was the last night, our ´last supper´ when we all went around and said the best thing about the trip, the worst, and something we appreciated. I said that the best thing was the group, the worst was the second day and the thing I most appreciated was Juan looking after me. Almost everyone said that the group was the best thing or the thing they most appreciated and Juan said that we were the best group he´d ever taken. At the end we all clapped (because Janelle was itching for it!) and it was a special little moment.
The last was on the last day when we arrived at Aguas Calientes. I´d toddled off by myself to use the internet while most of the others had gone shopping. When we met up again later, Janelle gave me this little rock that she and Red had bought me to keep away evils while I was travelling by myself. I carry it in my pocket.
Now the Golden Moments that I tried to record a little in my own personal journal (that contains all the saucy stuff that doesn´t make it to this journal!!) But there are oh so many.
My favourites were easily provided by Micky Red.
First one was the first night. Everyone was giving Red a bit of a hard time because he was being too polite. I said that I prefer when people are a bit ruder to me because I feel that I get to know them better. Micky Red replied by asking me to pass the ´bitch milk, bitch.´ I almost fell off my seat. I was called Nancy Bitch or just plain Bitch from then on. The last thing that was said to me the night we arrived back to the hotel from the Inca Trail was Micky Red saying ´Goodnight Bitch´. I felt that it couldn´t have been more appropriate and gave me peace and closure that I doubt I would have found without such a comment. (Please keep in mind that being called Bitch becomes all the funnier when it comes from a 50 year old man with three kids.)
The other prime-rib Micky Red moment was at Machu Picchu when he decided to take the piss out of Janelle by screaming ´I am as light as a feather´ repetitively in front of about 40 Japanese tourists (who looked at him like he had just escaped from the mental asylum) while sprinting up a whole lot of stairs. I almost wet my pants.
Janelle wants to set me up with her brother when I get back to Australia. When she says this, I see Micky Red pray to the heavens above that Joel will have a steady girlfriend by December. But I think that Micky Red would love to have me as a daughter-in-law, wouldn´t you bitch? Hehehe.
Oooh god this is taking ages and I have so many stories but I´m gonna write them all down for my sake so that I can remember this when I get home. The rest of this entry will probably follow suit so if you´re thinking that you gotta be there, I suggest you stop reading now.
- Ferhana´s ´don´t worry ol chap, you´ll get your feed too´ to Julio.
- EVERY SINGLE ONE of Janelle´s stories. The way she told them was classic, complete with sound effects and charades. She should take a one-woman show.
- Juan´s pick-up technique. Purring and stroking the ladies. Weird. Thank god he didn´t try that with me. (I´m clearly actually very disappointed.)
- Talking about wanting to see more of Australia. Janelle would love to visit Kakadu National Park. I´d just like to see Sydney.
- The woman wearing the bright yellow waterproof poncho in case of rain in 30 degree heat at Machu Picchu while everyone else around wore shorts, tshirts and sunhats.
- The random guy who could give Red a run for his money by also decking himself out in top to toe rouge posing on top of the rock for no particular reason.
- The little boy who ran all the way down from Machu Picchu to Aguas Calientes yelling this weirdo little yell and waving to us. Super super keen.
- Juan sitting at lunch on the third day pretending to slap some girl. And he pretended he was too innocent to know what it means when a guy has big feet.
- Juan´s hair. Classic. It was combed and parted neatly every day while everyone else looked like shite.
- The cake on the last night that had a little heart with A.G. in the middle. It freaked the shit out of me but it turned out Manuel was just messing with my head.
- in the bus on the way to the Inca Trail to start the trek, travelling down the narrow little path and coming head-to-head with other vans. We would have western standoffs. The tally of victories vs losses stood at 4-1 by the end (A victory was when the other van had to back away, a loss was when we did.)
- Janelle reminding me so so so so so much of Tracey from the Castle, especially when she was like ´Da-ad, take a pho-oto´.
- Jess´s story about trying to put on makeup after too many vodka redbulls. Funniest funniest thing ever. I recorded it but unfortunately Jess got all camera shy and didn´t give it her all. The moment lives on in my memory though.
- On the train back to Cusco I sat between Red´s legs. It was awkward for all involved.
- Jess tried to use Kim´s face as a pillow one night. Poor Kim.
- Jess´s grandpa. Farkin farkin.
BITCH HOT!! |