The Best Part of Machu Picchu Was the 5 Days Before It
How to make friends in your 40s, and why it’s hard
It was the night before the trek.
10 of us crammed into a little briefing room in Cusco, listening to our guides run through what the next 5 days would look like.
A family from Colorado and California, a couple from Chicago. Everyone decked in proper hiking gear, asking intelligent questions about the trek and the camping.
Liam and I were very much not asking intelligent questions.
We felt so intimidated, everyone else looked like legit experienced hikers!
Honestly, my main and only concern was the toilet situation (bush baños, it turns out, aren’t that bad, I just didn’t know that yet)
You could feel the nerves and the excitement bouncing off the walls, until someone cracked a joke about avoiding meat because of gas at altitude (I WILL NOT elaborate further, just google HAFE…it’s a thing).
The whole room burst out laughing. That was it. That was the moment.
We were off at 4.30am the next morning, the 10 of us and guides in a minibus for 2 hours heading to Kilometre 82, the start of the Inca Trail.
By the time we took our first steps, everyone was already chatting. By that evening’s dinner, it felt like we had known each other for a lot longer than a few hours.
I’ve been travelling for 8 months now, and if I’m being honest, I haven’t really felt uncomfortable.
My hubby and I are lucky enough to be able to do a lot of travels together. We always had a nice hotel or Airbnb to get back to, a nice hot shower.
But despite coming from the French Alps and hiking on the foothills of Mont-Blanc as a kid, I’ve lived in cities since I’m 20 years old. Plus Singapore isn’t exactly full of challenging peaks (fun fact: Singapore’s tallest ‘mountain’ is 163.6 metres or 537 feet above sea level).
This was really different. 5 days of trekking, 4 nights of camping, no mobile coverage, with 8 other strangers plus our tour guides.
We had never done a multi-day hike like this, and honestly we absolutely LOVED it!
The funny thing is that a group trek gave me what fancy luxury retreats usually promise, right? No phones for a few days, some daily movement, real food, sleep by 8pm and actual human connection.
We paid $1,000 per person. I’m pretty sure a similar experience in Bali or Tulum would be 4 times the price (ok but maybe with nicer toilets…)
Maybe some of you already know this feeling.
I didn’t know it until the Inca Trail. Which tells you something about how comfortable my life has been.
Here’s what was happening in those 5 days: climbing at altitude where the air is thinner and everything feels a little harder, breaking bread together as a group in our little tent at the end of each day. The food was genuinely fabulous, we even had CAKE!
People encouraging each other up the steep bits, waiting at the top, handing over snacks without being asked.
Small little things, but they add up so fast when there’s nowhere else to go.
Researchers call this pain as social glue. It’s the idea that shared physical challenge accelerates bonding between strangers. Brock Bastian, Jolanda Jetten and Laura Ferris published it in 2014: strangers put through mildly uncomfortable tasks together reported more bonding than groups doing the same tasks painlessly. Although when a Slovak team re-ran the cooperation half of that study in 2022 with 158 students, that effect didn’t hold. So, a good description, to be taken with a pinch or 2 of salt. What isn’t shaky: in 2010, Holt-Lunstad, Smith and Layton pooled 148 studies covering 308,849 people and found strong social relationships associated with a 50% higher likelihood of survival.
Basically: we survived the same hill = ok, we are family now.
After this experience, I think there’s a lot to be said for doing something hard together.
Now you’re probably not reading this from the wilderness. Maybe you’re allergic to the very idea of wilderness.
But you don’t need to quit your job and fly to Peru for the Inca Trail.
What the trail had that normal life doesn’t:
1) something hard happening to everyone at the same time, with the same people, more than once
2) no way to leave early without everyone noticing
Two conditions, that’s it.
A running club works. An actual group, usually with a WhatsApp chat, where people will notice if you don’t show up. The shared suffering of the last kilometre is always a great bonding experience!
My point is, the hard thing doesn’t have to be a mountain, it just has to be shared.
Machu Picchu was never on my bucket list, it was more of a “we’re spending a year in Latin America, how do we not go?” kind of decision.
On night 2 of camping, I was freezing on a mountain top, genuinely unsure how 5 days could possibly feel like anything other than forever. It did not feel like it was going to go fast.
But it went fast. So fast. TOO FAST!
When we got to the Sun Gate and Machu Picchu appeared below us, I actually cried.
I was so emotional because of the 5 days it took to get there, and the 9 people I got there with.
Machu Picchu was spectacular. But I had already had the best part.
The Unwritten Check-In
This week’s bare minimum: put yourself in one situation this week where something mildly hard is happening to everyone at the same time, with the same people, more than once. A group run. A class you commit to weekly. A dinner you actually stay for. Let the hard bit happen.
Ask yourself: what am I opting out of that I could stay for? And who would I be closer to if I did?
With love,
Noemie x
P.S. If you want to build more of this into your everyday life without overhauling everything, the Bare Minimum Habit Plan is exactly that: small anchors that actually stick. You can find it at unwritten.coach/summerplan
Key Sources
Brock Bastian, Jolanda Jetten and Laura J. Ferris, ‘Pain as Social Glue: Shared Pain Increases Cooperation’ (2014) 25(11) Psychological Science 2079 <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614545886>.
Jakub Prochazka and others, ‘Pain as Social Glue: A Preregistered Direct Replication of Experiment 2 of Bastian et al. (2014)’ (2022) Psychological Science <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35129413/>.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith and J. Bradley Layton, ‘Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review’ (2010) 7(7) PLoS Medicine e1000316 <https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316>.
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.