Inca Trail

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We had to wake up around 6am and we were picked up at our hostel by a bus that took us about 2 hours to a small town in the middle of these huge mountains. There we had lunch and met the other 9 people on our trip and the group was not very outgoing. The group was made up of couples in their mid 30s and then one random british guy and the three of us and I was a little nervous about having a fun time with everyone for the next four days on the trail. However, by the end everyone warmed up to us and we We had to wake up around 6am and we were picked up at our hostel by a bus that took us about 2 hours to a small town in the middle of these huge mountains. There we had lunch and met the other 9 people on our trip and the group was not very outgoing. The group was made up of couples in their mid 30s and then one random british guy and the three of us and I was a little nervous about having a fun time with everyone for the next four days on the trail. However, by the end everyone warmed up to us and we all got along well by the end of our trip.
We then took the bus another hour to the start of the trail, dodging boulders and a destroyed bridge along the way, caused by protestors the day before. Once we had finally made it to the trail safely we had to show our tickets to the government officials to get onto the trail. We hiked about 3 hours through relatively flat terrain and partly rainy weather. Then we stopped for lunch and ate in a tent while it down poured outside. Once the rain had stopped we continued to hike to our first campsite. Amanda and Rachel and I shared a tent made for 2 people so it was a little tight, but it was better than the other option of one of us having to share a tent with the random British guy. We had dinner that night and immediately fell asleep after a long day of traveling and hiking.
The next morning we work up early for the hardest day of hiking. To summarize the say we pretty much hiked stone stairs all day. Everyone else got their packs carried, but Amanda and I were hard core and we carried ours which made it a lot harder (thankfully I didn’t get sick this time) but it was definitely one of the hardest hikes I had done. After about 5 hours of straight up we finally reached the saddle and the clouds cleared and the views were amazing. After that we hiked down very steep steps for a couple of hours to our next camp site.
The third day we hiked up and down along the mountain peaks and ridges and the views were amazing. At one of our stops we did a little ceremony to give thanks to mother earth and our leader played the flute and each of us had carried a rock throughout our hike and we gave that along with coca leaves in a little ceremony. This day we also passed a couple of very impressive ruins and we learned a lot about the history of the Inca empire.
The fourth and last day we woke up at 5am to hike to Machupichu in time for the sun to rise over the ruins. It was a pretty easy hike and we made it over the Sun Gate overlooking the ruins before all the crowds were allowed into the park. However, by the time we made it to the ruins, it was already so crowded by tourist who had taken the train up to explore just the ruins for the day. Also, it was very hot and there were tons of bugs biting us the entire time that we were getting the tour of Machupichu so it was not that pleasant. So after the tour we didn’t hang around long, and we took the first bus into the small town at the base of the mountains, called Aguas Calientes. We stayed there for the night, nothing too exciting and took a train back to Cusco the next day.

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