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.