Day 1 Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

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Day 1 of our trek started out very early - we got up at 4:30 am to shower for the last time for 3 days, and make sure we were in the lobby to get picked up by 5:20. The hotel we stayed at prepares breakfast for you between 5am and 10am, so we were able to get some juice and a croissant before we left. We were the first hikers to get picked up that morning, and the bus made several stops at various hotels/hostals in the town of Cusco to pick up the rest of the group. In an earlier blog, I mentioned that there were to be 16 in our group, but we ended up with 13 due to a couple of bouts of food poisioning/altitude sickness. The bus ride was about an hour and a half to a small town called Ollantaytambo where we stopped for a proper breakfast (egg sandwich and banana pancakes!) and potty break and to buy more bottled water and snacks to get us through the trek. There were several ladies selling hats, gloves, scarves, hiking sticks, etc...and a bathroom that actually had a toilet seat and toilet paper that you could use for 50 centimos (about 17 cents American - totally worth it!). From here it was back on the bus to the start of the trek where we met the group of Porters - 18 porters, a cook, assistant cook, our guide Roberto, and assistant guide Omar. The porters carried all of our tents, sleeping mats, dining tent, cooking tent, 2 propane tanks, all cooking utensils, food, and everything else we would need to get through the next 4 days on their backs! These guys were incredibly strong, and carried all of that weight while running past all of us hikers struggling to hike with just our day packs! The trek began by going through a checkpoint and getting our passports stamped, crossing a bridge and immediately climbing a hill! (We were told the first day was easy, a fairly level 12 km hike...I was struggling with the thin air at 11,000 feet and needed to take breaks pretty frequently if we were going uphill at all!). We passed through several small villages on the first day where local ladies were selling water, gatorade, and snacks to hikers. Any toilets this day were better that what I was expecting - holes in the ground, but these were ceramic holes in the ground in a small building, so at least there was a little bit of privacy. The views on the first day were amazing, we could see the snow capped peak of Mount Veronica at 5860 meters, and we were surrounded by the Urubamba mountain range. We saw several different ruins on this hike, one a fort and the other an agricultural station discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911. We were pleasantly surprised by the lunch the cook made for us - fresh avocado and cheese, garlic bread, noodle soup, roasted trout, cucumber & tomato salad, Peruvian potatoes, veggies & pasta salad, orange drink and hot tea. After lunch we made our way to our campsite that night at Wayllabamba - a farming village that had a site set up with running water and toilets (still ceramic holes in the ground) - there were donkeys, chickens, horses, dogs, etc. around this campsite. Dinner that evening was lemon chicken, rice, potato cake, veggies, and poached apple for dessert! After dinner the group got acquainted by playing card games in the dining tent. The livestock was all very charming to see when we first arrived at camp until the dogs started barking at something in the middle of the night and the donkey was grazing right next to our tent and the rooster woke us up at 4am! That combined with the fact that our campsite was at a slight angle and we kept sliding down to the bottom of the tent definately contributed to a light night of sleep that night!

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