MACHU PICCHU

Ascent (1)

Someone knocks on the door at 3.10 in the morning. I get out of bed. At 3.15 the alarm goes off. By 3.30 I'm downstairs. Two of the Colombians, the Frenchman, the Italian woman and the Spanish woman are already there. We wait for the other Colombian and the Argentine. C leans out of the window upstairs and takes a photo of us. The Spanish woman gets fed up with waiting for the rest of her "family". We set off without them. They catch us up. Within five minutes we've left Aguas Calientes and headed out towards the river. No-one's exactly sure where we're going. It's pitch black. The Spanish woman uses her mobile phone as a torch. It's only a fifteen minute walk. We're there by ten to four. There's a gate leading to a bridge across a fierce river. The gate is locked. The Spanish woman talks about climbing around the gate. This seems like a hazardous option. The two guards are woken up by our chatter and stagger out of their hut. One of them instantly walks over to take his place in front of the gate. The other ambles around, trying to wake up. 

We send Edwin, the verbose Colombian, to talk the guard into opening the door early. The sign says, officially, that the gate can't be opened until 5.00am. Edwin is as talkative as a parrot on speed. He's cornered one of the guards and he's chewing his ear off. In the minivan on the way, Edwin didn't stop talking for 4 hours. To co-opt a Spanish phrase, he atomised everyone. We assume he will have a similar effect on the guard, who will open the gate just to get rid of him. Sure enough, Edwin comes over with his boyish features saying that the guard's agreed to open the gate at 4.30. We congratulate him. It's now 4am. It's dark, muggy, and there's nothing to do except feel your impatience grow. 

At 4.20 a pair of gringo tourists arrive and sit on the bench. We'd been advised to be first in the queue. Our eccentric guide, with his flies open, had briefed us the night before. He'd said we had to be ready to run to get in first. He said that there were people who spent thousands of dollars on their visit to Machu Picchu, and they had paid to be front of the queue, so the only way to beat them was to be the earliest, the quickest, the first out of the blocks. As a result we're here, sometime before dawn, at the front of a non-existent queue.

The gate is not opened at 4.30. Edwin backs off on his campaign. It's clear the guards have been stonewalling him. From 4.40 a steady stream of appropriately dressed tourists trickles down. Wearing lycra and goretex in florescent combinations. Many of them carrying high-tech walking sticks, which will only ever be used this one time, in honour of the Sun god. By five to five, a queue of perhaps a hundred people has backed up behind us. It doesn't seem altogether logical that we chose to get up at 3.15. At 5am prompt, the gate is finally opened, our passports checked yet again, and the hour doesn't matter anymore. We're on our way.

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