Trekking to Machu Picchu is a once in a lifetime experience, and I am so glad to have been able to do it. Once in a lifetime, that is, unless you are a guide or a porter on the Inca Trail.
Our guide had done the Inca Trail 750 times! If you think that's remarkable listen to this:
Each year they have a race, just local porters and guides, across the whole Inca Trail. End to end in one go. This trail is at serious altitude and takes us mere mortals four days of hard slog, and it is hard. Really, really hard.
So how long do you think it takes the locals to do this four-day strenuous trek? Three days? Two? Nope. The record holder is a porter who completed the entire Inca Trail in under four hours. How incredible is that?
Yes, they are used to the altitude, and yes, they are madly fit, but nevertheless I think the most incredible thing here is the mindset. And the belief of what it is possible for the human body to accomplish. The mind has such a powerful influence on the body, more so, I think, than the hours spent in a gym preparing. If you believe you can accomplish something, that knowledge is far more powerful than the actual prep. What you believe is possible is the greatest influence of all.
Consider this: when Roger Bannister broke what was widely considered to be an impossible barrier - the four-minute mile - back on May 6, 1954, beliefs were challenged and changed overnight. It had to be possible because Bannister had done it.
