Expectations

I will admit that I was very anxious about hiking the Inca Trail. As we loaded up into the minivan that would take us to the trailhead, my stomach churned and my palms started to sweat. I had flashbacks of my failed attempt at climbing Mount Quandry, one of Colorado’s famed 14’ers where I was sucking wind so hard I had to turn around. Plus, I was moderately intimidated by my super-sporty sis-in-law who regularly engages in adventure sports including a 24 hour bike race, a 12 hour desert hike and various other hard core outdoor activities. I was just worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I didn’t want to be “that” girl who was holding everyone up. Also rattling around in my head was the voice of someone who described the Inca Trail as “a death march.” So, as you can imagine, I was nervous. I love hiking…but I don’t do death marches. So, in preparation for what I thought would be a most unpleasant four-day debacle, I decided that I was going to shift into the auto drive mental mode that I have found that keeps me alive (and mostly sane) on my many marathon fustercluck trips to the jungle. I would push through it. It may not be fun, but I would get through it.

Then, as were queuing up in the intense Andean sun to go through the first checkpoint, something changed. I got this burst of adrenaline. The first few hours of hiking were cake. Then I cruised up the first big hill on pace with the rest of our group (Jer, my bro, sis-in-law and guide). At the top, I recovered quickly while hikers from other groups were gasping for air. We kept moving on and cruised right past them. We didn’t bother to take a break, because we honestly didn’t need one. The pace was great and we kept cruising. We were hiking so fast, in fact, that we were the first group to arrive at the designated lunch spot where the porters put up mess tents and cooked up a steamy hot meal. We actually had to wait quite a while because we got there so fast. On the following days our guide later had to amend the meal plans in order to accommodate our fast pace. It turned out we were one of the fastest and fittest groups he had hiked with (or so we say in the retelling of this story).
So, as per usual, I totally overfretted the hike. What I thought was going to be a death march ended up being one of the coolest experiences of my life. It may have been helped by the fact that I thought I would be miserable and instead was euphoric. The psychology of expectations.

So, we later decided to apply this lowered expectations theory to our bus ride from the Ecuadorian coast (over the Andes) and down to the jungle. I told Tom & Hannah that they were going to HATE the night bus…that it was going to be really hot, then really cold, really loud, uncomfortable, scary, incredibly long and overall miserable. I tried to make them have such dismally low expectations that they would think that the bus ride was actually good because it wasn’t actually that bad. (How’s that for some psychology?). Well, this little mind trick almost worked….were it not for the fact that Hannah had stomach issues, we had to get off the bus twice for security checks—including an intimidating full body pat down, and the bus route was not direct (we thought it was…and instead stopped in Guayaquil and Ambato) so instead of taking approximately 9.5 hours, the total trip took 12 and included all of the other qualities I previously described. So…the bus ride was pretty miserable, as expected. Which, I argue, is better than expecting a luxury ride and instead get a typical Ecua bus experience. Right? Cuz THAT would have been even MORE miserable. Like I said, it is all about expectations.