Birthday Surprises
On the second day of our Inca Trek one of our fellow trekkers overheard Janet and I talking about my birthday. He brought it up at lunch and by dinner the tour company had arranged a little celebration.
After dinner the gas lamp went out and in came a cake with “Feliz Dia Marc” written across it with dulce de leche and a single candle. Everyone started singing happy birthday. How the cook had managed to bake a cake at an altitude of 3800 meters and over a propane stove will boggle me for years. We suspect he did it in a pressure cooker. The cake was dense and tasted a little like pancakes, though not unpleasantly so. The icing was fluffy and not overly sweet. Overall, it was one of the best birthday cakes I’ve ever had. To top the night off, the guy that originally heard it was my birthday pulled a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel from his back pack and gave it to me as a gift.
I had expected my birthday to go by quietly, but it turned into a very special, memorable birthday.