Hiking Inti Punku : A lesson in humility and my cardiovascular weakness

After my recent trip to Peru and Hiking Inti Punku, I know a couple things …

• There are way harder ways to make money, but I can’t think of many others than being a porter for hikers on the Inca Trail
• I would never ever do the Inca Trail … too much time spent with too few showers. Trinis and/or brown people are not cool without showers!
• Altitude sickness doesn’t affect me, especially if you drink 1 liter of Coca tea per hour
• Machu Picchu is awesome in the afternoon
• Lima has some sick ceviche … in fact I would recommend going to Peru just to eat ceviche
• The thought of someone asking me … you didn’t do “So and So <insert Machu Picchu item> while you were there?” was enough to keep my fat ass moving along .
• Hiking Inti Punku (to the Sun Gate) from Machu Picchu offers some pretty spectacular vistas
• I’m completely uninterested in seeing sunrise at the Sun Gate – I’m sure it’s awesome and spiritual and stuff for a lot of people. Good for them but I’ve seen a lot of sunrises and sunsets, at a lot of places across the planet – but I wouldn’t hike the Inca Trail for a sunrise … seeing the sun setting over Machu Picchu was pretty awesome though.

Now this whole Machu Picchu thing was pretty awesome, but hiking to Inti Punku was a very, very long 60 mins for me. It took a while … in fact I think that the space/time continuum slowed down and that it could have been 45 mins to climb up, but my legs felt like I had been hiking for 6 hours. I grew to really, really hate these god damn signs. It was though they were taunting my every step … and everytime I saw one … it could hear the following in my head …. “Retorno? hahah, eres una perra  (Return? … hahaah, you’re a bitch)” … the voice saying this in my head had Antonio Banderas’ voice. I don’t know why I didn’t have the Dos Equis guy’s voice saying it to me … but I digress




Let’s not kid ourselves … the vistas were spectacular.

In the end, you get to the top of those stairs and you’re huffing and puffing, but the view is all worth it.

As usual, if you’re looking for poor but actual video of my death march up the hill along with a lot of huffing and puffing and some rather pretty vistas, feel free to spend some time watch a shaky video or two. My goal next year, is to be able to create a nice looking and well edited travel video … small goals, I tell you!