So I couldn’t have painted any worse of a picture. We’re standing at the base of Dead Woman’s Pass facing a 9 km hike straight up to 14,000 feet. It’s pouring rain, I haven’t slept in the past two nights and I’m already exhausted from yesterday’s “easy day.”

We start off trudging through the mud. At first, the breathing the biggest issue.  As we ascend, I just can’t seem to catch my breath. My chest is heaving up and down as I have to frequently stop and bend over inhaling whatever oxygen I can find as I use my walking poles to keep my body from falling over. But then about an hour in, my legs start to burn. After another hour, my legs have full on turned into concrete blocks. Just taking a step is incredibly painful. 

At one point, I am leaning over on my poles wheezing in and out and I just fall over onto the ground. “That’s it! I can’t go any further. I need to go back.” Robinzon, the eternal optimist, gives me a faint smile, shakes his head and says that there is no option to go back and that I can make it! He tells me that we will break for lunch early, in about an hour and I can rest up there. 

Things go from bad to worse in the next hour as I can’t seem to think clearly and the black lines return to the edges of my vision. At one point, I can’t remember where I am or what I’m doing here.  I know I’m hiking so I figure out that I’m in Patagonia but for the life of me, I can’t remember whether I’m in Chilean Patagonia or Argentine Patagonia.  I hate being confused. Why can’t I remember? Now I’ve got it. I know why I’m not thinking clearly. The porters must have drugged my food at breakfast. I’ve determined that they have come up with a secret plan to kidnap me and demand ransom from Leanne. Now I have to come up with a plan to thwart them.

Robinzon calls for lunch and the porters have already set up my tent for me to take a nap. I am consistently conflicted about asking Robinzon how far we’ve gone and how far we have left.  I want to know but I’m terrified of the answer subconsciously knowing we haven’t gone nearly as far as I’d been hoping.  In this case, I brave myself to ask and he answers halfway up the pass. This means I have 3-4 more hours of hell ahead of me I’m thinking to myself as I fall fast asleep in an exhausted state.

Justin wakes me up after an hour for lunch; however, I’m loathe to eat anything after suspecting the porters of drugging my breakfast.  So I eat a couple granola bars that we had bought at the store in Cusco.  The rain has abated a bit but the exhaustion, confusion and pain have intensified. Each step now is agony and I am stopping every 5 meters or so. 

I’m inhaling cocoa leaves like there’s no tomorrow and Robinzon offers me more camel piss but I’ve come to realize that there is no amount of cocoa leaves, Advil, tiger balm and camel piss that is going to even make a dent in my agony. Robinzon is trying to be optimistic but I can tell he seems worried about me.  He says, “it’s your vacation, try to enjoy it.” This is no fucking vacation and it takes every ounce of willpower to keep me from throwing him off the cliff. 

I’m recognizing what is now becoming a familiar progression or should I say descent into hell. While the hour of sleep helped in the beginning, the burning in my legs returns way too quickly.  The inability to breath is bad enough but the concrete legs is way worse. The black edges on the periphery of my vision return and soon I’ve returned to my confused state. 

 I’ve become convinced that someone is inflicting this agony on me.  I look around for the culprit and come to realize there is another person with us besides Justin, Corey and Robinzon.  Who the hell is this person who suddenly appeared in our group out of thin air? It takes me a good half hour of intense concentration to remember that he is the Russian dude who started with us. Call it gut instinct, but once I remember, I immediately know he’s responsible for the agony in my legs.  He told us that his company is letting him work remotely as he travels the world but I know this isn’t true. His company thinks he is working from home and has no idea that he’s traveling.  He must have found out that I’m writing this blog and thinks I’m going to expose him.  Thus, he has somehow figured out how to make every step I take 5 times more painful than everyone else in the group.  He’s out to ensure that I never make it back to write this blog but little does he know that I’m onto him.

I have no idea how long I’ve been slogging up the pass and everything becomes a blur at some.  The pain is so unbearable that I black out. Yes, like when you’ve drank too much and you are able to physically stumble home but you have no recollection of it the next morning. Well that was me sans the drinking part. I apparently stumbled the rest of the way to the top of the pass but I don’t remember it.  I think that when the conscious mind can’t bear the current situation anymore, it seeks out the “black room” in the inner chambers of my mind where a peaceful blackness washes over me.

Apparently, when we got to the top of the pass, Robinzon was asking me questions and wasn’t thrilled with my incoherent answers. The descent is really steep downhill with all sorts and manners of different sized and uneven rocks.  Robinzon declares that we must carry me down.  With Robinzon on one side, Corey on the other, my arms over their shoulders and Justin carrying my backpack, we start down. Of course, I don’t remember any of this. The next thing I do remember is intense waves of pain in my ankle as I fall onto the rocks below. Apparently walking down the Inca Trail, even being carried by two people, in a semi-conscious, blacked out state is hazardous to my health as I twisted my ankle on the rocks and went down hard. 

At least the pain in my ankle has snapped me out of my blackout and back to reality.  That’s the good news, the bad news is that now I can’t use my right ankle / leg.  We continue on (what choice do we have?) but the pace slows to a glacial pace.  It takes a full four hours to carry me down the pass to the campsite. We arrive at camp at 6pm, about 4 hours after we were supposed to arrive.  The eleven porters give me a clapping, standing ovation.  I’m way beyond too exhausted to be mortified and embarrassed by this and more just glad I’m still alive.

 I’m not even sure if I ate dinner but I know I was too tired to even talk. I get through dinner as quick as possible and crash fast asleep in my tent.