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Published: January 27th 2009
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I get up at 7 am. The sun is up and I can't sleep. I'm waiting for my clothes. The hostel offered to wash my clothes and have them dry in less than two hours. I guess their drier wasn't working last night.
The day doesn't look good for a few people in our group. Sofi is sick, Vicky and Flora both have knee problems. I hope they can make it to the end of our trek.
We begin our trek and I take the lead again. Antonio doesn't seem to mind me being ahead and encourages me to lead the group. We stop at a man made waterfall. The water is coming out of a cave. It turns out the water is the run off from the hydro dam. It looks very impressive. We take a break for 15 minutes before continuing on. 5 of the girls decide to take the bus to the rest stop. The rest of the group continues the trek in the rain. I'm starting to really hate rain. Wait a minute, don't I hate rain? Isn't that why I left Vancouver?
I hit a bridge that has a check point. Everyone is
required to sign in before crossing the bridge. We finally make it to the rest stop and have lunch. After lunch, Jimmy tells us that the rest of the way is all flat. I ask him if it's Inca flats and he says no, just flat. Great!
The last 2.5 hours shouldn't be so tough, right? The 6 girls decide to catch the train to Aguas Calientes. The rest of the group walks up the trail. The trail happens to be railway tracks from the rest stop to Aguas Calientes.
We start out and it doesn't seem so bad at the start, but then it starts raining again. The rain doesn't let up at all. Also, the trail is flat but it has a slight incline. Damn that Jimmy! It's tough going. There are two choices for walking. The first is to walk on the rocks (very difficult) or walk on the wooden planks that make up the railroad tracks. I opt for the later, but it's slow going. The wooden planks are not evenly spaced and sometimes the rocks cover the planks so you end up walking in the rocks. To top it off the damn rain
won't stop. There is a river running next to the railway tracks, but I spend all my time looking down I don't even notice the scenery.
I'm about 15 minutes to the end of the trail when I run into a couple heading in the opposite direction. They ask me how far is the waterfall. I seriously don't remember seeing one, so, I tell them maybe 30 minutes down. I hope they find it. When the rest of my group catches up to me, I ask if anyone saw a waterfall and they say no. They were all too busy looking down at the wooden planks to notice the scenery.
We finally get off the trail and walk up the road to Aguas Calientes. We meet up with Jimmy and head to the hostel. At the hostel, we get assigned our rooms. Jimmy tries to get two separate rooms for Jane and me, but the hostel only has one room left. Jane and I decide to share the last room. They give us one towel which I give to Jane as I have my own. She lets me take a shower first. Strange how the hostel ran out
of towels and is trying to dry the washed ones on a clothesline in the rain. Makes you wonder... Jane, Scott, Cole and I head out into the town and grab a beer before dinner. We also buy our provisions (bread, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, chocolate bars) for the next day.
The group meets for dinner where Jimmy gives us our final instructions for the next day. We need to wake up at 4:00 am and be ready to leave by 4:30 am in the plaza for our walk up to Machu Picchu. When we get to Machu Picchu, we need to go directly to the Waynapicchu gate and lineup for tickets. Only 400 people are allowed into Waynapicchu, so, we need to get there as early as possible. Jimmy also tells us to leave everything behind at the hostel as we won't need it.
I head back to the hostel and repack only the essentials (food, water, camera, poncho). All my other things are put in plastic bags to be left at the hostel. I call it the night at 10:00 pm.
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