The Inca Trail

This blog is by Samara since Mom didn't make the hike :(

Day 1:

At the start of the trail

The night before was really rough with Mom and Rob being sick so I was operating on about 2 hours sleep - not great conditions for hiking! I was the slowest that day so got to know Ever, the assistant guide who brought up the rear, quite well.


The scenery was very much like BC except squished together and pushed up. The mountains were so close and so high. The hike was a fairly easy one, rolling terrain with only a few steep, prolonged uphills.
We stopped for lunch at a farm-type area, lots of animals including this REALLY ugly rooster and a very cute kitty. I went to pet him and my sunglasses fell off my head onto him - oops!

We continued hiking for about 2 hours after lunch and then had snack time - popcorn! We ended up having that every day at snack time and always polished it off.

Dinner was only about an hour later so we didn't eat much. And then pretty much straight to bed. It gets dark incredibly fast. I've never been this close to the equator so I guess that's just how it is here. Not like at home where is gets dark over a period of an hour or more - here it's like someone suddenly turned out the lights!

Day 2:
This is know as the hell day so we were all a bit nervous. And it was uphill almos the entire time. However, I did much better and wasn't the last one. I think some of the younger hikers pushed too hard the first day and it affected them. One girl in particular had a lot of problems with the elevation and was way back in the group. She was really upset because she runs stairs at home and is really fit so it was pretty frustrating for her. The elevation affected all of us. Rob and Warren said they noticed it but you wouldn't know from their speed. From the last rest stop to the top of Dead Woman's Pass is supposed to take 1.5 to 2 hours - Warren did it in 34 min. and Rob did it in 47 min. I'd be annoyed but Warren came back down and carried my pack the rest of the way (approx. half way) so I managed to finish in 1 hr 15 min. The elevation at the top is almost 14,000 feet - it felt amazing to make it up there!

At to top!!

Looking back from where we'd come.  Our camp was basically at the bottom of this valley - huge elevation gain in approx. 5 hours of hiking.

We were told that this uphill was steps the whole way (ugh) but it wasn`t. It was uphill with a couple of steps every 6 to 10 feet - much easier to hike than solid stairs. However, the way down to camp was solid stairs...for two hours! Our legs were super shaky at the bottom. The porters RAN down which was crazy to see and really scary as we were on a cliff edge a lot of times and we wondered if they ever lost a porter over the edge and didn`t notice until he didn`t show up at camp!

So the toilets were rather gross - a hole in the ground with nothing to really brace yourself or hold onto. They generally were fairly disgusting as people aren`t used to having to aim. Also, after two hours of downhill, squatting was almost impossible!

Day 3:
This was all of our favorite day. The beginning was a bit of a nightmare though because it was uphill for about an hour and half...all stairs. The elevation was lower than the day before so breathing was easier but still not a nice way to start out. We saw a number of Incan ruins.

Rob in the ruins.

After a couple of hours we were in the Cloud Forest which was beautiful. Mostly rolling terrain through the forest with the mountains showing up periodically at viewpoints. It was supposed to be buggy but we didn`t notice any and didn`t have to use bug spray. At some point I was bitten by a spider. I didn`t notice so I expect it was while I was sleeping. Based on the bite size (you can actually see where both fangs went in), the consensus was that the spider was at least as big as the end of thumb...shiver.... We also decided that it wasn`t poisonous since I`m still here :)

We stopped for lunch on this gorgeous cliffside with llamas and an amazing view. The cooks baked us a cake for dessert - amazing! The food was very good the whole trip - pretty amazing that they can do that when the have to carry everything from place to place including the kitchens. There are no permanent structures on the Inca Trail except the washrooms.

Lunch spot

We made our way to some huge terraces on the side of the hill. You look a the jungle-like growth on each side of the terraces and wonder how long it took to build them - it would have been an incredible effort. As we are sitting there, we can see some bad weather starting to roll in. We don`t want to get wet to we practically run down the trail to the campsite which was about 45 min. away. We made it just in time - the heaven`s opened and it poured. We were actually really lucky with the weather - sunny in the morning, clouding over when it started to get too hot and then rain after we go to camp. That pattern happened all four days which, according to our guide, is highly unusual for this time of year.

Terraces



















Day 4:
Up at 3:45am - ugh - breakfast at 4 and then pack up and ready to go by 4:30. We hiked a short distance to the checkpoint which does not open until 5:30 for safety reasons (someone died falling of the trail while hiking in the dark). So, we were lined up with all of the other hikers waiting for it to open. After it opened, it was approx. 1 hour of fairly easy walking until the Sun Gate which overlooks Machu Picchu. Wow, wow, wow - we made it! After that it was about another hour of downhill into Machu Picchu where we met back up with Mom.
We had an hour and a half guided tour of the ruins and then had some free time to explore them on our own. It was pretty cool.

A neat thing that happened was right before our last group shot - one of the couples on our trip got engaged.  He tried to get down on his knee but he'd had knee surgery a few months ago and after the four day trek, he was pretty sore.  Everyone was crying and hugging and the poor guides were trying to organize us for our picture!  That picture's on Warren's camera so I don't have it here.

Group shot at the Sun Gate looking over Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu from about halfway down

Reunited with Mom!

After that, we took the bus down to Aguas Calientes and had some lunch and then took the train back to Ollantaytambo (Sacred Valley) and then a mini van back to Cusco (about 3.5 - 4 hours travelling). I was sitting way too close the front of the van - the driving is scary - no real rules of the road. After we almost collided with the second truck, I decided to close my eyes and try to have a nap. Ignorance is bliss :)

The hike was physically and mentally challenging but was definitely worthwhile. We all felt amazing that we had accomplished this thing. The only sad thing was that Mom couldn`t be there too.