Advertisement
Published: March 19th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Final Destination
Machu Picchu when the fog had cleared This was the main event of our South American leg and definitely turned out to be one of the highlights. It had everything - mindblowing scenery, amazing Inca ruins, a great group of people and some challenging but not impossible trekking that gave us a pretty good feeling of accomplishment at the end.
It’s a 4 day trek along the original Inca trail, passing ruins of Inca villages along the way and often walking along the very same narrow stone trail that the Incas built and used to travel between villages perched ridiculously high in the mountains. The main purpose for the trip of course is to reach Machu Pichu, the Lost City of the Incas, on the final day.
What makes the trek so challenging is not just the steepness of the mountains you are climbing but the fact it’s at such high altitude where you feel out of breath doing nothing at all. The killer was definitely Day 2 which is reknowned as being the hardest…so many people talk it up before you go that you’re freaking out at the thought of it…the benefit I suppose was that, as damn hard as it was, it was
Up in the clouds
Temporary relief after reaching Dead Womans pass probably easiest than we’d built it up to be. You hike from 2700 metres up to 4300 metres to the top of a mountain called Dead Woman’s Pass…how very ominous. It’s a relentless, non stop ascent and to make it even more agonizing, there’s not too much time for victory celebrations at the top….the views are awesome but the wind is so freezing and fierce that you’re pretty keen to get down, but that involves a climb down thousands of steep (and slippery) stone steps down the other side…the knees were not happy.
We were lucky to have a nice small, friendly group of 6 people in total and spent fun nights in the tent playing poker. But in addition to us, we had 11 porters, a chef and a guide…what an entourage. These guys were amazing - shorter than Ashleigh, they lug around all the camping equipment, food, gas, kitchen equipment, plus our packs, secured just by ropes and tarpaulin, the loads were often towering above their heads. And while we were huffing and puffing slowly up a hill, they would literally RUN past us in a flash. They’d be up before us to cook breakfast and set
up our ‘dining tent’, then stay behind to pack up camp while we set off, and somehow they’d still be at the next stop ahead of us, reading and waiting with a cooked lunch. What service!
So we were camping but this was definitely the most luxurious camping we’d ever done. The meals became the best highlights of the day…massive breakfasts, lunches, dinners & snacks, absolutely delicious and different every day, all somehow made in a tiny cooking tent and all with food that had to be hauled along with us for days.
Despite the numbers of other trekkers, it is still so peaceful and secluded up in the mountains and you really feel away from the rest of the world. The mountains are so steep and spectacular that they tower all around you and kind of swallow you up. The vegetation is so green and lush, with beautiful rivers and waterfalls. The scenery changes so dramatically too, that each day there was a new kind of countryside to see. On Day 3, we walked through eery misty cloud forest on paths that dropped away down long cliffs; then as we got closer to Machu Pichu on Day
3 and 4 we came into humid highland jungle with gorgeous flowers, while off to the distance there were mountain top glaciers.
On Day 4, we left at 5am and had to stumble through the dark and increasingly heavy rain to be at the famous Sun Gate for sunrise - overlooking Machu Pichu, an archway which was built to frame the sunrise perfectly on winter solstice.
Unfortunately the rain and fog was so thick that we could barely see each other, let along have any kind of view of Machu Pichu. Nevertheless, we trekked onwards down to the site, convinced it would clear as the sun came up. It didn’t. Although we were apparently standing right in front of Machu Pichu we couldn’t even make out a faint outline. Plus we were absolutely soaked and freezing. We all crammed into a small open shelter and waited for hours until miraculously the sun came out, giving us a perfect day to explore this thing we’d just trekked for 4 days to see! We explored the ruins and took in the spectacular scenery - the whole place is mystical, perched right on top of a pointy mountain that is then
surrounded by a ring of mountains around it. No wonder the Spanish never found this site when they conquered the Incas. As a result, it was “saved” from destruction and was actually unknown to the world for hundreds of years until 1911 when it was discovered. Hence the name ‘Lost City.’
At the end of the day, a 20 minutes bus ride got us down the mountain and was a bit of a thrill in itself, the narrow dirt road being cut into the side of the mountain and if you looked over the bus window there was nothing but a drop of many thousand metres below you. From the town Aguas Calientes, we had a 4 hour train ride back to Cusco which was a nice relief for the aching muscles.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0251s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb