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 Forget all that flowery language the guide books use to describe the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu.
Here is what my wife and I learned while slugging up and down vertical steps for four days, at altitudes over 14,000 feet, jamming our mouths with nasty-tasting-but
-stimulating coca leaves to fight dizziness while trying not to smell our sweaty, unshowered selves: The Incas were hard-core.
And they must have had especially hard buttocks, thanks to all those steps.
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AT THE HEAD OF THE TRAIL
 OK, so the trail taught us a lot more than that. There's a reason it's one of the most beaten tourist paths on the planet.
From a firsthand look at one of South America's most powerful empires 500 years ago, to the crushing poverty that is painfully apparent along the trail, the hike is both a mind ride and a daunting physical challenge.
A bus picked us up at 5 a.m. on a Friday from our hotel in Cuzco, taking us and about 20 other hikers on a windy, four-hour journey through the Andes mountains to the official beginning of the trail, a stop on the road called "Kilometer 82."
Our guide, a 25-year-old Peruvian named Fredy Soloma, introduced himself and the other four tourists in our group, a pair of 30-something couples from Australia and Switzerland.
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THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
Five men, our "porters," strapped huge packs on their backs that included our tents, sleeping pads, a gas stove, plates, food and our backpacks. The unwieldy objects were wrapped in blue tarps and tied with a rope. The loads were so big that they dwarfed the men, who were sandle-clad, skinny and not taller than 5 feet 5 inches.
"Don't worry, everybody," said Fredy, snapping me out of my stare of amazement at the porters. "Today will be an easy day walking. It's flat, and about five hours."
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 A DAUNTING START
Within 20 minutes, everybody was huffing and puffing.
Apparently "flat" meant this: a burst of steep incline followed by a few minutes of plateau, then another long and steep incline, over and over again. We were only at about 9,200 feet, but that was enough to make the lungs work on overdrive.
We crossed bridges over small creeks, a small cemetery and little houses made of mud that lacked electricity and running water.
Just about anywhere you looked, there was a menacing and beautiful jagged mountain top, some covered with snow. But looking up was a risk -- because about every 10 steps, there was another monster load of donkey poop.
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LOST, OR PURPOSELY FORGOTTEN?
 Fredy told us only locals were allowed to use donkeys, and there were places on the trail they couldn't pass. Hence the porters, who whizzed by to set up our camp site and start cooking hours before we arrived.
In the tent that first night, too tired to pop the raging blisters on my toes, I joked to my wife, Lorena, that perhaps Machu Picchu, the "lost city," was never really lost; maybe the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro decided it was better to conquer seaside lands after trying the trail himself.
Besides, it was hard to imagine how a large city, which scientists believe was built in the early 1500s, could just disappear until American Hiram Bingham stumbled upon it in 1911.
Our second day would be the most difficult of the journey. Like most days, we would walk about six miles. The difference was that this was all straight up on a purely stone-stepped path.
I got out a plastic bag of coca leaves that I had bought for the equivalent of 33 cents. They taste disgusting but, being the main ingredient in cocaine, they push aside hunger, headaches, altitude sickness and other physical ailments.
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 RELIEF STATION
Even coca leaves could only help so much with stone steps that were each two to three feet high. I had to plant my walking stick on the step above and thrust myself up before taking a breath and doing it again.
It took us about five hours to reach the highest point along the trail, about 14,000 feet, morbidly named "Dead Woman's Pass."
About halfway, I met 14-year-old Augusto Herrera. He was selling Gatorade and water bottles he and his mom had hauled miles to offer to thirsty tourists. How much did they make?
About $10 a day, which supported him, his younger brother and mother.
"It's not much," he said.
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 MONEY WALKS
While the tour companies rake it in, charging tourists $300 to $600 each for the trek, people living along the trail are very poor. There are few schools, no government services and no hope that tomorrow will be better — despite the throngs of affluent tourists passing by each day.
The porters don't have it much better, earning roughly between $30 and $70 per trip. Still, they consider themselves well-paid.
"I make three times what I made working as a chef in Cuzco," said Armando Taco, 34, who was a porter (and our cook).
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RAIN ON OUR PARADE
Only a few minutes after triumphantly reaching "Dead Woman's Pass," a cloud moved in, and in an instant, the sun disappeared and was replaced by rain and icy winds.
The rain continued all afternoon as we descended for three hours, on the same kind of knee-crushing steps, to our next campsite. The rain never stopped. It poured all night, and then the entire next day.
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 FINALLY, A SIGHTING
The trail on day three snaked through lush tropical vegetation and tunnels the Incas had etched out of the mountains.
The porters didn't seem to notice the weather. They reminded me of the Chasquis, or Inca messengers, who were said to cover the 20-mile trail in less than a day — the same one that we struggled to do in four.
The fourth day, we woke up at 3 a.m., soaked, smelly, and exhausted. We were also giddy thinking that we would soon see Machu Picchu. We found ourselves running on a dark and muddy trail trying to beat the sun to Intipunku, or the Sun Port, where trekkers gaze across a valley for that first glimpse ...
Then there were shouts of jubilation, high-fives and awe. Nestled between mountains, a majestic world emerged. Huge stone structures, from houses to dome-shaped temples, gave it a medieval look. But the lush green grass and vegetation also radiated life.
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SLOGGER'S REWARD
Arriving at Machu Picchu this way, the hard way, instead of just rolling in on the train, helped us better understand who the Incas were. Closing my eyes, I imagined them arriving at the Sun Port before descending to their city, carrying with them an air of ruggedness and pride.
The journey felt worth every painful step, and heck, after such a workout, our buttocks were a bit harder, too.
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asap contributor Peter Prengaman is an AP reporter in Los Angeles.
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