The majestical Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

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At breakfast we meet Maria, a 62 year old woman from Adelaide with a dodgy knee who is doing the easier Inca Trail walk. We wish each other luck as we get on the bus and head to kilometre 82 - the start of the trail. The morning is hot and I buy a bandana to cover my neck to stop me from getting roasted at the advice of Eddison. We meet the porters who I can’t even understand their names let alone what they say, but they smile politely and get on with packing our camp. Ranging in age from 18 to 70, the ten of them appear to be getting to know each other for the first time. The porters do not speak English as their first language is Quechua, the local traditional language, and they also learn Spanish. Eddison and Adrianna (our apprentice guide) inform us there are 200+ porters working for Inkanatura and for many of these this will be the first time they have met. We take photos at the start line and Eddison leads us off at a brisk pace. I walk with him with the 3 girls behind. Occasionally we stop and wait for them to catch up. The landscape at this point is very flat and the plants are dry weather such as cactus. There are quite a few horses on this part of the trail which the locals also use. I can’t believe that people actually live on farms out here, in run down mud brick homes, it is amazing. Eddison talks about his guiding experiences with me including his story about taking a grandfather, father and son that were all a bit nuts. He also discussed his love of German girls and his favourite saying was ‘vamos, a la playa’ (lets go to the beach). It was an easy three hour walk to lunch.
Embarrassingly, the porters clap your arrival despite the fact that they do it in half the time carrying all your stuff and set up lunch for you while they are waiting. I am sweating very heavily which is not aided by hot soup for lunch. Lunch is by the fast flowing Urubamba river that comes from the snow capped mountains above. I put my feet in and it is refreshingly icy. 30 degrees outside, the water is just 5 degrees. Lunch is 3 courses, soup, sandwiches, beef and rice. All meals are 3 courses which is great and amazing considering the limitations that the cooks have. Luckily, Catherine is tired and doesn’t ramble too much. We go up the first pass in a steep walk after lunch before finding our campsite at Huqyillabamba at about 4pm. Sarah and I cool our legs in the stream with the donkeys of the area before playing cards til sunset. The porters who proceed to play most of the night (for money I hear). We have an early night knowing that the second day is the hardest. Luckily, the conditions are good for sleeping!


The second day is a gruelling 5 hour climb almost straight up (about 1.2kms vertically). We have a hearty porridge made of quinoa (a circular Andean cereal) to give us strength but after just an hour of the treacherous hike I am reaching for the snacks and the Gatorade! There are people set up on the side of the trail to sell you drinks and also to pour the porters some chicha to give them strength - luckily I am not a local as 1 glass of chicha and I would be struggling to keep my feet on the steep trail! Luckily it wasn’t hot but we still saw many emotional struggling tourists along the way. The lunch stop was non-existent as we powered through. When we reached the top we took a break and admired the valley below, finding it hard to believe we had come from all the way down there in just two days. The view was spectacular although it was quite windy at the top of the second pass, also known as dead woman’s pass.
Just after the top, one of the porters met us with tea and wantans (cheese in pastry) which was brilliant. We then had a steep 2 hour descent which was very hard on the knees to get to camp. As I was climbing down these steps I wondered why on earth did the Incas make these steps so steep, it’s not as though they are any taller than I am! We are now in cloud forest which is much greener and denser that what we have been walking through. There is a greater presence of butterflies and insects here and the humidity is stronger. There are also many clouds upon us and the night at our campsite at Llulluchapampa is very cold.
After dinner, I play cards with Eddison and Adrianna while Sarah and Catherine go to bed. Stupid Catherine tried to wash her hair in the hand water the porters gave us. We have a laugh and are joined by a neighbouring guide for a game of ‘shithead’. At about 9:30pm the porters suddenly come into the dinner tent where we are playing cards. Suddenly I remember that they all sleep in this tent. Wow, how on earth did they all fit, and how cold did it get in this tent which was not constructed for sleeping. I went back to the warmth of my tent and had to sleep with my socks on it was so cold, even in my excellent sleeping bag and tent. My legs started cramping from the long day of walking and as I slept on my makeshift pillow of a jumper, I realised that perhaps tomorrow was going to be the toughest day of the Inca trail. Just one more night in a tent after this.
Surprisingly, we didn’t wake up that sore which was good because we had a couple of tough little passes to cross followed by hours of downhill tracks. I was starting to stink a little and was glad to be past the halfway mark of the tour. The Inca ruins on day 3 included a couple of lookouts and many terraces. I spent much of the day walking ahead of the others. Catherine was annoying me with her stories that made no sense and whining about how much she works and how much tax she has to pay. At lunch on day 3, the weather turned seriously nasty, and it rained some big old fat rain and we sheltered in the lunch tent for an hour or so waiting for it to pass. Hmm, slippery steep stairs in the rain for a couple of hours could be a recipe for disaster but with Sarah tracking me and some intense concentration I was fine. We made it to our camp at Winay Wayna at 5pm, this was the longest day of trekking so far. We were rewarded at the end of the day. Sarah got the shower that she craved, while I got something more important - a nice cold beer while I played cards with Eddison in the small bar.
The final dinner was nice although I was over their liquid puddings every night. An embarrassing farewell to the porters whose names we all forgot, and then we did the tipping with Catherine, however she decided the next morning to throw in an extra 100 sol and make us look bad! Our last night of camping was upon us and we were all quite tired and over it, how the hell the Incas could be bothered building Machu Picchu was beyond me as I was stuffed just getting there. Then they built the Inca trail, kilometres of steep steps and retaining walls to stop the trail from falling off the cliffs as well as digging tunnels through the mountain where required - how much coca were these guys chewing? I put my stinky socks outside my tent and looked forward to doing some washing tomorrow afternoon on the return to civilisation.
This day was the highlight of the trip. A 4:30am wake up in the dark to start the mad dash to the Sun Gate. The terrain was relatively flat, thanks to some incredible Inca tunnels through the side of mountains - although the hike wasn’t without short periods of sharply steep steps. At 8am we arrived at the sun gate, the end was now in sight! Of course from the sun gate Machu Picchu was covered by cloud, much to my disappointment. Eddison however knew better and told us to hang about and relax for a bit. Sure enough, 15 minutes later the clouds had moved on and Machu Picchu was before us basking in the sunlight.
The sun gates significance is that at the equinox, the sun rises at the sun gate when standing inside the temple of the sun inside Machu Picchu. God knows how the Inca’s figured all this stuff out. Machu Picchu was still a one hour hike from the sun gate and as we descended towards it I was amazed by the greenness of the terraces and the stonework of the houses and buildings was almost like a fairytale city. We finally arrived at the top terraces and took the mandatory photo from the vantage point that everyone does. We had a toilet stop before Eddison gave us the tour - the temple of the sun and the sundial, and the royal quarters were amazing. We were incredibly tired and the sun was so strong for 11am.
We finished up looking around the ruins of Machu Picchu at 12:30 and had the buffet lunch in the only restaurant - and boy did we see some fat Americans in there. The annoying thing about doing an amazing 4 day walk to get to a magical city that was so hard to get to is that when you get there, the tourist buses with hundreds of these fat Americans also arrive with you - kind of cheapens the experience a little.

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Photos

The money shot of Machu Picchu
Complete with mystical cloud surrounding the stone city ruins...brilliant photography Heathy!