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So we got off to a good start with our guide picking us up 40 minutes late. We barely slept the night before in an uncomfortable room and it didn´t help that our pickup was at 6am. We were broke as usual, so had picked up a supermarket breakfast of yoghurt, cheese and crackers the day before. Our first stop was at Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley. The rest of our group had brekkie in town, while we sat on the sidewalk with the locals and munched on crackers! We bought a walking stick each as we heard they are very much needed on the trail. They only cost 4 sols each which was a mere $1.50. After brekkie we piled back into the van and drove to kilometre 82, the official start of the Inca Trail. On the way I spotted where the train tracks had been broken during the January flooding. Part of the track had simply broken off and I could see where it started up again, there was a track but it was hanging in mid-air... hence why we were driving up a dodgy gravel road to get to the train station. Our guides handed us all
out camp mattresses which completely stuffed up our packing efforts. Our small day packs were already packed to the gills, then we had our sleeping bags strapped onto the underside of the backpack.. so an extra bit of luggage really didn´t help. There were the usual hoardes of hawkers trying to sell their wares.. hats, food, walking sticks and other crap. We ended up buying a few straps off one lady so that we could tie our sleeping bags onto our backpacks properly.. we were pretty stoked because they were cheap and meant our crap bags could hold our stuff and she was stoked because we gave her a handful of lollies. Off in the distance we could see huge snow-capped mountains, it was still sunny and hot though but we knew this would mean freezing once the sun went down.
After a quick pep talk by the guides and the whole team introducing themselves (it was a huge team of 34 people plus 4 guides), we headed off down the gravel road to the train station and the entrance to the Inca Trail. We all got together for a team photo and hit the road. We were all
quickly processed through the checkpoint and crossed a bridge over the Rio Urubamba river. From there it was a pretty cruisy walk for the day. We saw the archaeological site of Llactapata. This place had many cultivation terraces, that probably served to feed many people from other Inca sites in the area. The rest of the day was pretty easy walking, about 5 hours all up including our lunch stop. We had porters with us who went on ahead of the group. The loads they carried were massive, bags bigger than our jumbo 90 litre backpacks that we had left at the hostel in storage because they were too big to carry. The porters were all small guys, my height or shorter. They all chose to wear sandals rather than walking shoes. Our guide told us that they used to carry 50kg each, but the government bought in new laws that they can only carry 25kg now. We saw some porters carrying big gas camping stoves plus the whole gas bottle tied to their backs. They were amazing! Once the sun went down, the wind chill picked up straight away and we busted out our hoodies and beanies pretty quick.
Our first campsite was in a small, grassy field by a rushing river. Our porters had beaten us there and had already set up several tents and started cooking dinner.. efficient little dudes! It got dark very quickly so we commandeered ourselves a little tent and made up our beds on the nice hard ground. It was really cold by this point so we put on our woolly socks that we bought in Cusco and headed up to the dining tent for dinner. We quickly learnt that every meal would be pretty much the same, soup first (always vegetarian.. normally a broth with pasta and a few bits of veg), then a main normally including rice and some veg with a tiny bit of meat or in my case soy meat, then hot tea after dinner. No complaints on the food though, they did so well considering that every little ingredient was carried by the porters the whole way. After dinner our guide, Eloy, gave us all a pep-talk and told us how awesome we all were for finishing the first day. He told us that the first day was easy, second day is all in your head, third day
is unique, fourth day was amazing. So in the morning we would be having breakfast and then hitting the road asap.. lunch wouldn´t be served until we reached our campsite.. which was at least 8 hours away, depending on how fast you walk. He then told us that we would be woken up at 5am by the porters serving us hot coca tea and we had to get our asses out of bed straight away. So of course we all quickly migrated to our tents to attempt some sleep. After dinner we also unfortunately found out that the bathroom was ´baño naturale´.. in other words, go in the bushes. So after dinner you could see half the group walking off into the trees to try and find somewhere private.. difficult considering there were so many people and it was totally pitch dark so you had to carry a torch everywhere.
Anyway, we made it through the night with barely any sleep. The river was a few metres away from our tent and so loud. Plus we were sleeping on a slight bank so spent the whole night sliding down towards the door of our tent, which by the way
wasn´t even long enough for us to stretch our legs out straight. To top it off it was bloody freezing, even though both our sleeping bags went as low as minus 5 degrees. So it was with much disgust that we heard the porters coming towards our tents at 5am. We dragged ourselves up for the hot coca tea and quickly packed up our tents, rugged up in all our woolly clothes and stumbled to the dining tent. Happily, breakfast turned out in my favour.. pancakes.. yay! We had heard from all the people we spoke to that the second day is the hardest, so it was with some apprehension that I started this day. The first few hours was reasonably easy walking. Most of it was quite pretty, through shady forest areas with some running streams. There were quite a few stone steps and of course we had plenty of rest stops... well, I did anyway. By this point we had made friends with Bryan, who was from the UK. I was glad to have him along as he wanted to stop and rest as much as me! Aaron had a big job keeping us motivated as it got
harder and harder. The steps got bigger and more frequent until I thought there was no way I could make it up one more step. We finally reached our meeting point and found that most of our group had already headed off before us. We met with our guides who told us it was another 2 hours to the pass at the top, then 1.5 hours down steps to the campsite... sounds easy right?? We were all pretty starving by this point so shared some biscuits and orange we had saved from the day before. Water was low so we had to ration it out. There were what looked like real toilets at this meeting point so I inspected only to find they were squats.. yuk.. for those who haven´t seen them, these are what looks like a porcelain toilet bowl, but it is set into the floor. It has two spots at the front where you are supposed to put your feet. How you are supposed to do this without having an accident is anybody´s guess.. lets just say it´s touch and go and you have to have your head about you so you can balance.. it´s hard! Oh
and it stinks of course... nice.
So we amped ourselves up for the walk up to Warmihuañusca Pass (It means "Where the woman dies" in a literal translation from the Quechua), it doesn´t look that bad from here.. don´t you reckon (oh yeah, it´s only at an altitude of 4200 metres)? Oh yeah, looks fine.. look there are already people at the top of the pass right now, can you see them? ... So the three of us set off, with Aaron in front of course, singing a silly made up song and trying to egg us along. To put it simply, this part was pure torture! It was pretty much steps the whole way, but not normal steps like we get at home. I´m talking about steps made out of irregular stones. Steps that are all different lengths and heights. Oh, and my theory is that the steps were made for giants because normal human legs aren´t made for them! The sun was beating down on us and there was no shade at all. I totally lost my sense of humour on this section, it was way beyond hard if you ask me. I am totally unfit though,
so it was good exercise I suppose.. but it almost killed me! Bryan and I stopped lots along the way and looked up to see Aaron on the next bend going ´come on guys, you can do it!´. Damn people who are happy when things are shit! Every time we thought we were almost there, we got around another corner and found that we still had yet another hill to conquer. If it wasn´t for Aaron I reckon I totally would have packed a sad on this section and had a cry about how hard it was. The top just seemed to move further and further away and it was even more soul sucking that we could see people waving and yelling from the top. More and more people overtook us while we toiled up the steps. We barely even took photos in this section as it was the last thing on our minds! But in the end, we finally made it to the top. It was nice to see a bunch of people from our group sitting up there catching their breath. When we put our foot over the last step, all the people clapped for us which was
pretty cool. We thought we were dead last but it turned out there were still others behind us. So we took that opportunity to rest and wait for them so we could all clap on their arrival. The view from the top was stunning. On the other side of the pass was a view of high mountains, that we were at the same height of, with clouds hanging over the tops.. just beautiful. We could also see the route to camp, down over 3,000 steps and 1.5 hours. So we sat up the top for a good hour and met our new American friends, Sandy, Charlotte and Amy. They joined us for a bit as we started the downhill climb, but were way too fast for us and steamed on ahead while we lagged behind. The steps were so hard after the uphill climb, our legs, feet, backs.. everything actually.. were so sore already. The steps were once again, irregular and too big for human legs.. so every step jarred our already painful everything! It of course also looked closer than we thought, but every corner bought a lovely new surprise of yet another stretch of steps and hills. By
the time we made it to camp the sun had just ducked behind the mountains so it was cold straight away. By this point it was 3pm and most of the team had already eaten. The porters bought us our lunch of rice and lentils with hot tea. The campsite was all on gravel, mmm.. lovely to sleep on. We got ourselves a tent and went to inspect the toilet and shower prospects. The good news was, there were western toilets.. the bad news was that A: they stunk more than any stink I´ve ever smelled B: the shower water came straight from the mountain eg. freezing. While I was in a toilet stall I heard a girl in the shower gasping from the icy water. In that moment I decided I could live without a shower for one more day. Aaron was brave though and gave it ago, he said it was so cold it took your breath away. Back in the tent we put on as much warm clothing as possible, it was even colder in this valley than our campsite the night before. For afternoon tea we were treated with big trays of popcorn and fried tortillas
with hot chocolate.. happy days! Dinner was the same, soup entree then veg & rice. At our pep-talk after dinner we found that we would be lucky enough to be woken at 4.45am in the morning and that we would be walking up the forbidding path we could see on the other side of the camp site. Eloy also told us that there was a story to be told about our campsite.. but being the joker that he is, he wouldn´t tell us until our first meeting point tomorrow.
So with dread in my heart, we hit the hay and tried for some sleep.. which didn´t happen. It was absolutely freezing and the ground was cold and rocky and neither of us slept barely a wink. Waking up that morning was so far from fun, I was so cranky from lack of sleep. Lucky I had Aaron there to sing a tune and be the happy guy! To add insult to injury, breakfast was omelettes.. I hate eggs! There was nothing else to be had so I made myself a 4 spoonful hot chocolate with loads of sugar and used it to wash down the skanky omelette. It was
either that or go hungry, and I knew lunch time was hours away. We hit the road and walked through the campsite to go and tackle the nasty looking hill. 45 minutes up yet more damned stairs and we were at the first meeting point, the archaeological site of Runkuracay (3800m). Here Eloy decided to tell us the story of our campsite.. some guy murdered his wife there! Apparently porters and hikers have been attacked by ´ghosts´at the site... freaky. So after the ruin we hit the stairs again.. yay more stairs! Walked uphill for another hour admiring the beautiful views along the way. Finally got to the top of the pass and headed down to Yanacocha lake, arriving in Sayaqmarca, another archaeological site. This ruin was quite beautiful, on the side of a steep mountain with an uninterrupted view of the jungle below. We stopped here for a while as Eloy gave us another in depth account of how the Inca´s used the site.
After that beautiful spot, we headed down the hill to our lunch site. As usual, the porters had beat us there and already had the dining tent set up and lunch on the go.
Lunch was great with a quinoa vege soup.. mmmmm. After a feed we headed for the next pass. With the jungle so nearby it was steamy but we were also up pretty high so at some points we were in the clouds and visibility was low. This part of the walk was lovely. The steamy climate encouraged beds of moss to grow everywhere. The rock walls to one side were covered in moss in shades of red, orange and green.. on the other side was a sheer cliff and steep drop down to a chasm and then another high mountain in the far distance. The path here went up and down a lot, all stairs and uneven ground. We finally reached the next meeting point, where we could see the town of Aguas Calientes far below. Just down the hill from here was the next archaeological site, Phuyupatamarca. This site was on a hill with a brilliant view over the valley and mountains. We stayed here for a while, waiting for the rest of our group to catch up. Not long now until our campsite and the promise of the first hot shower in 3 days.. woo hoo! Tell a
Inca Trail - Day 2
yep.. this is the super duper fuckin hard day!girl she can have a hot shower after 3 days of no shower and she runs! So after another teaching session on the history of the site, we practically took off running towards our camp. We knew it would take about 2 hours and we wanted to get there asap in case the hot water ran out. We were gross and sweaty and our feet were covered in blisters and totally stinky and a hot shower was sounding extremely exciting. The stairs were so steep and wound endlessly down and down and down. We did ok on the first bit and pretty much ran down a lot of them and made good headway. But of course we ran out of puff for that and had to slow so we didn´t fall. We ended up giving up on the race due to our protesting feet and knees and took it easy for the last half hour. There were loads of amazing orchids and flowers along the way and we couldn´t help ourselves taking loads more photos. We finally got to our camp and found our little campsite, along a treacherous path and past several other campsites.
On arriving we were
totally stoked to find out that we were camping on rocky ground again. We threw our shoes off and thankfully put on our thongs and headed off in search of the shower. Of course they cost money, 5 sols each (AUD2).. which isn´t much but still we were a bit miffed, especially since we had no change and the restaurant on site refused to change our notes. We had to buy a ticket and wait in a queue for our go. The showers ended up hot as promised, but the water just dribbled out and once you got out of the shower you almost froze to death. But a shitty hot shower is better than no shower at all right? We rewarded ourselves with one very expensive beer each, then trekked back to camp up a muddy hill with steps and our crap little torch that was dim all the time and ate new batteries in less than 2 days. We spotted the toilets on the way back up the hill to camp.. they were squat toilets of course and you could smell them 10 metres away.. they also looked like that scene out of Trainspotting (I´m sure some of
you know the one I mean).. in the morning there was even poo smeared on the wall! We rugged up in our woollies again and headed for the dining tent. Being our last night of camping, they had made a special dinner.. for everybody but me! The team got big plates of chicken drumsticks, pizza and beef and gravy plus pasta and vegies.. while I got a plate of rice... ripped off! So, to add insult to injury after my insignificant dinner, we were told that wakeup in the morning would be 4am... ouch.
So there was no sleep yet again, hard ground and no pillow doesn´t really seem to allow for it. We got up and headed for the dining tent to have a small brekkie. The whole camp was shrouded in low clouds and visibility was really low. We all headed down to the meeting point as it started to rain lightly, so we all had to don our wet weather jackets and oh-so-cool poncho ´s. The whole team headed off down the path through the clouds. The path was the usual stone with some pretty easy steps. Visibility was zero on the cliff side, the clouds
still thick. We were all thinking in our heads that we hoped they would clear for the all important moment that wasn´t far away now. We walked pretty fast until we came to some near vertical steps. Quickly got over those and continued on the path to the Sun Gate, Intipunku. Intipunku is a gate built in a high mountain pass, overlooking Machu Picchu. In the winter and summer solstice, the sun shines through there and can be viewed from the temple at Machu Picchu. It was still before 7am at this point, yet there was a crowd of people at Intipunku. All of the different groups walking the Inca Trail got up at different times, but all were stopped at this point hoping for their first glimpse of Machu Picchu. Unfortunately the cloud cover was still thick, complete white out. The atmosphere was electric up there, the crowd of excited people starting to cheer as soon as clouds started to shift. But, it was not to be, we hung around for a bit but the clouds didn´t shift so we headed off along the path.. only half an hour walk to go! We rushed the last bit, getting excited
Inca Trail - Day 2
me and Bryan.. dying by now. The clouds even started to clear faster and faster. We finally got a view of the lower agricultural terraces and had a little cheer. Not far on we came across some big llama´s blocking the path. We made our way around them and then there it was, Machu Picchu. 4 days of walking, sun, stairs, sweat, almost tears, freezing nights and blisters.. we had finally made it to our prize. As the clouds gradually cleared, the view was more than we could ever have hoped for. We clicked off hundreds of postcard perfect pictures and took a while to marvel at the sight.
As we had been up since before 4am, tiredness was really starting to set in by now. Some of the people in our group headed off to climb Huayna Picchu, the big high mountain off to the side that can be seen in a lot of the photos. I had barely the energy left to walk so refused to climb more steps! We met our guide and sat down for a while as he gave us a little lesson on the site. He believes that the Spanish never found Machu Picchu. Apparently the residents
of Machu Picchu covered the site with vegetation and evacuated to a site further into the mountains. This is supposed to be why the site is so well preserved. After our lesson, Eloy took us off for a tour of the site. There weren´t too many tourists around at this early hour, so we managed to get a lot of good photos. After our tour, the guides told us where and when to meet in Aguas Calientes for our train back to Ollantaytambo. We headed off to check out more of the site and took way too many photos. Sun and tiredness eventually took over though and we decided to head back to town in search of food.. the one pancake we had at 4.30am definitely wasn´t spurring us on by this point! As we were short on cash, as usual, we took the free way home.. walking. It took about 1.5 hours and was all downhill on uneven steps and was pure torture. Our feet and legs complained all the way.. oh, actually so did I. Especially nearer to the bottom where we were discovered by swarms of sandflies and gained yet more itchy bites to add to our
Inca Trail - Day 2
shit yeah.. we made it to the top of the stairs alive! growing collections. Thankfully, we finally reached the bottom and crossed the bridge over the rushing river. We thought it wouldn´t be far into town, but the kilometre or so walk was the death of us with constant buses driving fast along the dusty road and our feet barely able to carry us the rest of the way.
Once in town we searched out some pizza and fresh squeezed juice and demolished it all in 15 minutes flat. Unfortunately since Aguas Calientes has a captive tourist market, all the prices are hugely inflated. We got into town around 2pm and had to somehow kill time until our train.... ages away at 9pm! So we wandered around and bought some beers and discovered that not only were the prices high, every bill included a 10% service charge.. rip off! Anyway, we managed to kill the slow moving hours and then met up with our friends from the team at the meeting point for some drinks before the train. Departure time finally arrived and we all dragged our feet to the train station. As soon as the train pulled off, most of us were asleep. Once the train got back to kilometre
Inca Trail - Day 2
this is one of the porters.. how they carry those massive loads is beyond me! 82, we all piled off in search of our lift home. Found our guy and all got on the bus.. and fell asleep again for the bumpy ride back to Cusco. We finally got back to our hostel around 2am and promptly fell asleep in our thankfully wonderfully comfortable bunk beds.
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Bryan Burford
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The pain
Excellent blog - reliving every step! It was hell, but fantastic memories - and I'm not sure I'd have made it to the top without you two, so huge thanks for that. Great photos too!