We woke up early and I ate well again. Today was to be our longest day; Jose Luis estimated seven hours. After we'd gone about an hour (I again carried no pack, nor did Andrew; Niels was the only one that carried a pack each day), Jose Luis took us off the main path, down into the bottom of the ravine where, next to the river, were hot springs. I didn't want to get wet and grimy and then have to hike the next six hours, even if it were all downhill like Jose Luis said, so I didn't get in. Andrew, Niels, and Jose Luis had no such qualms, quickly stripping down (Jose Luis and Niels in underwear, Andrew in his birthday suit) and getting in. I jumped around the rocks in the river while they enjoyed their bath. Other hikers gawked and took pictures of the three exhibitionists from a spot on the path across the ravine.
I stayed with them for a time after we'd crawled back up to the main path, but going so slowly hurt my legs. I passed them and the horses and went alone again.
About halfway, I came to a glen where there was a shack full of snacks run by an old woman. I looked back up the valley in the direction from which we'd come and could make out Salkantay, the mountain which had broken me the day before, well off in the distance. Circumstances had surely changed, and for the better, in that I was basking in the sun in a grassy glen with trees and bushes all around me, I had the gentle murmur of a stream beside me, and birds were calling out and flying just above me; it was idyllic.
Jose Luis and the others caught up to me and we carried on with the hike. We'd not been on our way long when I smelled something horrible. I looked down from the path and forty feet below was a dead pack horse rotting on a rock by the river. Its head appeared as if it had been sheared in half, the top part missing, and I figured it must not have died from the fall and so someone had gotten a shotgun and put it out of its misery since no ribs or anything else were exposed.
As I barreled down the mountain I passed a bald man (late 20s, early 30s) who asked me if I were British. When I replied that I was American, he said, "American? You're brave to wear that!" I was already past him and didn't bother querying him as to how I was brave to wear army jungle boots, camoflage pants, a green longsleeve t-shirt with a baseball logo on it, a desert camoflage camelback on my back, and a camoflage gortex jacket tied around my waist. True if, besides what I were wearing, I looked like a US soldier, he would have had a valid point since Europackers (a group in which I include Aussies and Canucks) detest Americans who could be seen as supporting the President, but I haven't cut my hair in months and I haven't shaved in two weeks (nor has Andrew. He has a full beard already; I have my natural Don Juan/ gay French waiter thing, along with a few pathetic wisps of lonely hair on my cheeks).
I finished the walk in three hours, three hours ahead of the estimate, and while waiting for the others (Andrew was four minutes behind) I sat with some locals in the shade of a shop and drank an Inca Cola. Inca Cola outsells coca- cola in Peru. It isn't very carbonated, is yellow, and tastes like a cross between cream soda and bubble gum.
While sitting there drinking our drinks we watched roosters strut up and down the road/ path. It should be mentioned at this point that we've come to despise roosters. The first problem we had with them was in the Galapagos, where each day we were woken up by them at 4:30am, well before light. Here on the trail it's been the same thing. Simply put, !$%&! roosters!
We'd finished the hike so early that we went ahead and set up our tents there in the village of Playa (which means "beach"; it was next to the river) and then had lunch; it was barely lunchtime. As we had so much time to kill and we'd put up our tents on a large field which also had the town soccer field on it, we played soccer too. Niels and Andrew play; I don't, but I attempted nonetheless. I did alright, but I had to stop shortly after I tried to pivot in the jungle boots and took the bottom of my left big toe O- F- F.
As dusk fell, we were served a hot pineapple soup slathered in nutmeg while sitting out on a local family's porch. Inside, the family watched a DVD of a spastically rhythmed Peruvian band. A menagerie of house pets (cats and dogs, one of which was named, no joke, "pokemon") and farm animals walked around us and under the table while we ate. (Oh, and as for the hiking, I am hurting. My legs are on fire and I'm walking like a old man, or a cowboy, or an old cowboy.)
On a partially unrelated note, just as a general observation of our time in Peru so far, we haven't seen many honestly attractive adults, but, uniformly, the children are gorgeous. We haven't seen an ugly child. Apparently somewhere around 15 these people age 25 years.
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