This feat brought to you by the chewing of many coca leaves…

A week ago today I was climbing the excruciating path up Machu Picchu mountain and today I lay lounging in my hostel bed in Cuzco, with a slight cold, basking in my lazy haze. This is my second weeklong stint in Cuzco now and the days go ticking on by as fast as ever; it’s hard to believe that the week is already almost up!

We left Aguas Calientes early last Thursday morning after scarfing down some free hostel breads, fried egg and tea. After filling up our water bottles and hydration packs, I also filled up my small Nalgene bottle with some coca tea for the road, we strapped on our gear and, cheeks loaded with coca leaves, we started the walk down to the train tracks in the center of town. Having splurged on the train ticket from Santa Teresa we had already decided during the luxurious journey to Aguas Calientes that we would be walking back, no matter how taxing the trek. 

Admittedly, a smarter traveller than I, Alexis had only her big pack weighing in at about 35 or so pounds and a small camelback hydration daypack to carry. For me, the 2.5 hour walk was going to have to be accomplished not only loaded down with my behemoth of a pack strapped to my back, also weighing a little over 30 lbs, but with an additional daypack strapped to my front, weighing in at about the same.
My 60 lb load being my cross to bear for the next 13 km and a painful reminder of my struggle with materialism, wishing for the thousandth time since arriving in Peru that I could go back and repack, knowing what I now knew about traveling around out of a backpack; what is actually necessary versus luxury.
Additionally the small chest strap on my large pack had been dislodged and lost negligent bus handlers somewhere along the way and so I was left to gerry-rig a substitute using one of the bungee cords I brought with me.
I had to stop several times to awkwardly adjust my load before even reaching the tracks, not used to this new life as a pack animal, and would have to adjust several times more during the arduous journey before finding the best system only 2 or so km away from the hydroelectric station. 

If not for this insane burden, the walk itself was quite nice and scenic, occasionally chatting with fellow backpackers who had also chosen the cheap alternative, when I had breath to spare.

Walking along the river on the sun-speckled trail, through darkened, damp train tunnels, the path is relatively flat, constantly crossing over the tracks from left to right and occasionally over precarious, largely spaced wooden track bridges where one misstep would send you into the muddy water below.

Stopping every so often, but never for long lest we loose momentum, to readjust the weight from shoulders to hips to give the other a break and replenish coca leaf cheek pouch supply, we somehow made it there in just about 2.5 hours, 2 hours and 40 minutes to be exact, whereas my handy Lonely Planet guidebook allocates 4 hours for this walk- amateurs. 

At the train station, we grabbed a taxi back to Santa Teresa, where we switched into a ‘collectivo’ van with several others for the ride to Santa Maria, paying only 10 soles for the second leg of the trip as our taxi driver forgot to hassle us for money during the exchange. 

Once in Santa Maria we negotiated for yet another collective van trip back to Cuzco, 20 soles from 25, and continued on with some locals as well as some other foreigners who we had seen along the tracks, having recently finished their respective treks to Machu Picchu. 
The trip went relatively smoothly with some rain slicking the roads as we ascended yet again high into the Peruvian Andes, passing through the small town of Abra Málaga at 4,300 some meters above sea level. 
While en route we saw a member of a mountain bike tour laying in the ditch, most likely having slid off the road from the rain, a fun idea in theory I suppose, but you couldn’t pay me to be on two wheels on those sharp, serpent-like, click-paved mountain roads. 

However, winding up and around the mountain roads in the high mountain cloud forest fog again, not quite as opaque as on my trip to the farm a month earlier but dense nevertheless, we came within inches of our lives ourselves as a truck with large construction cargo came barreling around the sharp corner without so much as blowing his horn for warning of his presence on the road, let alone his lightning pace. 
Thankfully we had a stellar driver how was able to stop the vehicle in an instance, as we all sat in shock, observing the inches that separated us from the cargo truck. After exchanging some angry words with the truck driver, rightfully so, our driver backed up so that the truck could pull up into the shoulder of the road, an incredibly infrequent occurrence, so that we could continue on. 
We all thanked the driver for reacting so well and his safe driving in general thus far as we continued down the mountain, descending again into the Sacred Valley, past Ollyantaytambo and Urubamba, before switchbacking back up toward Cuzco, where we could seek safe, sedentary hostel refuge, hot showers and cheap, delicious eats, a welcome change of pace from life on the farm.

[view of Ollyantaytambo ruins from the collectivo]