Peru: Excerpts from the Inca Trail

What better way to share the Inca trail with you than through excerpts from my journal?  I could do a more informative piece about what guide company to go with, how much to pack, how long it takes to get to the start point, etc. but there are hundreds of blogs out there already sharing that information.  And if you have questions, please feel free to message or contact me because I will willingly share!  Here is my first person perspective from hiking the 26 mile, 4-day/3-night Inca trail with Llama Path, which is an amazing company that believes in treating their porters well and sustainable tourism.  My experience re-affirmed my choice in choosing their company, so if you are thinking about trekking or are enticed by this post, check them out!   These are straight from my handwriting, unedited and imperfect!

Day 1, August 9th  

Morning – We woke up at 3:30am for Day 1 of the Inca Trail.  We loaded up, left our suitcases for storage, and headed out to the Plaz
a Regocijo to meet the Llama Path bus.  We began with pickup of the LP porters from their dormitory on the outskirts of Cuzco.  LP
actually provides them housing while they are working because Cusco is so expensive and they come from the highlands to make money for their families but don’t necessarily permanently work for LP, just when they need work and money.  So they house them there, I like that.

We rode the van 2 hours to Ollantaytambo where we stopped for breakfast and Coca tea.  We had a quick buffet-style meal, bought some loose coca leaves for the trail, and got back on the bus to drive down a bumpy dirt road to our starting point at kilometer 82.  Once we arrived we picked up our sleeping bag and mat from the porters.  It added a good amount of weight to our packs but they were still manageable.  J. took water from me to help with the added weight.

The second we took our group photo at the entrance…it started raining!  That was unexpected!  We made it a little further down the road before we had to bust out the raincoats.  Around this time I also discovered my camera battery at 2/3 power despite charging it all night.  Well shit.  But the icing on the cake was at the first bathroom stop when my pack fell off the bench and because it was wet from rain…got covered in mud!  I’m not lying, I shed tears at that point.  This was not how I imagined this magical trek starting.  Jeremy was so kind and sweet though, he reassured me, let me wipe mud on him, and took more weight from me.  Seriously, he has been amazing today.  I feel like we have re-bonded just this one day on the trail, even more than the rest of the trip.  It is just us, in our element, full of love.  I adore it!  We need more getaways and camping/hiking trips like this!

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Afternoon – When we arrived to lunch we realized how spoiled we are!  The porters set up a lunch tent.  They greeted us with tea and bowls of hot water to wash our hands!  We waited for our guide, Juan Carlos, Warren, and Shauna to arrive and had a spectacular lunch!  Like actual silverware and real food.  Hats off to chef Ronaldo!  I’m going to list our meals as I go because they are spectacular!

Lunch Day 1

Appetizer: Chicken Cebiche (sin leche para mi – and to die for!), Soup: chicken noodle, Main: veggie stuffed avocado, rolled stuffed tr
oute, fried rice, and potatoes.

The village where we had lunch was one of the bigger ones off the Inca trail.  It is amazing how these families live off a footpath where they can only use donkeys and horses, or motorbikes at best on some portions.  They have electricity and running water but otherwise its fairly primitive.  Roosters and ducklings waddling through the front yard.  To think how self-sustaining they are but how far they have to go for anything they can’t provide for themselves. Anywho, we all trekked together through the last inhabited village of Wayllbamba (where by the way they have a fish hatchery, it may be remote and seem primitive but the people are so efficient!) and to the next Inca trail checkpoint.  At this point Juan Carlos released us because J and I have a much faster pace.  we climbed up enjoying the views and conversation.  In between stops for breath and water!  We saw donkeys and locals coming down on horseback from having sold concession to hikers at the next campsites.  Yeah, they hike Gatorade and Pringles up to 3200m above seal level.  We arrived at camp a 4:35pm after about 10 miles and were feeling good!

Day 2, August 10th 

Evening – So Day 2, it was hard on me today.  We started off uphill to Deadwoman’s pass.  Uphills are fine with me.  At a slow and steady pace I can conquer anything.  We made our first pit-stop ahead of schedule.  We found some llamas to pose with and used the restroom.  Not a hole in the ground yet!  Juan Carlos sent us on our way and said he would catch up.  We think to call the porters because we were outpacing them haha.  They did eventually pass us on the way up of course.  However, I have to admit that my competitive side kicked in and at several points I pushed too hard to pass people.  People who had full porters and were only carrying day-packs.  I felt good when I triumphantly reached the top and posed for our pic with the elevation marker, BUT, I think that extra effort at that elevation (4520m/13779ft), coupled with my weight began my downfall.

We took off our packs and were immediately freezing with sweaty backs.  We put jackets and gloves on and the porters had hot coca tea and snacks for us (seriously, they rock), but my fingers went ice cold and I was feeling shaky.  We geared back up like 20 minutes later to go down 800m in elevation to the lunch site.  J, JC (Juan Carlos), and I all walked together.  I still had no feeling in my fingers and J had to give me his giant thermal gloves.  Then, it started raining again.  At first a drizzle and then a solid rain.  WE pulled out the rain ponchos to go over our packs and still got pretty wet.  While cold and wet, I started to get a bad tension headache from the pack and looking down at the trail, which was really just a sh*tload of stone steps, and is killer on the joints.  It was literally and figuratively downhill from there.  I started feeling nauseous and hating the world.  I just wanted to get to the lunchsite.  I was in a really bad way and it just hit so quickly.  We continued down and I was not speaking, just down down down.   We finally made it and I was beat.  The porters took my pack off and pushed me into the tent.  They got me hot water and tea right away.  I was sipping it when J came in the ten and I lay my head on his shoulder and actually cried and told him I didn’t know if I could make it the rest of the day.  He reassured me, empowered me, and gave me a neck/back massage.  I took some Ibuprofen and focused on eating and hoping food could fix everything.

The food and water did help and after 90 minutes at the site I felt like I could continue on.  We had about 4 hours left to hike including the stops at 2 Inca sites.  I was more worried about the downhill than the initial uphill anyway.  We started up to the second highest point on the trail at 4000m/13,120ft.  We made it to the Inca site with relative ease, like I said the uphills were feeling easier because they didn’t cause the headache.  We continued up past two false summits to the 4000m pass.  Jeremy had taken even MORE of my weight back at the lunchsite, without telling me until then, so I thought I was on good track for the downhill.  Not so much…again it started to wear on me and the headache came back.  Despite frequent water breaks.  We continued down stairs until we came in view of the campsite and the next Inca site we would tour before arriving at camp.  That lifted my spirits and we had good conversation with our guide about things ranging from beer in our countries to cell phones to popular fastfood and Pokemon Go.  Sharing culture and bonding 🙂

When we got to the Inca site JC said we were going up these steep a** steps and could leave our packs.  As soon as I took the first step up I didn’t feel too hot.  The nausea came rushing back to accompany the headache.  I still forced myself up with my trekking poles and used them for support when we would stop to discuss something.  It was actually a really interesting site with a now out-of-use running water system and fountains.  It had a religious center with an offeratory window where you could see people still left coca leaves and flowers as offerings.  JC went to take Jeremy to another section and I had to stop.  I was leaning against rocks feeling like I would either puke or pass out.  When they came back we cut the tour short to head to camp.  I felt bad but I was not doing well, I’m not used to needing special treatment.  Being myself and still refusing to be helpless, I strapped my pack back on.  I pushed the last 30 minutes mostly downhill and a final uphill.  When we arrived my stomach was queasy and my head was pounding.  I lay down for a bit and when dinner came just having popcorn and tea brought me back to feeling pretty normal. I also learned the proper pronunciation for the Quechua word for Guinea Pig, spelled Cuy.  It is “kwee” because some Quechua words for animals are based on the sounds the animals make!  How perfect, “Kwee! Kwee!”  Haha babies are called “Wawas”!

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Day 3, August 11th 

Morning – After breakfast we came out of the tent to a nearly clear sky and a wondrous view of Salkantay, the second highest peak in the Cuzco Valley.  Apparently very hard to summit.  We then FINALLY formally met our porters.  We were supposed to meet them the first night but due to the two original group members getting sick the first night, and the rain yesterday and me getting sick, we didn’t have time.  So we met them today!  JC told us a little about the porter system then they introduced themselves in Spanish.  I picked up on most of it but where they are from was hardest to understand.  6 of the 9 were from the same region, I got that much.

Here is what I remember:

1) Chef – Rolando, 30s, from the Highlands
2) Head Porter – Edgar, 43
3) Florencio, 53, Highlands
4) Martin, 44
5) Unk, 29, Cuzco
6) Assistant Chef – Savino aka ‘Shaman’, 23, Highlands
7) Unk, 57, Highlands
8) Unk, 30, Highlands

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We set out on our 5.5 mile trek around 6:45 or 7:00.  Since we covered 17 miles in the last two days we only have 9 to cover between days 3 and 4.  About 150 feet outside the campsite we came across a dog!  Small, about 30 pounds, soaking wet, and adorable.  JC said she was probably lost, belonging to a villager from Wayllabamba, since there aren’t any dogs allowed on the trail.  She started following us, skittish at first but taking to Jeremy pretty quickly.  She stayed with us through the jungle, up the ascent to the third highest pass on the trail at 12, 073 feet.  We named her ‘Inca’ along the way.  It seemed fitting 🙂 I dubbed her our spirit animal, our guide to keep us motivated on our journey.

When we got to the pass, also a campsite, there were three llamas.  A male, female, and their male “baby”.  I say “baby” because he was larger than his mom.  The llamas did NOT like Inca and started chasing her around the campsite!  They ran her up a hill and she escaped back to Jeremy and hit behind him.  It was hilarious, poor perrito.  We went right over the hill to an Inca site for a tour and Inca stayed glues to us.  At this site we learned about the history of the Inca and the theories and legends on how they came to be in the Cuzco Valley.  So knowledgeable and powerful in just 300 years.  Collecting people and knowledge from different civilizations across Peru, like the Nasca and Wari.  They actually only resided in the Cuzco Valley, not even the Sacred Valley, until about 1450 when they conquered a Warrior culture outside of Cuzco and used their expertise to continue conquering and expanding.  In just 100 years most of the Inca sites we saw were built and the Inca expanded to Ecuador and into Bolivia!  Imagine if the Spanish hadn’t come, or had failed!

Sidenote: As I sit here and write this I’m sitting at our campsite at Wiñay Huayna and have this indescribable view of Intipata, the Urubamb River, and the green mountains that carved it.  It is amazing.  I have another Happy Place to add to the list.  Such serenity.  I also have a view of runners coming through completing the Inca Trail Marathon!  Yes, it exists.  The classic 30k and a full marathon.  And its being run while I’m hiking the Inca trail, how cool!  I am so impressed with them.  They are really spread out.  There are only 30 runners total and I saw the lead runner like 4 hours ago.  The 10th just ran by.  7-9 were women!  But all looked about 50 or older.  Man age brings strength, mental strength because that is what you would need to run the Inca trail in one day!

Ok back on track, we left that Inca site and headed downhill for about an hour.  We were booking it!  I felt great and just let the downhill momentum carry me.  We suddenly arrived at Intipata! An astounding cliffside Inca site of dozens of levels of terraces and used only for farming – theoretically to support the people living at Macchu Picchu.  Inca was with us the whole way and I got some good photos of her and Jeremy.  But then, she suddenly abandoned us for a group of kids, just got up and walked away from Jeremy never to return….We got up to hike down and I asked J if he was ok, lol,    he said better he say goodbye now than awkwardly trying to leave a homeless dog at the campsite tomorrow morning.
Hopefully she finds someone to truly adopt her.  I’m sure years from now we will say “I wonder what ever happened to Inca?”

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Evening – At 3:00 we went to Wiñay Huayna with JC.  A Beeee-uuuuu-tee-ful Inca site around the corner from our campsite.  We walked down (without poles or packs weeee!) about 10 minutes and through a gate, and came upon a site to behold.  Wow!  We stared in awe and after photos, oogling at llamas, and picking up our jaws off the ground JC walked us to the temple area to give a brief on the site and its significance.  The most important fact that stood out to me had nothing to do with the site haha.  I learned that the Inca actually did perform occasional human sacrifice.  It was rumored until the 1990s when an American archaeologist, after 15 years of searching and summitting mountains in South America, found a 14-year old girl, mummified, at the peak of a nearly 20,000 foot peak!  The idea was that the Inca offered female sacrifices to the ‘male’ mountain deity.  Anyhow, this site was about 75% original and in amazing shape.  We explored on our own after the brief and had fun with photographing llamas 😉

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Night – I’m in bed preparing for a 2:30am wakeup and 3:15am breakfast.  Gotta do what you gotta do to get to Machu Picchu at sunrise!  So we had the BEST tea time.  We walked into the tent and there was a cake!  It said “Llama Path!”  I know they do that with all of their groups but we still felt really special.  And I cut 3 small tiny slices because a) dessert before dinner? but mostly b) I knew the porter crew would enjoy the rest! And devour it they did! It was gone in 30 seconds.  We had our regular popcorn and hot chocolate too, which is all I need to be happy.  We had an amazing meal including food sculptures and a bird carved out of a cucumber!  After our post-dinner coca tea we had our tip presentation for the porters and

the chef.  We were able to say some words and JC translated.  Jeremy thanked the porters, especially for enabling a dream of ours to come true, and I thanked chef for the spectacular food and how impressed we were to have such delicious dishes cooked on a camp stove in the mountains! The porters and crew are beyond amazing and deserve every bit we can afford.  I am really happy we chose this company who treats their porters so well, as they seem truly happy out here, laughing, dancing, and joking all the time.  They work hard and just deserve everything.  Alright its 8pm and we have a 2:30 wakeup.  I’m so pumped, hopefully I can sleep!  Next time I write I’ll be a Machu Picchu veteran!

 

Day 4, August 12th

4:30 pm on the train back to Cuzco – What a day! What a day!  Been going for 14 hours now.  Our day began with a 2:40am wake-up and pac-kup then a quick 3:15am breakfast!  By breakfast, it was a pancake and coca tea.  By 3:30 we were saying Adios to the porters and left with a bag of snacks.  We walked about five minutes down to the checkpoint gate where you sort of leave the Inca Trail and enter Machu Picchu.  Well, the portion of the trail explicitly for trekkers.  Once going past the checkpoint you are still on the Inca Trail until Machu Picchu.  But, we got to the gate at 3:30am to get a good place in line and ended up being the third group.  Then…we sat in the cold and dark until 5:30 when the gate opened.  Just cold and drifting in and out of sleep.  At 5:30 thought everyone sprung to life and strapped on their packs.  The second we got through the checkpoint everyone shot off like slingshots!  We booked it through the 45 minutes or approx. 2.5 miles to Intipunku the “Sun Gate”.
We reached the entrance and received our first view of majestic Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu mountains.  BTW they literally translate to Old and New mountain.  It was breath-taking! Tun sun was well away from rising and the Valley was quiet.  It was 6:15 and and the first crowds were entering M.P. a mile down below.  We took some photos then I had to run off and find a spot to relieve myself!  Part of the reason we made it so fast was because my bladder was about to explode!

We continued down the trail and stopped to watch the sun hit the upper terrace, the top of Wayna Picchu, and then the lower terrace.  Gorgeous.  The sunrise the Inca living at Machu Picchu would have seen 550 years ago.  We continued down the trail and 4 days culminating to that moment, what we had been waiting for, came to fruition.  That classic view from the upper terrace and the iconic photos of the lower terrace with Wayna Picchu in the background.  We went to take some photos in another spot and who do we see….The Fernandes’! A site for sore eyes, they made it!!  We took a group shot and then we had to quickly exit Machu Picchu because our packs were over the 25-liter limit and needed to be checked outside.  Plus, the bathrooms are outside the main gate and we needed to pause for some snacks (they say no food allowed inside but we saw plenty of people with food and drinks later).

We started our two hour tour with JC at 8am with a beautiful history lesson.  That man knows everything!  I understand why it takes 5 years to get a degree in tourism in Peru!  After an overview of theories as to why M.P. was abandoned and the truth of its discovery (Hiran Bingham not truly being the first to find it) we went to explore the Urban sector, the fountain system, the Inca’s house, the Sun Temple, the priest’s house, the perfectly linear granite blocks, the proof that M.P. was still under construction when it was abandoned, the granite site from which the Inca carved their building blocks, and more!

 

But then, we saw the coolest thing yet!  As we were coming down from the temple sector we came upon one of the llamas in the plaza literally giving birth to a baby llama!  First people were shouting because the legs had appeared and I quickly popped on my zoom lens.  Then the head appeared and within 30 seconds…the baby llama dropped out and to the ground in a gangly sack!  Our timing was perfect, we witnessed the miracle of birth AT Machu Picchu!! How insane.  Then we saw the baby lift its head and show signs of life!  We saw it sit up for the first time and pick its head up! We didn’t see it stand but this was so amazing, I was fascinated.  We made ourselves continue and the tour came to an end at the Sacred Rock at the entrance to Wayna Picchu.

 

We wandered through the Temple of the Condor and some other sites and realized our bodies were just beat.  We didn’t have the energy to climb to the Inca Bridge or other sites we aspired to reach.We did just get an amazing tour anyway! We listened to our bodies and hopped on a bus to Aguas Calientes where we could get food and water.

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We met up with the crew at a restaurant in Aguas Calientes or the self proclaimed “Machu Picchu Pueblo” although Google Maps and the rest of the world know it as Aguas Calientes.  We had a lovely time and gave nothing but positive reviews for Llama Path, and finally gave Juan Carlos his tip.  We said goodbye to Juan Carlos since he had an earlier train then meandered through the market next to the train station until we were due to board.  We all traded emails so hopefully we stay in touch! But now as I wrap up on the train back to Cuzco my body is dead, my soul is happy, and my brain is wired on coffee and Inca Kola.  I can’t wait for a shower, we smell quite awful!  Time to stop writing and take in the rest of the terrain out the train window before it gets dark.

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