...Probably not, but I'll try...
Will and I had signed up to hike the Inca Trail, a 4 day/ 3 night 50 K (35 mi.) trek, months ago. We were told its so popular that you need to book in advance. The Peruvian government requires all hikers go with an official tour group, so we decided to choose a group called SAS, by the recommendation of Lonely Planet.
Last Saturday night we had our briefing with the our two tour guides, Ruben and Julio, as well as a "meet and greet" with the rest of our group. All together there were 14 of us, 5 Americans, 2 Canadians, 6 Brits, and 1 Dutchie. Everyone was really cool and we all got along immediately.
Just to give you an idea of the kind of trip this would be, we were all served hot tea during the briefing!
Ruben explained to us the itinerary, passed out the sleeping bags and pads, and told us to get some sleep.
Sunday morning Will and I got picked up by the van, with the rest of the group, and we were off to Kilometer 82, the official start of the Inca Trail. After registering with control and showed our passports we started hiking. The plan was to do 14 K the first day, hiking through the Peruvian Jungle, seeing Incan Ruins on the way and gaining elevation to put us several K below Dead Woman's Pass, the highest elevation (4200 m, 13,600 ft) for the trek. Keep in mind that we were hiking on the actual Inca Trail, the same trail the Incans used over 600 years agao to travel in and out of Machu Pichu... Absolutely amazing! At camp that night we had a crazy dinner prepared for us!! No joke- a four course meal! One thing we did not do on this trip- was go hungry!
Day 2 was the hardest, by far. we were woken up at 6, and planned to be on the trail by 7. We had to climb up and over Dead Woman's Pass, then down, then back up through another pass. This is the rainy season too, so each day we had alot of rain, luckily, though just sporadic showers. Each day we stopped and explored some of the Inca Ruins and had storytime courtesy of Ruben! He would explain to us some stuff and we would get to ask questions.
Question: "Ruben, how old did the Incans live until?"
Rubens: "Ahh, The Incan people would live till 130 to 140 years old!! they live very long becuase they drink corn beer and chew coka leaves!"
...yeah, Rubens had a lot of information about Incan culture, problem was, slightly skewed information!...
Anyway... with day 2 down we were over halfway to Machu Pichu. Because we did over 16 K on day 2 we took it easy on day 3 and hiked only 7 K. We camped at Winawayna, a large camp for all the tour groups, about 2 hours outside of Machu Pichu.
We woke up the morning of day 4 at 4 am ate, broke camp, and headed out for Machu Pichu. This was the most exciting day by far. With headlamps we hiked in the dark through the jungle, on the mossy cut Incan stones, everyone was completely silent (maybe because we woke up at 4am!?), the only sound to be heard was the constant chatter of secadas, birds, and frogs. It literally felt like i was in an Indiana Jones movie!
We arrived at Machu Pichu!...
...only we couldn't tell!... it was completely covered by clouds!
But that's ok, Rubens insisted the weather would get better... "right, Rubens, just like the Incans lived until 140.."
We walked down into the ruins, and Ruben explained to us about the temples, the houses, and the fountains that were supplied with a built underground plumbing system! The craftsmanship that the Incas had is unbelievable, they could precisely carve extremely hard granite with only hand tools, nothing that could ever be duplicated today. All while our Incan education, the weather did clear up! the views were amazing!! (as you can see)
After Machu Pichu, we had lunch down at Aguas Calientes, a town below Machu Pichu. We said our good-byes to Rubens and Julio and got on the train back to Cusco... a very long and painfully slow train... 4 hours!
I still can't believe I got to visit Machu Pichu, it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
I highly recommend it! check out all the other pictures! http://picasaweb.google.com/Derek.Wielkopolski
1 comment:
Nice report. We weren't able to get a permit for the Inca Trail, so we did the Lares Valley. We had the same thing with the food - 4 course meals 3 times a day. Our guide's name was Socrates.
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