Inca Trail Day 1

The night before we started the trek our guides came to the hotel to give our group details on the trip and answer any questions we had. I’m sure they were a little nervous as we all sat around taking turns with the oxygen bottle. After they answered all of our questions, they told us we were leaving at 4 a.m. the next morning! We all rushed off after the meeting to get all of our stuff organized so we could try to get a few hours of sleep before the big hike began. I was pretty anxious to get started so I only slept a few hours that night. In fact, I forgot the time on my phone was completely wrong and got up an hour earlier than we needed to. Chuck was not amused by my mistake!

We had a couple hour bus ride to get to the start of the trail. The bus ride was almost as bad as the taxi rides we had survived, but we felt a little more comfortable just because we were on a big tour bus.

Many of the streets in some of the small towns we passed were super narrow.

A couple of times we came head to head with another bus or a van at which point someone had to back up until there was a wide enough area to pass. Sometimes this made us hold our breath!

We stopped in an area called the Sacred Valley to eat breakfast.

It was a beautiful area.

There were several places with ruins in this area. One of the guides pointed out to me a set of ruins on the hillside behind this place where we ate breakfast.

Corn farming is huge in this area.

There were so many interesting sights and people to see during this part of the bus trip. Our porters were all fast asleep in the back of the bus, but Chuck and I were to fascinated by the passing scenery to try and sleep.

We finally reached the end of our bus ride as we came to the area where we were going to begin hiking the Inca trail. Our porters were busy loading up there packs and getting ready to rush to our lunch spot and get everything in place for us.

We were finally ready to start our adventure!

The trail started near the river.

The train to Machu Picchu ran through this area. Several of us were wondering if we could hop on the train instead of taking the trail. Of course after we started hiking, we realized the trail was amazing and was by far the better way to go then taking the easy route and riding the train!

Chuck was excited about using the GPS. All throughout the trail we would ask him our elevation and most of the time we couldn’t believe we had 1000’s of additional feet to climb!

The super fun group at the start of the trail. We were all full of smiles and smelled good at this point!

The porters were packing our tents, sleeping bags and lots of our clothes, but Chuck was still packing a pretty big pack. All I had was my little camelback with water, but not very long into Day 2 I even strapped that to Chuck’s pack.

The little building in the background was the first checkpoint on the trail. They only let 500 hikers a day on the trail, which breaks down to about 250 porters/guides and 250 hikers. Our tour company liked to start very early each morning so we were always one of the first groups on the trail in the morning. This was nice because he didn’t run into very many other groups while on the trail.

The first day the trail was mostly dirt and we got pretty dusty while hiking. The surrounding area was also surprisingly dry with desert landscape in portions.

The first day there were also small farms every so often along the trail. Some of the residents would hike portions of the trail everyday to sell hikers treats and drinks. Chuck actually bought a Snickers candy bar for $3.50 at one of these stops.

This was the first set of ruins we saw along the trail.

I always thought hiking poles were for wimps, but we could not believe how much they helped! They especially saved us on the super steep downhill portions of the trail. We had hardly begun at this point, but were amazed by the beauty of the Andes mountains all around us.

We reached a little plateau area and our guide stopped us again and told us he had a surprise for us.  We walked to the edge and saw another set of larger ruins.

At this point I was beginning to realize how amazing this hike was truly going to be!

We stopped to eat lunch in the “backyard” of one of the locals in the area. I wished I had taken a picture of the super cute little boy who was probably no more than 3 that lived in one of these houses was giving up all high fives as we came to our first lunch spot.

Taking our lunch break. It was at this point we realized how amazing the food was going to be during our hike. Every meal was at least a 5 course event with the most amazing creations. Our chief was truly amazing!

 

I was super excited to see our first llamas on the trail.

Don’t you love my expression in this picture! This llama stopped right beside of me and as we stared at each other it started making some sort of noise that sounded sort of like a hiss. All I could think is, it’s going to spit on me!

We made it to our first camp spot.

The porters had our tents all set up and ready for our arrival. This is the way to camp!

Before dinner one of our guides introduced all of our porters. The captain was in the black jacket. There were many of the porters who were in their early 20’s, but there were also some in their 50’s. These guys were all amazing. They would literally run along the trail with packs on their back. The youngest guy in our group tried keeping up with them a few different times, but they always left him in the dust. They would leave after us in the morning taking down our tents and cleaning everything up and then pass us along the way as they rushed to our lunch spot. Then they would leave after us after lunch and pass us again as they rushed onto our camping spot where they got everything set up for the evening. They would also cheer for us as we came straggling into camp each evening.

 

This was Rueben our main guide.

And Sebastin our amazing cook. He wore this outfit every time he prepared us a meal.

Anyone who knows me very well, knows that I am a pretty picky eater and not very daring when it comes to trying new dishes especially when I’m in South America and worried about getting sick. But the food on the trail was simple amazing! We knew it was safe because they boiled and filtered all the water and it is in their best interest for the tourists not to get sick. Every meal of the day was several courses always with a dessert and we always left the food tent completely stuffed. Everything was so mouth watering tasty!

Our chief was also an artist. He sculpted this bird out of a cucumber – pretty impressive! And the jungle potatoes around the base of the rice were superb. Our napkins were always folded with some origami creation as well.

 

Another tasty food creation. It was a real let down when we got home and no one was making me tasty meals anymore!

Inca Trail Day 2

Day 2 of the Inca Trail is the hardest climb and the day we had all been worried about. It was Mother’s Day and we were set to climb Dead Woman’s Pass – lovely!

Starting the day off with steep steps. We climbed and descended SO many steps. Thank goodness for the walking poles!

We all bought the llama caps in Cusco before we started the trail. We laughed that it’s one of those things you can only get away with wearing while your on vacation. But we sure did love those hats. They were warm and covered your ears completely. I even slept with mine on a couple of nights and was so glad I had it!

The official break spot. I sure did love the beef jerky we brought along - what a great hiking snack.

This is the last spot we saw locals and where Chuck bought the $3.50 snickers bar. It sure did taste delicious!

We were at a pretty high elevation at this point so there weren’t really any trees, but it was still beautiful. We were all grateful that none of us experienced any altitude sickness. You definitely got more winded and couldn’t hike super fast, but no one felt sick.

Notice the red dots along the trail, those were our porters. They were cruising up the mountain slope!

Chuck and his friend Gary, with Dead Woman’s pass in the background.

Hiking and talking with friends all along the way made it so much easier.

Almost to the peak! Do I look tired, because I was!

We made it to Dead Woman’s Pass!

Elevation nearly 13,900 feet! I had another mouthful of beef jerky – loved that stuff!

We were officially in the cloud forest so sometimes we had great views and sometimes the clouds completely covered all around us.

All of us at the pass.

We didn’t get much of a break before we started down, after all we had another high pass yet to climb.

We descended 2,000 rock steps this day. Not sure who bothered to count them, but that is what our guide told us. All I know is it felt like thousands of steps!

Waterfalls in the distance.

We finally made it down the first descent where a yummy lunch was waiting for us. Since it was Mother’s Day, the guys surprised us all with a message from the kids. I woke up that morning missing our little ones so I was nearly in tears when Chuck pulled out the video he had recorded before he left of each of them wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day. We were all surprised they had planned this for us – it was actually Chuck’s idea.

And since it was Mother’s Day, the porters pulled out our sleeping pads and we took a few minutes rest before lunch was served. See the thickness of those sleeping pads – no wonder the ground felt so hard every night!

And we were off and climbing again. We had another pass to climb and descend before we reached camp for the evening. Waterfalls dotted the hillside.

It was steep!

Our porters cruising by us again.

The weather was constantly changing on us. You’d be hot and then you’d get cold. At this elevation temperatures changed rapidly.

Another set of ruins along the way.

It started raining on us just before we reached the peak of the second pass. We pulled out our ponchos and started climbing down another super steep set of thousands of stairs. With the rain the rocks were super slick. My poncho was so big I couldn’t see my feet as I was trying to step down the rocks. It was at this point I got a little ornery. I decided I needed to remove my poncho and put on my rain jacket so I didn’t fall, but then my pants were getting all wet. Then, Chuck asked me to hold his poles for a minute and I snapped back that couldn’t he see my hands were already full. Yeah, the rain, super slick step rocks and feeling pretty tired at this point made me upset for a bit. Luckily Gary and Amy caught up with us and I had to snap out of my ornery mood! And good thing for nice hiking pants – they dry super quick!

We were so excited to get to camp that evening. It was a long hard day, but we had made it and it was amazing probably more so because of the difficulty!

And our amazing chief made us a Mother’s Day Cake for dinner. Seriously – a cake! The food was simply amazing this whole trip.