My roommates and I get into daily, 20-minute long arguments about who’s going to undertake the great exertion of grabbing the TV remote to tell Netflix we’re still watching. I had never camped before or even hiked, but there I was about to do the whole peeing in bushes and not showering thing for five whole days. Needless to say, I was completely and utterly unprepared for the insanity that was about to descend on me.
The adventuring company that ran the hike had a tagline that said, “The journey is the destination” and went on a giant spiel about how the journey was the best part.
Not. True.
The first day of the hike, everything that could possibly go wrong did. The air became increasingly thin as we climbed. For regular people, this wasn’t great. For me, a former asthmatic, halfway up my lungs decided they’d had enough. Suddenly my throat started to close up. Let’s just say that didn’t make my breathing any easier. When I eventually made it to the campsite that night, I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to do this. It was only the first day, the easiest day. We had four more to go.
I had two options — either keep going or walk back. There was not going to be an easy way out of this. If I was going to be walking anyway, it might as well be forward.
The map we were given labeled parts of the hike. Day two was labeled “Dead Woman’s Pass.” Looking at that 14,000-foot peak that we had to climb up and back down within a day, I was fairly sure I was going to be that dead woman.
Eventually I did make it to the peak. You’d think arriving at the highest point of the hike would give me this rewarding feeling of accomplishment but the only thought in my head was “everything hurts, and I’m dying,” and we still had to go back down an extremely steep mountainside. Of course that’s exactly when it starts pouring and the mountainside turns into a river. I was so exhausted that I fell down about every three minutes.
Miraculously, I remained uninjured. Three days to go.
The third day was when altitude sickness finally hit me, and I started to lag far behind everyone else. I was so determined not to fall again that I’d stare down at the path before me and plan out each step. When I finally looked up again, I was alone. I didn’t know how far behind I was; I didn’t know where my family was.
When the air is that thin, even screams of “Anybody there?” don’t really carry. The altitude was making me dizzy, and I was on my way up to a 13,000-foot peak. The path was only wide enough for two people to fit side by side. One misstep means you stumble, and one stumble means you could find yourself dangling off the edge off a cliff with no one there to help.
I continued on. I was still dizzy, and it had begun to rain again, so the stones were becoming slippery. You see what’s coming. Naturally, me being me, I tripped and hit my head on the step in front of me. I wasn’t hurt, but I was paralyzed with fear. I sat down on the edge of the mountain, too afraid of falling to move. Looking out into the valley, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone. It was beautiful, and I had no idea what I was doing thinking I could survive it.
After what seemed like hours, the voices of two girls around my age wafted toward me. They sounded like best friends insulting each other as best friends do, and I sat there laugh-crying because of how much it felt like home.
Eventually, they got to me, helped me up and walked with me until we reached the peak. Ours wasn’t a particularly deep or meaningful conversation, we just laughed and talked about nothing. Brooke and Hannah, I don’t know much about you other than your names, but there is no way I would have made it without you.
On the fourth day, I ended up lagging behind, terrified again. I kept meeting people along the way, though. I didn’t know any of their names, but there was the curly-haired 20 year old from Israel who had already hiked up Kilimanjaro and wanted a new challenge; the 60-year-old lady on a day-long hike who said if she could do one day, I could do five; and so many more whose stories I don’t even remember. See, that’s the funny thing about being alone on a mountain. Nobody’s a stranger.
In the end, it wasn’t the pain or the cold I’d remember. It wasn’t even the feeling of seeing Machu Picchu for the first time. It was the feeling of unfamiliar hands helping me up. It was the sound of an entire group of people I didn’t know clapping when I got back up after falling and almost twisting my ankle.
So no, it wasn’t the journey that was the best part. It was overcoming everything I did to get there. It was looking at Machu Picchu below me knowing that I had hiked my way through the Andes to get there. I had survived.
...And then the next day I fell off a horse.
