The Inka Trail - day 2

We were woken up at 5.30 am every day when one of the porters came by the tent and gave us tea. A few minutes later he would come again, saying "agua caliente", which means hot water. After having some tea and a very quick morning shower, we packed all our belongings and got up for breakfast which the porters had already prepared for us. While we were enjoying our breakfast the porters took down and packed our tents. 

Some people are more awake then others at 5.30 am. Guess which kind I am... 

It always felt a bit bad to have the porters doing everything for us. We were told to not help them with for example taking down the tents, since they would do it faster on their own. This is probably true since they had done it quite a few times before. They were also responsible for the tents, so that if we would have damaged them, the porters would have to pay for it.

After finishing our breakfast we started the hike of the second day. This day is quite a bit tougher than the first day. You walk about 11-12 km both of the days, but whereas the first day is very flat, you climb quite a bit more than a kilometre the second day. The morning starts at 3 000 m in Wayllabamba and already before lunch you reach the highest point of the whole trail, which is called Warmiwanusca or Dead Woman's pass and is at 4215 m. This climb is the toughest part of the whole trek. 

Apparently the Finnish helped the Peruvians with the park close to Huayllabamba (or Wayllabamba), where I found this sign.

A small river crossing the trail. 

Beautiful view early on the second day. 

You can see the trail going up just above the trees.

Every now and then you hear someone shouting "porters", which means that there are porters wanting to pass you in the trail. Despite their heavier load they easily pass (most) tourists. When you see that some porters want to pass, you shout "porters" to let the people in front know that there are faster people coming. This also works if you want to pass a slower group yourself.

Some of the porters have serious trekking shoes, but many run around in sandals. Then they often also put grass in the sandals to improve the friction when they start getting wet from sweat. It looks a bit funny, but it seems to work well, at least for them and their feet that are used to it. I don't think it would have worked as well for me.

Most of the porters use really large backpacks, but some of them simply carry enormous bags that they tie together themselves, see the picture below. I even saw some of them carry fancy modern backpacks inside bags as the one below. First I thought this very strange, but then I noticed how they somehow wrap the bag around their shoulders, which should spread the weight better and might make it easier than a normal backpack. They are also used to using this kind  of construction, so it seems to work well.

There are many different companies operating on the Inka Trail and organising these treks. There seem to be some that are very good, some that are less good where for example the porters are not treated so nicely, but most seem to be good. I think that as long as you choose a serious company, you can't really go wrong. Most of the companies are probably from Peru, but there are also some foreign companies. These can be very good, but I agree with our guide who said that he prefers if people choose the Peruvian companies (not necessarily his company) since the money then stays in Peru and doesn't go to the for example Canadian companies.

Some llamas enjoying the view.

The last place where you can buy water and snacks is another campsite called Llulluchampa. The prices constantly increases the further along the Inka Trail you are, so this is also the most expensive place. The price also seemed to depend on who you were and how much Spanish you spoke. We didn't camp here, but we did stop for some snacks and to watch the Llamas.

It is a bit cold in the morning when you start hiking, so you wear an extra shirt, but you quickly get warm when you start walking upwards, so you start stripping. However, it starts getting windy after a while, which makes it cold again, especially if you are a bit sweat. So you need to put on more clothes. We ended up taking a lot of breaks for all these changes of clothes. It didn't hurt that this allowed us to catch our breaths a bit as well. 

It is especially cold up at the top of Dead Woman's pass, where we dressed in all our warmest clothes, including the typical Peruvian hats. 

The weather changed very fast up at these altitudes. The pictures above and below are taken over the same valley and just a few minutes apart. The view is from Dead Woman's pass and shows the trail we walked down after having enjoyed the top for a while. This part of the trail is quite steep in some parts, but it's not very far to the next lunch and campsite.

At some point during the hike, we started discussing if there was anything that we missed from our "normal" life. Family and friends did not count, instead we discussed more material things. We mentioned computers, phones, internet, TV, a proper bed, shower etc. but we couldn't really think of anything. We enjoyed the trip so much that we didn't really miss anything. A little while later when having to go to the bathroom, however, we realised that we all missed a proper clean toilet. There are toilets in all campsites and in some stops along the way, but they are all of the "hole-in-the-floor" kind. Since 500 people pass through the park every day, these toilets are used by 500 people every day, so you can imagine how clean they are... Then there is also the possibility to use the Inka toilets, which you can find everywhere in nature.

View from the pass down towards where we started the day. The picture on the right is zoomed in at the bottom of the valley, where we camped the night before.

The porters always go/run fast on the trail in order to get to the lunch place or campsite before us tourists, so that they can set up the tents, prepare food and so on. In the beginning it really felt like we had our own servants or even slaves, because we never really had a chance to get to know them. We didn't have meals together, see each other very much on the trail or even talk very much in the campsites in the beginning. One issue is that some of them only speak Quechua, many also know some Spanish but since most of us didn't, this didn't help much. After a while we found out that one of our porters spoke English so we got to know him better, and S. really enjoyed practicing her Spanish with the other porters and the chef. We felt much better after making friends with them, than before when they were just these "magical creatures" who invisibly fixed everything for us. OK, they were still doing all the work, but now we felt like a big group together and not as a few tourists with a bunch of servants. 

S. helping out in the campsite.

We reached the second campsite, Pacaymayu around lunch time and had both lunch and dinner there. It's incredible how tasty food the chef managed to cook on the little stove you see in the picture, and only using what they were carrying with them on the trail.

The second campsite, not too bad either...

View from the second campsite. 

We recharged our batteries with an Inka happy hour, with popcorn, cookies and so on.

The Inka Trail - day 1

Then we have come to the highlight of our trip to Peru: the Inka Trail! The Inkas built a huge network of roads in the Andes. There are many different treks you can do here, but the most popular one is the 43 km long 4-day hike called the Inka trail (or classic Inca trail) to Machu Picchu. Four days might seem like a lot to walk the length of a marathon, but the point is not to run through the trail but to enjoy every step, visit Inka ruins, enjoy the fabulous landscape and so on. The fact that the trail is at an altitude of 3-4 km and sometimes with steep steps also makes the trip more exhausting.

The Inka trail can be hiked all year around, except for February when the trail is closed for maintenance. It is however a good idea to go in the dry period between May and October, since it's not fun to get wet in the rain. June, July and August are high season, which means that the trail gets fully booked very early. There might be fewer people on the trek if you walk outside of the high season. We made the hike in May, which turned out to be a very good choice. It only rained a few drops and even if you basically always see people on the trek, it wasn't too crowded.

The day started very early in the morning, we were told to be ready for pickup in the hotel lobby (in Cusco) between 5.30 and 6 am. The hotel must be used to this as you could start having breakfast even earlier in the morning, I think it started around 4 am. We had packed the evening before and were eager to go, so we were ready to go even a bit earlier than we had to. We were sitting in the lobby just wanting to get started, but we had to wait until a bit past 6 am. We were later told that we were picked up last of the whole group since we were listed as Brazilians, since we live in Brazil, and Brazilians are known to always be late. Our guide seemed to become quite happy when he found out that we just live in Brazil. He had expected to always having to wait for us, but now he wasn't so scared of that anymore. 

At this point I didn't even know if our guide was going to be speaking in Spanish or in English, so I was also pretty happy when I found out that he spoke English. In fact, it turned out that most of our group spoke English but not Spanish.

The Inka Trail goes through a national park, which actually is forbidden to enter. However, the Peruvian government have issued an exception for people hiking the Inka Trail, but it is limited to 500 people entering the park per day and all have to be accompanied by a guide. Normally, you are a group of around 8-16 people per group and you have about as many amazing porters helping you carry all the tents, food, equipment and so on. You just have to carry your own personal stuff yourself. However, you can hire a porter to do this for you as well, but we carried all our belongings ourselves. We minimised our packing as much as we could, but you always end up bringing more than you actually need, and so did we. We don't have our own sleeping bags here in South America, so we hired one each from the company who arranged our trek. These turned out to be really warm and nice, which was very good as the temperature can drop to around zero degrees Celsius. The problem with a warm sleeping bag is that it is heavy, but it's definitely worth it. In total, we ended up carrying about 10 kg each.

After having been picked up from the hotel around 6 o'clock in the morning, we had a drive of about two hours to Ollantaytambo. Here, some people had breakfast and you can also buy some last equipment, snacks or water. We bought a wooden walking stick each. There are a lot of people running around the streets trying to sell things, but you can get everything cheaper if you just walk a few steps (literally!) to a small shop in the square. Our walking sticks cost 2 soles (50p or 5 kr) in the shop, whereas the street vendors wanted 5 soles. This was also where we started to get to know the other people in our group a little bit. We were 8 tourists, including a Swedish speaking American! I thought that I very well might meet, or at least hear, some Swedish during the trek, since Swedes do like to travel and it's quite common to want to hike to Machu Picchu. However, I was really surprised to meet an American who spoke Swedish, but he was way more surprised to meet a Swede in a tiny town in Peru. We were both really happy to be able to speak Swedish a bit. I had not spoken Swedish for about half a year (except for on Skype...) and he probably hadn't for way longer than that. We would later meet a Swedish couple as well.

It is also possible to take the train to Machu Picchu from Ollantaytambo (or from Cusco). The trip then continues on some small roads along the railroad to km mark 82 of the railroad. This is where the actual hike starts, at 2750 m above sea level. Here, everybody makes the final adjustments to their luggage and watches the porters pack their huge backpacks. 

The porters are "only" allowed to carry 20 kg each. They therefore divide the weight carefully and weigh it before the checkpoint where they are controlled. Many of them actually carry a few more kg though. We heard one guy who carried about 30 kg, and still made it look extremely easy. 

The start of the Inka Trail, as well as a compulsory photo stop (or Japanese moment as we started calling it).  This sign was just before the actual park entrance, where they thoroughly check everyone's passports. Just after this, a funny guy jumps out from nowhere and takes a picture of everyone who passes. 

The Urubamba river with the train to Machu Picchu. (The river might have had a different name here, but it continues to become the Urubamba river)

We saw a lot of donkeys carrying food to the few small villages in the beginning of the hike. They are not allowed after the part we cover in the first day. This small and shy donkey didn't have to carry anything though.

These angel trumpets can be used to produced a hallucinogenic drug, which the Inka priests knew how to do.

The fruit from the cacti are edible and quite tasty. Well, they are actually more fun to pick and peel than they are tasty. The cactus pear is covered in tiny needles that are really annoying to get rid of (I'm talking from experience). They don't really hurt, but they are annoying. To peel the fruit, without getting covered in these needles, you can roll the fruit on the ground using your foot, without putting too much pressure on the fruit and thereby crushing it. This removes most of the needles and you can peel of the skin and eat the fruit. 

The cliff in the picture above really looks like a helicopter pad, but it is really located in the middle of nowhere and there are more flat areas around, so I'm not sure if it's used for anything. Maybe as a tee for golfers.

The first day is a very easy hike and we took it really slowly and nicely. However, if you suffer from altitude sickness and lack of sleep it becomes a struggle. We were really happy that we had added an extra day in Cusco to acclimatise. After about three hours we could look down on the ruins of Llactapata, which are located at 2650 m above sea level.

There are many Inka graves along the way. Here is an entrance into the mountain, into a cave which was planned to become a big tomb.

We saw hummingbirds along the way. 

An extremely green and enormous larva. I wonder what the butterfly will look like.

It is supposedly possible to see a huge amount (around 200!) of different orchids on the Inka Trail, but not during the time of year we were there.

There are several places along the trail where you can buy snacks and water, but this is the funniest. Above the window it says: "Shopping center, we accept visa and mastercard!

The first campsite was in Wayllabamba, which is located after a hike of 12 km at an altitude of 3000 m. 

Even in the middle of the park, far from all roads, you can find a football pitch, and the scenery is not too bad...Some of the porters played football with the local kids.

Some of us still had a lot of energy and played with a dog.

Ireland!

The European championships in football have finally started! This might be the best time, just before the matches when everyone is still hopeful. When just surfing around the internet, I found a couple of nice Irish songs, which I really enjoyed. 

"You'll never beat the Irish!!!"

"If I get nil,

you get nil,

if we don't score,

no-one will,

you say we're dull,

but we think we're brill,

and we all get nil,

together!!!"

We have now listened to these two songs numerous times. I also found another funny song about the Irish team, which can be worth listening to once. 

The lyrics describes the whole experience of the euros. It starts with the trip to Poland and continues describing the score in the group stage matches. Of course it tells the story of how Ireland manages to go through the group to face England in the quarterfinals. It then ends with an impressive 4-0 victory over the English. I really enjoy the fact that the songs ends there. It perfectly fits the Irish mentality, if we beat the English, then who cares about getting a medal...

GOOD LUCK IRELAND!!!

Peruvian food

Before going to Peru we had heard that Peruvian food was supposed to be very good. The Peruvian cuisine was called South America's answer to French cuisine. So we were looking forward to trying it, and we found that it was absolutely delicious! Below are a few pictures of some of the dishes we enjoyed. 

Alpaca is used to make clothes, such as sweaters, hats, scarves, blankets and so on. The Peruvians also use the meat to create delicious dishes.

Guinea pig (cuy) is another Peruvian speciality. They can be served whole with all the bones, with all the bones removed or something in between, as in the picture above. The taste is somewhat similar to duck. One drawback is that it's not very much meat on a guinea pig. Both alpaca and guinea pigs are very popular in the Andes.

There are many yummy soups that you can get for a very low price.

After having traveled with Ryanair, Webjet and Easyjet many times, it was a delight to see that even the food on the airplanes was much better than average.

A very typical beverage in Peru is the lovely Inca Kola. It tastes a bit like bubblegum and is really good. The strong yellow artificial colour also makes it a bit funnier.

They have loads of different kinds of corn. It is not sweet as the sweet corn we typically have in Europe, but still very good and also very large, as you can see in the picture.

One evening when it was a bit cold we went to a tea house in order to warm up. Many of the different beverages came together with a shot of strong alcohol (pisco) that you were supposed to put in the tea. Let's say that it had an interesting taste.

As all over the world, you could also find many pizza restaurants together with the restaurants more inspired by local traditional food. It is also true that most prices go up (not necessarily the quality though) in very touristic places, but I don't think I have ever seen "tourist food" proudly displayed on adverts before.

We saw many kids running around drinking fluids with funny colours from plastic bags. Of course we had to try it as well, but it was not one of the better examples of Peruvian cuisine.

It seems to be easy to get a PHD in Peru...