Just one day before embarking on the Inca Trail, the classic 4-day 3-night trek to Machu Picchu, two very significant things happened. First, I got sick with E. coli poisoning.

It was devastating, but you can (mostly) hide such a thing in photographs. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, my main pair of sunglasses broke. There’s no hiding that, I looked like a douche in these ridiculous aviators for the entire trek.

The E. coli poisoning seemed to be nature’s way of rewarding me for my pre-hiking health kick. See, before embarking on the Ina Trail, I somehow managed to achieve both my goals of quitting smoking and drinking. I was feeling pretty great about myself, and figured, why not go all the way?

So, while everyone else celebrated their last restaurant meal before the Inca Trail with a greasy cheeseburger and fries, I demurely ordered the healthy chicken Caesar salad wrap. This might have made sense back in Texas, but the lettuce was washed in poisonous Peruvian tap water and made me sicker than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

E. coli poisoning taught me a lot about myself, and revealed a talent I never knew I had: In a Turkish style toilet, no less, I am able to both poop diarrhea and throw up, AT THE SAME TIME.

I kid you not.

I had to hide my condition the best I could, or the guides wouldn’t have let me join the trekking group, and all would have been for naught. Luckily, just like on the EVEREST TREK, you couldn’t really see how miserable I was feeling just by looking at me. Sometimes I wish that in these photographs I had a massive head wound, with blood trickling all down my face, so they would be more indicative of the kind of physical pain I was in.

What was visible, however, in almost every single photograph, are these hideous last-minute replacements for my broken sunglasses. In every photo, I look like I’m living out some kind of childhood Top Gun fantasy. The first Top Gun, to be clear. (Upon leaving the theater of the second one, my fantasies had changed somewhat, and the film had me much more interested in joining a shirtless volleyball league than learning to fly a fighter jet…).

Anyways, I hiked the whole Inca Trail wearing these two droopy windshields on my face. Combined with my insufferable hat, what a sleazy treat I was.

“Ladies…. Which one of you would like to join me this evening? Unfortunately, I don’t have my hot tub or my CHOPPER with me, but I’ll be making some mean pedialyte nightcaps back in my tent, if you’d care to stop by… “

Seriously, though, all jokes aside— one of the guys in our group had gotten E. coli too, but a few days earlier than me, so he was further along and on the mend. It was his backpack full of emergency pedialytes and other diarrhea medications that saved me and made it possible for me to make it all the way to Machu Picchu. There were several people throughout the 4-day trek that we saw being carried down on stretchers, and that so easily could have been me.

Sadly, in his backpack there weren’t any extra sunglasses.

Read about the wall-licking llamas of the Inca Trail HERE.

Or, read about Glamping: A Dangerous Gateway Drug, HERE!