The Salcantay Trek: What to Do When a Crazed Horse Breaks Your Collarbone

This is the second installment of a three-part series about my trek to Machu Picchu. Read the first installment and the third installment here!

The second day of the Salcantay trek was beautiful.

We’d had a rather dramatic start to the morning with my bout of altitude sickness at the Salcantay Pass, but eventually we arrived at our lunch spot under crisp blue skies and snowy peaks and took a well-deserved rest.

Our planned route for the afternoon was simple enough. Once the steep ascent to the pass is over, day two of the Salcantay trail is pretty much a long, slow descent: the landscape around us would change from alpine and snowy to dense sections of forest until we reached our campsite for the night.

The paths we began to follow wound around the mountainside. They were narrow and somewhat rocky, and to our right was a valley thick with treetops. I couldn’t see much beyond them, so had no real sense of how steep the drop might be.

Suddenly, I heard a shout. I turned around, expecting to see that someone behind me had fallen over. Instead, I saw the figure of my friend Fiona; she was almost horizontal and strangely frozen, with a cloud of dust around her.

But more prominently? There was a giant black horse straight in front of her: head looming, its eyes bloodshot, veins bulging at the sides of its neck.

Only after the realisation that this mad creature was charging down the path, with no regard for us, did I hear the thundering of its hooves and feel the heat as its body brushed violently past me. I was knocked, back first, into the rocks before I knew what was happening.

The mood shifted in an absolute instant. Without any understanding as to why, we were suddenly in a war zone.

Broken bones with no solution in the mountains of Peru

The contents of our backpacks began flying across the path as we hurriedly searched for baby wipes, clean water, antiseptic, painkillers: anything which could potentially help.

“Does anyone know how to make a sling?” someone shouted, as Fiona’s cries got louder.

“It’s my shoulder, it really hurts!” she wailed, cradling her injured arm with the other.

She pulled the edge of her top down, and against the pale skin of her collarbone we saw a jutting lump of bone. It didn’t look right. And when Fi glanced down and saw what we could see, her face twisted into an expression of awful, vulnerable realisation.

“Oh god, it’s broken! I’ve broken my collarbone, haven’t I?”

Suggestions of a solution were thrown out into the still dusty air. Was there an emergency helicopter anywhere? A doctor nearby? Where was the nearest road? But our clearly shell-shocked guide shook his head at our every suggestion.

There was no phone signal in the mountains. There was no drivable road, no place for a helicopter to land, and no medical facilities anywhere near our location.

We were completely stranded in the mountains of Peru.

Fi was panicking and could barely stand, let alone walk. It quickly became apparent that our only option was to carry her closer to civilisation. Unfortunately, our group was comprised of six girls, two guys and one panicking guide – and it was obvious that our combined efforts weren’t going to get her very far.

But as luck would have it, an organised group of trekkers soon caught up with us, and in their midst were two trainee nurses and a few medical students. In no time, a tall burly Irish lad named Connor (who was carrying a tree branch as a hiking pole) became our new favourite person in Peru.

First stirrings of a rescue

Within a few minutes, Connor the nurse had established that her collarbone was almost certainly broken. She’d need a sling to keep it supported, he informed us, and we had to get her to a doctor as soon as possible.

And if nobody was coming to help us, we’d have to go to them.

Never underestimate the ability for a group of strangers to band together. Even after experiencing an element of the same when we crossed the Peruvian border, it was still amazing to watch various people construct a stretcher from walking poles and waterproof jackets, and at least eight different men from various trekking groups immediately volunteer to help carry an injured girl through the mountains.

Once we’d pumped Fi full of as much medication as we could muster, she started calming down enough to allow the guys to get her on the stretcher. And so off we went, accompanied by a substantial group of mildly confused trekkers, none of whom really wanted to overtake us and leave the drama behind.

The walk felt never ending. Not because of the difficulty, but because we worried constantly about how Fi was doing – and what was going to happen when we finally found her help.

An eventual sense of enlightenment

Various medically trained trekkers tried to put us at ease; that collarbone breaks don’t need a cast, but that she might be in need of an operation – in which case, Cusco would be the only place she could go.

And no, there was barely any way she’d make it to Machu Picchu now.

After four hours of walking/stretcher carrying we finally reached our intended campsite for the night, and informed Fi of our group’s decision; that as many of us as possible would go onwards to Cusco with her to find a hospital. There was no way we wanted to leave her side in her current state – and we wanted to make sure Sam, her boyfriend, had as much support from us as we could offer.

But sadly we didn’t have a choice in how things went.

Once they’d put Fi in the front passenger seat, the porters instructed us to jump in the back of a truck alongside the tents and gas canisters, and our group drove two hours through the darkening evening to Santa Teresa.

This was the location of the third night’s campsite. We were told to stay behind, while Sam and Fi drove onwards to the medical centre.

The rest of us spent the evening staring blankly into the heat of a campfire, still trying to absorb what had happened. Unbeknownst to us, the medical centre’s nurses were attempting to convince Fi that her collarbone was only dislocated – “I’ll try to pop it back into place” – only leaving her alone when she started screaming.

They had to endure another drive to a third clinic, before being told to board a night bus to Cusco at 3am, where she finally had an operation at 1pm the next day – a full twenty four hours since the horse first charged past her.

We wouldn’t see her again until we’d eventually reached Machu Picchu and returned to Cusco.

Musings on the Salcantay mountain

The Salcantay trek is known to be difficult, but none of us expected it to be like this. Nobody could have imagined that one horse would have the ability to eclipse our day, our trek, and destroy two people’s chances to see Machu Picchu.

And the overarching worry that remains etched into my head? The crazed horse was wearing a saddle, but no rider. Despite spending over an hour in the same spot on the trail as we tried to cope with Fi’s injuries, not a single person came past in search of their lost horse.

But maybe Salcantay does watch over the people who trek along its passes.

Because although Fi’s luck seemed terrible at first, things could have been a hell of a lot worse. Maybe the small piles of rocks that sit at Salcantay pass do more than simply honour the mountain gods.

Perhaps they protect their creators as well.

This is the second installment of a three-part series about my trek to Machu Picchu. Read the first installment and the third installment here!