Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Introduction.

Hi there. Welcome to my new blog. My name is Marie and I live in Louisburgh, a small town on the Atlantic sea-board in the west of Ireland.

I am 56 years old, not too old and not too young. Just old…enough. For what, I couldn’t say.

I straddle a few career paths which has turned my journey through life into an interesting, vaguely haphazard adventure.

I’m a wilderness first aid trainer, a part time nurse in an overwhelmed Emergency Department in Co Mayo, a sometimes adventure guide and an often times mountain rescue medic.

I have a current ex husband with whom I remain close, and two kindly, easy going red headed daughters who everybody told me would be trouble but so far not a whiff.

I read alot and jog in the rain. It rains a lot in the west of Ireland. I listen to music and make Mammy dinners for my humans when I alight at home. Despite being in many geographical areas in one month I am unrealistically house proud and could win an All-Ireland championship in hoovering.

I wrote a novel which I am hoping to peddle soon, a murder mystery set in the west of Ireland. I grew tired of novels set in cities, always in the ‘under belly’ of a gritty urban jungle. (Louisburgh doesn’t really have an underbelly as far as I’m aware although a lot of people seem to be making progress with the over belly.)

I’ve been writing a blog to myself since I was young enough to think I would be a virgin until the day I got married. In those days incoherent scribblings were called a diary. Now I notice that people who are even more incoherent than myself are calling whatever they put onto a page a blog……

So!. I ve decided to stop talking to myself and now invite others in to share my nonsense instead.

So.

What you will not find in this blog is the following:

• Particularly useful information
• Selfies of me pouting
• Selfies of my backside hanging out of a bikini (or front-side hanging out of a bikini you ll be pleased to hear)
• Fashion advice
• Delicious recipes
• Make up or make-over tips
• Hang-over remedies

What you will find in this blog is the following:

• The random insights of a woman in her prime. (Yes I did say prime)
• Stories of adventure and travel
• Commentary on life experiences that affect us all, raising kids, getting older, the death of parents, friendship, looking for love….
• Lots of humour
• Shots of beautiful scenery that I didn’t get from Google images
• Experiences of an adventurous mountain rescue nurse
• Occasional rants about random things

So here goes people……..

I need someone to invent a strimmer for women please. Anyone?

 This female version of strimmer would be much lighter and have a harness which takes breasts into consideration. Men are always taking breasts into consideration except when it might be remotely useful to the woman.

 It wouldn’t have to be pink or purty. I have no idea why grown women are always annoyingly associated with the colour pink when all females grow out of this phase at the age of 6 years or so with the exception of my 80 year old mother.

Also there would have to be a lot less length. I’m saying this with a completely straight face.

The reason for this is that I have noticed that despite the harness that’s supposed to take the weight, a certain amount of forearm strength seems to be needed to operate these devices with precision simply because the real weight is at the working end. Far, far away from your centre of gravity.

And might I suggest that forearm strength is directly proportional to the presence of foreskin. When you don’t possess any of the latter, there is a commensurate decrease in the capacity of the former. With the single exception of Martina Navratilova, our woman forearms are puny affairs, useful in that they attach our more functional upper arms to our very busy and industrious hands. 

I wanted to buy a strimmer and took myself to the internet to see if there was a smaller version of the implement but if you go online and look up ‘Strimmers for Women,’ the request is blithely ignored.

Ignored! What is this? I’m being ignored by the fucking internet? Is that even possible? You can learn how to build a bomb in your kitchen or get detailed instructions on applying blusher so that you look forty five years younger. But not a damned thing about woman sized strimmers.

Eventually I found a thread where a light weight woman was plaintively wondering if there was any such thing ‘out there’ as a light weight strimmer. I was sitting at my desk at home and I wriggled my bum in my seat with interest. This was my exact question. I too am a small woman with a peculiar and particular interest in strimming.

So I read on.

She received a lot of manly advice about all varieties of brush cutters and there was an endless rush of guys competing with each other by listing brands of same, but the bottom line was to hire the thing, and preferably then hire someone– (a man someone of course-) to do the job for her.

However as far as I was concerned this was just a design flaw problem. And what I wanted to know was this? Why couldn’t some strimmer-inventing genius come up with the idea to invent a model especially designed for women! Open up the market. CREATE a new market. Lady strimmers. (Sort of like lady shavers only not as easily stored.)

I separated from my husband a few of years ago.  We have remained friends to a degree which has confounded many and we continue to support each other practically. He is still perfectly willing to help in the rather large garden around the family home where I live with our two teenage girls.

Mark is a very competent and manly man. He’s always had wonderful instincts in all matters house and garden. For the fifteen years we occupied this home together, all that he planted flourished. The alder trees that wave cheerfully at the sky all summer. The Escalanoia hedges. The willow in the snarly unseen bit at the back of the site. He was the King Strimmer making light work of the overgrowth around the edges of our garden.

I on the other hand- well- everything I plant turn to shit. It’s not that I dont try. I’m quite gamey and certainly not the kind of woman who never ventures past the kitchen window. Over the years, I have mowed the lawns and humped sacks of compost and dug holes and wobbled bow -legged back and forth wheeling heavy loads in the wheelbarrow. I carpet burn my knees with weeding for two days every spring when the excitement of lambs and daffodils after an endless winter went straight to my head. Then I don’t weed another minute until the following year.

 Every May, I plant flowers in containers which I place around the porch leading to the door of the house. During those first few weeks after planting as I arrive at my home, I am greeted by the cheerful little faces of begonia or petunia shivering in pleasure as I walk by. They always seem delighted to see me. And I them. The containers explode with colour and are a wonderful welcome as the air gets warmer and spring turns into summer.

However as the summer wanders on, the honeymoon period ends as I get busy working and now I hurry past, eyes down, mumbling apologies to the wilting forlorn little heads. Promising to water them tomorrow. ‘Too tired now guys. ‘Sorry. Sorry’

 Also I work away from home a lot and trying to get teenagers to remember to water flowers is about as useful an exercise as asking the dog to put out the bin.

I try to make it up to the poor things on days off, watering and feeding and dead-heading flowers for Ireland and within a few days, the flowers straighten up once more and to a man they breath a sigh of relief. Congratulate each other like stalwart survivors. They have dodged the bullet yet again.

‘Whew!’ they laugh, elbowing each other playfully. ‘That was a close one. Yer one is a bit of tease.’

My father had a joke about a farmer who tried to teach his donkey to survive without the inconvenience and expense of having to be fed every day. The punch line went ‘And no sooner had I the fucking fellow trained, didn’t he up and die!’

That’s me and flowers. If only they weren’t such demanding little brats. I should be able to train them, as I have done with my indoor cactus type plants, to survive without watering and feeding for weeks on end. I keep forgetting to tell myself that flowers are not just for Christmas. I have to be more responsible and not resent them for being so needy.

Back to the strimmer. All these years my ex husband did his thing, strimming only the bits of garden he saw fit and totally ignoring any requests on my part as to which parts of the garden I wanted to tame.

How I yearned to be a champion strimmer! I wanted to lay waste to the raggedy bits of over growth at the edge of the garden that he refused to cut. I wanted to see the ankles of the trees at the front of the house and unearth the secret garden and the steps he once built at the ignored back gable of our house.

But every time I gamely took up a strimmer, it felt heavy and unwieldy and over long with all the weight at the working end. I had the impression that I was trying to operate a goal post pole.

And on the few occasions where I stubbornly persisted I was a loose canon. Mark winced and cursed as I careered around the edge of the garden laying waste to new hedges and small trees, gouging big wedges of earth out of the lawn. Out of the planet it seemed. Clumps of clay hung off my hair, shrubs were tossed hither and yon. After such unsuccessful outings with Mark’s strimmer I would retreat with a degree of rare humility and that would be the end of it for another year.

A year after our separation I bought a damn strimmer. It was an impulse buy I admit. There it was leaning nonchalantly against the wall in the garden implement section of the local Homeland store. I stopped and eyed it with interest. Took it down from where it lolled with its’ arms folded, daring me to take it on. It looked smaller and more manageable than the big industrial sized yoke that Mark used.

Daughter number 2, sweet sixteen at the time, gazed at me doubtfully through her specs as I muttered to myself ‘Ah just look at you….’ stroking the thing like a long lost lover.

‘You don’t need a strimmer Mom. Dad will do that job for you’ she suggested with a worried look. She knew there would be trouble in paradise.

But I didn’t want to go on forever depending on my ex husband. He was about to build his own house. He had a girlfriend for godsake.

I was on my own and wanted to grow up and be independent in all things.

Jake, a helpful young man at the counter in Homeland gave me a 10 minute tutorial about the thing and I nodded earnestly although I didn’t understand a single word. At home I took it out of the box and when I laid the alarming number of separate bits on the table I realised that I didn’t have the first clue about how to assemble it. If only I had listened to Jake earlier. I read the instructions carefully, tried to match the diagram with the actual bits that lay on the kitchen table but it was as incomprehensible to me as a foreign language.

Or Enigma. I would need Benedict Cumberbatch and a team of mathematicians to come from Oxford and scratch their heads and stay up all night trying to figure it out. Alternatively the current ex-husband would have to be drafted in. Well shit.

When he saw the thing he was outraged. He would have been more reasonable if I had purchased a real live giraffe. ‘Such a waste of money!’ he ranted.

‘Not that much money’ I sniffed. (It was on sale…)

He went on in that vein for a while. Why couldn’t I just let him do whatever tidying up the lawn needed after mowing etc etc? Why did I always have to go rogue?

I resented his argument. He didn’t understand that this was my lawn now. We had always done things his way. This was my small way of staking the ground on which I now lived. Without him. Of course he got over his tantrum and put the thing together with blithe efficiency for which I was grateful. Is this what happens to women who have things assembled by men for years? We become mechanically illiterate.

I consider myself pretty competent and practical. I’m a nurse with all the practical skills that entails. I’m outdoorsy and hardy. I do all my own painting inside and out. I’m calm in the middle of life and death emergencies.

But I m fucked if I can make out a single line of instructions on how to assemble a strimmer.

So is there a moral to this story? Of course not. We all just muddle along doing the best we can.

Since then I have been using my strimmer frequently and without any problem although I will still need Mark or Jake in the garden centre when the entire top flies off or I decapitate the dog.  

Meanwhile I have cleaned up the bits of garden that I wanted to uncover. I exposed the secret garden again, shabby and forlorn and filled with towering weeds that have stalks the width of tennis racket handles. I mean when did they arrive?

 So may I beg your pardon people but I have strimmed and afterwards in the house, with shaky forearms and skin flecked with grass I have pronounced myself pleased.  

Over the winter as growth recedes and shrubs and plants and weeds alike bow out after the last curtain call, I hope to go around and cut back and lay bare and groom my garden in preparation for a profusion of happy growth next year.

It’s a lovely plan and who knows? I might even carry it out.

People watching in a forecourt…

Well I just said that thing about the sabre to get your attention.

Bucket rattling doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. I’ve never had a sabre to rattle. Not even a small one.

Today was Saturday and I spent three hours rattling a bucket in the draughty forecourt of a petrol station in Westport. Fund raising for Mayo Mountain Rescue. As if all the hours on call outs and training didn’t take enough large chunks out of one’s personal life, we also have to raise the money needed for our operations every year. Thanks fer nothing Irish government…..

However, lest you think I’m griping it’s quite remarkable how time passes in the forecourt of a busy petrol station. It’s an experience much like people-watching in an airport. Just take away the tans and the luggage and add a frigid wind blowing straight through the centre of your belly button.

I didn’t actually shake my little bucket. I don’t think that’s allowed anymore and anyway it would seem rude.

I just stood there rather passively beside the rubbish bin which was as tall as me, wearing my mountain rescue jacket and my ugly mountain boots which make my feet look like clumps of turf.

I smiled and greeted people as they passed me and gave fulsome thanks to those who put money in my bucket. Grovelled a little even. Then I spent the next three hours marvelling at all sorts of things.

For example, the driving techniques of the different demographics.

Who knew that old ladies were such a card-carrying menace in confined areas?  You can barely see their  blue- grey heads over the steering wheel as they wobble in to park at all sorts of impossible angles. Then there’s all that unnecessary revving whilst stationary.

I watched as one elderly woman, after buying her litre of milk, climbed back into her car with a good degree of agility. She turned on the ignition and with a serene expression and staring straight ahead, she shot backwards to get clear of the cars parked at the pumps.

She didn’t grace her rear view or side mirrors with a single glance. Nor did she exert herself to look behind. Luckily the guy in the white van behind her was alert to such old lady manoeuvres and alarmed but quick thinking, he accelerated out of her way and just managed to avoid a collision that might have killed her off completely. Maybe that was her objective. To die in a public blaze of noise and drama rather than suffer some protracted drooling end in a nursing home. Headlines in the Mayo News. ‘Local woman reverses to her death!’

After that suicidal but admittedly nimble display of reversing, she put the car in forward gear and everyone in the vicinity cringed at the whine of the gear change as she drove away with nary a care, oblivious to the fact that she had skirted death and damage to limb and property. Possibly someone else’s limb and property.  Ironically after such confidently brisk reversing, her forward motion had all the urgency of a wounded turtle on the way to see a distant relative. It took her hours to leave the forecourt…..

The other selection of drivers I noticed were the young men. In the way of young men the world over, they simply couldn’t help making a big deal of themselves. I was reminded of feather-inflating peacocks. They drove in off the road in a commotion of noise and speed as if competing in a rally. Then the abrupt car-rocking stop.

One young fellow with skinny jeans lying low on non-existent hips jumped out of his barely stationary car and jogged towards the shop ignoring me completely with my bucket. I held about as much interest for him as the bin standing beside me. He was out a half minute later holding a sports drink. I wanted to remind him about the sugar content but he was off again, after accelerating from 0 to 40 miles an hour in a nanosecond. Only to be stopped by the traffic I was pleased to see. Hymph.

Over the course of the few hours all manner of humans drove up.

Holiday makers with parents barely keeping it together while sullen teenagers sat smeared into the back seats, head phones on.

I mugged at a little boy when his father’s back was turned as he filled the car with petrol. The child was propped in his booster seat and in the alert and perky way of small humans, noticed me immediately. He peered at me for a moment and then stuck out his tongue. I admit to returning the greeting.

There were lots of solo young women in leggings. I appreciate the extreme comfort of leggings and wear them myself jogging but with some versions of really thin material, the woman’s actual anatomy is practically on show. We should really have a debate about this.

Call it ‘How public is your pudendum?’

I wonder for example if it’s socially appropriate to be in a position to check out a girl’s cervix as she approaches? It’s almost an incitement to indiscriminate gynaecological inspection.

Someday someone will call out in an urgent manner ‘Nurse! Speculum please! No! On second thoughts, make it a duck billed forceps! The big fat steel ones. Oh and a good dollop of KY jelly if you don’t mind. I m going in!” I should really carry these things in my hand bag just in case. Every good nurse should always be prepared.

The women who gave me money all found their coins in purses that they carried into the shop while the men found change by rummaging deep in pockets.

There’s another difference I’ve noticed between the habits of men and women.  (Really anthropologists should be getting in touch in their droves…there’s so much stuff they miss….)

The difference is where we keep our change. Unlike men, we women never ever carry change in hip pockets. I have never seen a woman lean forward with that stupid intent expression men get when they are rummaging for change, rearranging their balls etc to get that small 50 cent at the bottom corner of the pocket where the fluff is.

The reason for this is simple. Every woman, big or small, skinny or more generously proportioned, has the same issue. Our hip pockets are full to the brim with our actual hips. You could barely get a hand in there. Although there are many who have tried believe me……just slap them away ladies.

Anyway this explains why many men jangle when they walk. It’s a week’s worth of coinage. My father was very jangly. Mr Richard Bo Jangles Lyons. Without the Bo. With the jangles.

Back in the forecourt a young girl trailed after her father entering the shop.  She was cradling a baby doll. When I said ‘Lovely baby’ she admonished ‘It’s not a real baby silly!’

‘Oh of course not. What’s her name?’

It’s a boy silly! His name is Samuel’

I laughed at being called silly twice in such a short conversation and apologised for my mistake.

‘It’s okay’ she allowed. ‘I have a girl baby at home’.

I didn’t ask any more questions in case she called me silly again.

An entire football team climbed down from a bus and trooped past me avoiding my eye in that furtive way of teenage boys.

There was a moment of embarrassment when a woman walked towards me and I smiled and held out the bucket but she was just putting something in the bin. We could have salvaged the moment with a joke but before I could make any she wheeled away mortified. Some people need to relax a little. Embarrassment is essentially unnecessary unless of course you’re returning from the bathroom of an expensive restaurant with toilet paper trailing from your knickers.

I got bored eventually and tried to make myself useful.  I minded a guy’s bike and a woman’s dog, a tiny dispirited looking pooch with less personality than the bike. There was no chance anyone would run away with this particular canine so I didn’t even try to make small talk as we waited for his mistress to emerge.

The bike on the other hand looked as if it cost about thirty grand and I figured its’ owner, a fit looking man in his thirties for an out of towner. He had a tan that looked like it was cooked on a yacht in Monaco. He wore expensive lycra bicycle shorts and had a vague air of moneyed privilage. Before entering the shop, he took off his helmet and shook out rich ebony curls. That head was in no way shape or form a west of Ireland head. I can tell these things. He thanked me graciously for looking after his bike and took off to conquer the world. I felt sure I would see him next in an ad next Christmas for Giorgio Armani.

Speaking of heads I also did a bit of dead heading on the two hanging baskets swinging off the wall behind me and resisted the urge to help a young employee pick up around the place. He was about 17 or so with a pimply face and an attitude of lassitude. When I first caught sight of him, I sneered to myself at the desultory way in which he pushed his brush around the bricks of the forecourt. I was thinking ‘Ho, look at this buck. He can’t even operate a sweeping brush.’

However I am pleased to say that he proved me completely wrong and over the few hours, despite an appearance of not really moving at all, he got all manner of jobs completed. He shined the aluminium siding on the pumps, picked up all the rubbish, replaced the old bouquets of flowers in the bucket outside the shop with new ones, cleaned the outside tables and washed the outside windows. Admittedly he’d make a glacier look like it was in a hurry and he had an air of someone who yearned with every fibre of his being to be somewhere else but I was nonetheless impressed. I praised his work at one point but he wasn’t bothered having a conversation with a middle-aged woman in an anorak. This seemed to be a running theme I realised.

The most generous people who donated were the elderly who stopped to chat and ask me about Reek Sunday. Also women from thirty years of age onwards who smiled and rummaged absently in purses while children hung out of their arms.

I didn’t make a killing but there was a respectable heft to my bucket as I walked away to join the rest of my team members who had all been standing in different equally draughty parts of town.

Oh and the young employee came running up for a hug before I left.

Ha. Only kidding……..

I came, I saw, I dead headed……..

The pass we were to climb to today is supposed to look like a supine woman hence the name. I don t know why a supine woman has to imply a dead woman but I suppose ‘Supine Woman’s Pass’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.

We awoke at 5.30 to the sweet sound of bird song. Nicholas the oldest porter at 165 years old, came around to our tents and brought us a small bowl of warm water for our ablutions which would become more minimal as the days wore on. Our ablutions that is, not the water.

(Okay Nicolas is only 60 or so but he had a lot of missing teeth which gave his face a caved in look.)

We ate a hearty breakfast of bread and the most delicious omelette while the porters moved around the camp with practised ease, dismantling our tents, putting away pots and pans, taking away the contents of the toilet in a bag.

Today was the day that strikes fear into the heart of every Gringo who has ever read a single thing about the Inca trail. Words like ‘punishing’ had been thrown around to describe the 5 hour hike on Day two up and over Dead Woman’s pass at 4215 meters where I hoped I wasn’t going to become a dead woman myself. Then a 2 hour hike down. I wasn’t worried although there was no telling whether I would be affected by altitude. I was enjoying myself too much and if it was going to prove hard then so be it.

 Back on the trail we greeted people whom we had met the day before. A couple of gorgeous Argentinian girls who got the attention of all the men in their immediate vicinity, a lovely young German couple, a few Irish people who you could pick out as Irish as a distance of a 100 meters. What is it about us that is immediately identifiable? It’s not just our whiter that white skin and our somehow Irish looking potato heads or the fact that we’re not remotely sleek like so many other brown limbed Europeans. There’s just an indefinable Irishness that means we can always pick each other out of a line-up.

We spent the morning walking through cloud forest on a path that took us along a smaller river that ignored our upward progress and bounced off downward over the rocks to leap joyfully into the arms of its mother, the Urumbamba.

Alfredo told us to walk slowly and mindfully and ‘just enjoy’ and that’s what I did. Alfredo should be in charge of the world, I was thinking contentedly to myself. The morning was cool and sunny and I put one foot in front of the other up and up the stone steps. And up.

For hikers from Ireland who normally have to climb on mountains where a wet sucking bog tries to ingest your every footstep, I found it a great luxury to walk on dry stone. There was far less labour involved walking on solid ground. There would be no trench foot here. I still had a sort of background headache and I was breathless certainly as we gained altitude but nothing serious and I stopped regularly to look around and chat with other hikers.

We stopped for a leisurely lunch at 1 O clock and plenty to eat and drink to fortify us for the final climb. I chatted to an Irish couple, sympathising with the guy who had been up all night with diarrhoea.

After lunch we trooped off again, leaving the forest behind and emerging into a vista of mountain scenery on all sides. We were surrounded. Snaggly toothed mountains in stark relief against a vast sky. Shape changing clouds. A glacier peeping between two high spurs in the distance. I had to stop a little more regularly to catch my breath but that was fine because that gave me just another opportunity to look around.

My legs felt fine, my breath came back every time I stopped to rest, the sun was shining and it was truly wonderful. I started to get cocky then and felt a certain satisfaction as I took my short arse past mere saplings in their 20’s and 30’s and left them far behind. I felt strong and enormously grateful to be there enjoying such an experience.

When I was preparing for a marathon which I did for my fortieth birthday I remember reading that middle aged people are often more successful at training for endurance courses as they have more patience and mental discipline. Maybe there are up sides to being ‘mature’.

At one point in the midst of all of this mindful shit, I was walking past Hombre who had stopped to rest. His pack was still attached but resting on the wall behind him. We smiled at each other and I said intelligent things like ‘Whew!’ and ‘Well well!’ as I stood before him panting like an eagar puppy.

I said “Not far now eh Hombre?” as I could see what looked like the top of the path up ahead. Hombre pointed to a mountainy hump to the right of the saddle indicating where I had to go.

“Oh righto” I said without complaint and lurched on huffing and puffing cheerfully. I did wonder vaguely why Hombre had such a shit-eating grin on his face as I left him.

Ten minutes later I landed at the saddle and Darren who had arrived before me, told me that I had made it. I was at Dead Woman’s Pass and I was very much alive.

 I looked around unconvinced. “What?  But what about that yoke over there” I persisted pointing my walking pole at the mountain hump that didn’t even look navigable now that I was closer. “Hombre told me we had to go over that.”

I was strangely reluctant to let go of the notion that I was going to have to toil and struggle unto the death at some point. I was mentally prepared for the religious experience that comes in the aftermath of the gruelling and punishing. I had arrived at the top of the pass without any problem whatsoever. What was I supposed to do now with all that hard earned mental preparedness! I had been cheated!

 Hombre was just arriving behind me. I went over and gave him a shake. ‘You imp! You were teasing me!” Hombre didn’t have a single word of English but was laughing. He had set me up.

Pat and Alfredo joined us soon after. We took a few photos and then set off for the 2 hour walk down to camp. This was a total bore and after climbing upward all morning it was an adjustment trying to convince our bodies to change gears. I had heard that this downward trek after all the uphill slogging, was hard on the knees so I used my walking poles like crutches. Leaning on them as I put a foot down. This seemed to work well and at the end of the days walk I marvelled at how good I felt and I gave my thighs an affectionate little thump when I finally sat down at camp. My abbreviated legs would never see a cat walk but they have been great friends and have brought me to places that I would never have seen if they were less enduring.

Apologies if all of this crowing about how great I felt is annoying to those who are punished on this day of the walk or to those who suffer from altitude sickness at this stage. My legs are somewhat conditioned from my mountainy life at home and also I did everything you’re supposed to do to prevent altitude illness. I drank lots, ate well and took my time.

My advice to those who ask how fit you have to be? You need to be fit enough to hike in the mountains for several hours. Regular hill walkers of all ages would have no problem with the Inca trail.

And if there are no mountains in your life?

Get reasonably fit. Do strength training for a few weeks before hand to condition legs. Walking on flat ground for a half hour every evening after work will not give you the legs for a hike upward.  Nor will housekeeping or gardening. Some of the back packers I passed were only in their twenties, young people travelling around South America but while they had youth and strength on their side many of them were only reasonably conditioned to walk upwards for hours at a time and some struggled. On the third day I noticed one of the young Argentinian girls lying in a sleeping bag outside the dining tent at one of the camps. Altitude possibly.

Everybody makes it of course. It’s just about how comfortable you want to be while making it. So get fit, and strengthen your legs. They will be a great friend on the Inca rail

And as Forest Gump said “And that’s all I gotta say about thayat”

Today the camp was a series of natural platforms beside a river with the different levels joined by little trails and steps. Porters from the bigger companies like Exodus and G adventures were already there setting up.

It was only early afternoon and we betook ourselves to our tents for a snooze before dinner and for the rest of day I idled, reading and writing and occasionally hanging out near the kitchen tent to watch preparations for dinner and generally annoy the porters.

The third day involved hiking up a couple of passes, not as steeply inclined as the day before but enough to challenge the breath in spots. The ruins du jour was Sayacmarca. (Town in a steep Place)

Hiram Bingham, the American explorer who discovered Maccu Piccu in 1911 had inexplicably called these ruins Cedrobamba although there was nary a cedar tree to be seen! He had obviously been slipped some of those hallucinogenic plant thingies.

This fortress-like group of roofless buildings clung precipitously to the side of the mountain over looking the valley below. Back in the day of the Inca I imagine it would have been a simple matter to get rid of an unwanted relation, a nagging mother in law for example, by just bumping her over a low wall. She would disappear into the deep vegetation of the valley hundreds of metres below and no one would be any of the wiser as you went about your business whistling merrily. These were the silly thoughts I had as I peered over low walls into the sheer drop, off the site.

We landed at camp in the early afternoon. Phuyupatamarca. (Cloud level town) at 3670 meters. True to its’ name the clouds were actually down amongst us and although we were informed by Alfredo that the view was the most magnificent on the trail, we couldn’t see anything beyond the perimeter of the camp.

Alfredo old us that this was his favourite camp because of the view and he was looking forward to our reaction when the clouds parted and we could finally see beyond the length of our arms.

The main excitement that afternoon came in the form of a herd of Llama’s who were placed all around the camp and as the different companies arrived to set up their respective tents, the Llama’s remained standing amongst all the activity wearing stubborn expressions.

Alfredo tried to gently push one of the animals who was standing in front of the kitchen tent. The Llama wouldn’t budge. Alfredo was smiling. “He doesn’t want to go.”

“How do you know it’s a ‘He’” I asked wih the earnest stupidity of a tourist who is not thinking for themselves. I had decided that Alfredo, as an indigenous Peruvian could just look into the Llama’s eyes and intuit that masculine glint.

‘Balls” Alfredo remarked laconically and the Irish men and Alfredo laughed out loud at my abashed expression.

 Unfortunately the clouds elected to stay put and for the rest of the evening we sat in a strange dream like world with tendrils of mist teasing and shape changing around us. We ate in a kind of desultory silence and went to bed early out of boredom.

I awoke at 5am and lay there listening to the rain. I had had a fitful sleep and the outside of the sleeping bag and inside of the tent was damp with droplets of condensation. There was a rush of water immediately outside the tent and really close to my head. Then I heard an eerily plaintive moan and I thought ‘What the actual fuck?’

Maybe it was the altitude I decided. I was having auditory hallucinations. Waterfalls that weren’t there. Strange noises. Then realisation dawned.

I unzipped the front of the tent and stuck my head out into the darkness. And there she was, standing outside the front of my tent, close enough to touch if I reached out my hand. (It had to be a she with those eye lashes.)

I was kneeling inside my tent with my head poking outside and looking no doubt rather foolish and I m afraid the llama had this self same thought because she pointedly ignored me. She remained perfectly still and allowed me to study her profile.

She was poised and imperious, standing there under a sky full of stars. Then she emitted that strange strangled cry again. Was she calling for a mate? Communicating with the others who stood over at the edge of camp together grazing on some grass? Was she saying ‘Will you look at this twit with her head sticking out of the tent!’

So we stayed like that for a time the two of us. Me quietly watching her, she quietly ignoring me. I could hear the snoring of one of the men and the sleeping ventilations of the other in the tent beside me. All was perfectly quiet and still otherwise.  Then she sat down with a grunt, more or less dismissing me and a friend or relation came to join her and they lay there doing absolutely nothing.

Her Highness. Note that sneer!

 After a time the birds woke up and gave us sweet little trills and whistles. People started to stir. I withdrew back into my tent and lay there swaddled in my sleeping bag. I was wearing all my clothes.

I’m not gonna lie, I felt a little manky. My personal grooming had suffered during the course of the three days I m afraid. Every night I wore a pair of leggings, two base layers and my socks to bed. I brushed my teeth before I went to bed and first thing. I had a quick wash every morning with the warm water that Mariano brought to the tent but it was just a quick top and tail. I hadn’t washed my feet in days because then you’d have to use the same little bowl of water to wash your….well you get the idea. My hair was greasy and I was down to my last base layer. I was sorry I hadn’t brought my Chanel number 5. I hadn’t wanted to bring a single item of vanity that another would have to carry but in retrospect I m sure the porters wouldn’t have minded carrying the tiny bottle if it meant that the only Gringa in the group smelled like a meadow rather than a wet blanket.

But I quickly cast these concerns of vanity aside after I dressed and wandered outside. Alfredo had been looking forward to showing us this vista.

The clouds had shrouded us entirely the previous evening but now the wisps of vapour started to separate. I walked down to the edge of the camp with an air of expectancy. Alfredo had talked endlessly about this, his favourite camp and favourite view.

Suddenly the cloud lifted and parted like an opening night curtain. I practically gasped. I was standing tiny and insignificant above a wide valley through which white clouds rolled through like a river. All around in every direction stood the Andes mountains, their peaks probing an endless sky.  Timeless. Immutable. Mind-bendingly beautiful.

I ignored the clanging sounds behind me of a nearby group of porters preparing breakfast and I stayed very still. I tried to make a mental imprint that would stay behind my eye lids to be taken out whenever I wanted. I had no interest in taking a picture. No picture could have captured the way I was feeling. The exhilaration of it. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I felt emotional. Small and insignificant but nonetheless part of this wonderful world we call nature.

That moment was my moment on the trip. The one I will remember and cherish.

The guys finally wandered over to join me and imbibe the scenery and Alfredo noticed us and captured the above picture. I finally and reluctantly tore myself away from the view and went back to get ready for that day’s walk. I was feeling remarkably buoyant. The sun was beginning to show its’ cheery face and the damp of the night before was already a dim memory. Joints were limber from use and I felt like a spring rabbit as I bounced away from the camp and started down the steep steps towards the next ruins which were called Intipata

                   

Intipata. Sunny Slope.

 I was very smitten with the broad green terraces and stone steps of the Intipata ruins which obviously had an agricultural function. I marvelled again at the sophistication and ambition of Incan agriculture and what they managed to produce high in the mountains in cold thin air with a lot of precipitation all year round.

 They created these broad terraces to increase the area of flat land on which to grow potato, quinoa, and maize and at every Inca site you will see these large impossibly verdant giant stone steps carved out of the rugged mountain environment.

They built irrigation channels on the terraces to divert water to wherever it was needed and coax  water away from where it was not. They also constructed these terraces in layers so that water running down these steps soaked into top soil, then into a bed of sand below and underneath that a foundation of fine gravel, probably the leavings of the stone work. This ensured that a lot of the water got sifted down into the earth rather than waterfall off the terraces. In this way the clever buggars prevented erosion.

They made intelligent use of crop rotation and had a massive talent for food storage, building thousands of storage silos all over their vast empire in which they stored freeze- dried food to protect against drought or famine.

The rulers provided seeds and basic tools and in turn the farmers were expected to be self sufficient but to supply their labour when needed for big building projects. This is the tax system I mentioned before, a sort of socialist model or reciprocal exchange between individuals where your taxes due were a labour obligation. Whether this was Shangri La for the ordinary people or a repressive autocratic system is not certain but it seems to have been successful.

Llama and Alpaca were used for meat, hide and to transport and distribute the produce around the system on their extensive network of roads, one such road being of course the Inca trail. How wonderful to walk along a road that was built 500 years ago and where the ghostly whisper remained of thousands of feet that had walked here before us.

I marvelled at the fortitude of the Inca people, fighting an ongoing battle with nature and the environment, dragging bounty from these mountains in the harsh Andean eco system. To increase their chances of good luck, they sang while they worked and prayed to their Gods of nature, the sun and moon Gods and offered sacrifices on stone altars. Llama and Alpaca were choice sacrifices and I m afraid children who were considered pure and therefore a perfect gift to appease the ever hungry Gods.

Trying to imagine these lonely misty terraces bustling with people working the land.

(I look like a person from Lilliput who has fetched up in a giants garden.)

 It all worked somehow and agriculture here was so successful that there are many projects around Peru now employing these self same methods and restoring Incan systems of farming to improve production.

Once again a couple of Llama were the cause of a diversion when a large animal that had been grazing amongst the ruins, decided to descend the stone steps behind me. Darren called out a warning as this beast of a thing started to canter down the steps at a good clip and I managed to step out of the way before I was wiped out. These animals are as harmless as sheep but getting hit by one at speed would be like being knocked down by a Mini. I’d never live it down. Tourist mowed down by Llama recovering in hospital with 37 broken bones…..

The next ruins of the day were the hugely impressive Winay Wayna (Forever Young).

More cleverly constructed buildings connected by steep stone steps. More sweeping lush green terraces.  Maccu Piccu and the end of the trail was only a short distance away now and myself and the boys were feeling strangely giddy.

                                            

                                                          

The last steep steps before the Sun Gate.

The sun gate is where it is thought that imperial guards controlled entry to the citadel of Maccu Piccu and was the primary approach into the city from Cusco. Visitors were probably restricted to royals and priests and those needed to maintain the city and serve the royals. This structure was built in homage to the sun god and was constructed in such a way as to have the rising sun pass through the gate every year on the summer solstice.

This was the end of the road for the Inca Trail travellers. For us. We had shared hugs with the porters and said our goodbyes and with just Alfredo, for the last 45 minutes or so we would follow the stone path called the sun gate trail to the city. This was also our first sighting of Maccu Piccu, a short distance away across lush mountains.

Seeing it for the first time has an overwhelming sense of unreality to it. That iconic image from a thousand pictures and post cards that we were so familiar with. However that image always had a fairy tale quality, an ephemeral beauty like the Disney Castle at the end of kid’s movies, an entity that didn’t really belong in real life.

Now we were seeing the Disney Castle for real. This was not an idealised image or chimera. The city was standing there ahead of us, aloft on it’s broad plateau, face to the heavans, bold as you like on a high mountain ridge under a warm sun, grass gleaming greenly around the stone buildings. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The mountains around Maccu Piccu which I fancy look like friendly ogres but that may have been the thin air speaking.

The citadel of Maccu Piccu lies well hidden on a high ridge overlooking the Urumbamba river. It is thought that construction started around 1430 and hadn’t yet been completed by 1530 when it was abandoned for reasons that are still not entirely clear. It was built perhaps as a retreat for the Sapa Inca, (Emperor or King) Pachacuti.

The site was rediscovered by the historian Hiram Bingham who was leading the Yale Peruvian Expedition to explore lost Inca sites. The Holy Grail of the expedition was the city of Vilcabamba, the retreat of the exiled last Inca king who sought refuge there for 35 years until the city was conquered by the Spanish in 1572.  Over the years Vilcabamba had somehow been mislaid and Vilcabamba was The Lost City of the Incas as far as Bingham was concerned and the place he was most keen to discover. Instead he more or less stumbled on Maccu Piccu.

Other explorers had been searching for years following rumours and whispers of rumours about mystical ruins lying forgotten in the Andes but it was Bingham who got the lucky break. Perhaps it wasn’t luck. He was very energetic in making extensive enquiries of local people and then following up every single lead to every single ruin. It was one such lead that brought him to Maccu Piccu.

He had met a farmer and inn keeper in the Sacred Valley and there must have been a conversation where he asked politely ‘And tell me this, dear farmer and inn-keeper. Are there any old ruins in them thar hills?’ as he made vague gestures to the mountains above them.

To which the farmer and inn keeper must have pointed in a particular direction and answered in the affirmative. So they all set off the next day and at the top of a ridge near Maccu Piccu they met a fellow and his 11 year old boy who were farming the terraces near the site.

“Ruins anyone?” Bingham must’ve asked again.

“Yep” the boy answered. “Follow me” and Bingham followed the young fellow who didn’t show much excitement one way or the other. The boy’s name was Pablito and he was the one who first showed Bingham around the ruins which of course held no great interest for the locals. They had farmed these terraces all their lives and were probably wondering what all the fuss was about.

Of course at the time of the discovery, the site had been largely reclaimed by the jungle and the first photos taken by Bingham show Maccu Piccu well preserved but tatty with vegetation compared to the pristinely preserved site we know today.

Mr Bingham wasn’t even that impressed at first because the extent of the ruins wasn’t immediately clear.

He eventually did notch up his enthusiasm especially after he convinced himself that he had found Vilcabamba and he spent several years going back and forth to Peru, trying to make the evidence fit his theory rather than the other way around. The original analysis of the bones found at Maccu Piccu seemed to suggest that the skeletons were 80% female so Bingham concluded that these were the bones of the virgins of the sun who accompanied the Inca Kings wherever they went. So by Bingham’s reckoning the last King of the Inca had rocked up here with his virgins and lived in exile.

How lucky were these guys, the Inca Kings, carted around on feather-festooned litters trailing nubile virgins?

I can’t help thinking that The Trump would love a retinue of virgins to accompany him wherever he goes especially on trips to stuffy old Europe. It’s extremely tiring heckling heads of state and stirring up political shit storms hither and thither. I’m sure it would be very relaxing to have his brow smoothed in the evenings by a retinue of virgins after he’d had his burger.

Or. In the event that the secret service couldn’t rustle up a single virgin within the legal age, perhaps Stormy Daniels and a coterie of good time friends could accompany him instead? She seems like a gamey sort of gal and would be a lively diversion from those dreary old spoilsports, Theresa and Angela, always insisting that he discuss stultifying matters like world trade agreements and the future of Nato. I must mention the idea to him when next we meet.

Anyway poor old Bingham. He was wrong about Vilcabamba which incidentally he also discovered on the same trip had he but realised at the time.

And it turns out that the bones on future analysis were not mostly female after all just small humans. They hadn’t done any hard labour as evidenced by the lack of osteoarthritis so they were not farmers or stone masons or soldiers with a myriad of tell tale injuries to the skeleton. They were probably the royal servants, caretakers etc, the folks who flutter and fuss around Kingly persons the world over.

Still. Bingham had no reason for disappointment. Maccu Piccu became an overnight sensation and has been a marvel for the world’s pleasure ever since. Years of scientific study of the stones, artefacts, ceramics, jewellery and bones both insitu and elsewhere and careful on-going archaeological excavation by leading experts from Peru and all over the world yield ever more interesting facts about the site all the time.

Its’ elevation is 2430 meters and it can only be seen from high up in the mountains which is why it was never discovered by the Spanish although it was only 80 km from Cusco. If the Spanish had found this estate it would have been destroyed as per colonial policy at the time.

We walked along the sun gate path to a large platform over the city. We would not visit the complex proper until the following day which I was pleased about because I wanted to feel refreshed and clean when we finally got there.

After an hour or so of gazing down into the pristine site and a bit of oohing and a lot of ahhing, we climbed into a big bus that took us rumbling down the switch back roads to the town of Agua Calientes where we would spend the night before returning to see Maccu Piccu at dawn to properly explore the ruins.