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Published: August 14th 2007
The group
Minus me, here´s Wendy, Stuart, Adam and Tyler, plus our guide Cesar and JamesSo... the fourth of August, James and I drag ourselves out of bed at about 5am to go down to meet the mini bus to begin our trek!
We were in a really small group, just us and an American family from Colorado, a couple with two boys aged fourteen and sixteen; who luckily we got along brilliantly with, and made our trek so enjoyable! Then we had our cook, porters, four horses and our guide, Cesar. Cesar was a pretty entertaining guide, not what we had quite expected! He liked to describe himself as an Inca, and as he often said to us "we are all Incas now". I think the word to describe him would be... spiritual. He loved to talk about mother earth and how the Incas loved nature, and most of his sentences would start with, "You know, in the mountains..." Which was interesting to start with but slightly strange when he answered every question with it, including, how long are we walking today, where's the camp, can I stop to take a photo... answer being, "In the mountains..." followed by some weird comments about mother earth and how "we are all brothers". He definitely made
What lies ahead....
It´s the first day, and our camp for the night is at the bottom of that mountain... best get a move on the trek entertaining though! (We think he might have been chewing too many coca leaves, plus the fact he liked to drink Pisco, the local liquor, as he walked... consequently the last two days of our trek Cesar walked on ahead and when we caught up with him, he'd often be vomiting in a bush...)
Anyway the first day we took a mini bus up to a place called Cruzpata, and this is where we began our walking. We were eased in gently, with a half day's trek (four hours) on pretty flat ground. This was easy going and I think it's fair to say we got pretty complacent, not realising how tough the next few days would be! At the end of the day we got to our camp, Soraypampa, where we had our tents set up and food cooked for us. The food was probably the best food we've had during our entire trip, the cooks were fantastic! We were pretty much camping at the bottom of Salkantay mountain the first night, and it was so cold! About minus 6 degrees, so needless to say the first night was not much fun.
The second morning we
Scenery
Needless to say, probably the most amazing scenery we´ve ever... seen were woken up at about half past five in the morning, which was to become the norm. for the rest of the trek. This day was the hardest of all, as although we only walked about ten miles, we had to climb up to 'the pass' which was steep and took about four hours. Obviously we were getting pretty high up at this point, and James did start to suffer a little from the altitude, feeling sick, but luckily Cesar was prepared and provided every remedy from chewing coca leaves to downing Pisco! The downhill walk after lunch was just as hard as the up, being steep and hard to navigate (luckily we had invested in some state-of-the-art bamboo walking poles). After about eight or nine hours we were dead, and so happy to crawl into our tents and sleep!
The third day is when the climate changed. As we had passed Salkantay mountain now, we left the cold behind and got into the hot jungle. The third day was a half day again to let us recover a bit, thankfully, as now the blisters had begun to form...
The fourth day was the last really hard day
of trekking, basically scaling a huuuuge mountain in blistering sunshine, and then walking all the way down the other side again. I say hard, but it wasn't nearly as hard for us as the other tour group that were doing the same route... They had paid pretty much half of what we did, but unfortunately their bargain meant that their cook got so ill he had to leave them and go to hospital (meaning they had no food for the last two days), plus their guide went with him! Apart from having no one to follow, half of the group had been given a different itinery to the other half, and so after disagreements the group split, with each half going a different route, without a guide or any help. At this point, we felt quite happy we'd paid that bit extra!
By the end of the fourth day we were all completely shattered, covered in blisters and all sorts of aches and pains, and really glad we were 1) staying in a hostel for the final night - finally, a shower!!! and 2) going to take the bus up to Machu Picchu the next morning instead of another
hours trek (we literally couldn't walk any more!)
We went up to Machu Picchu at 6am the next morning to catch the sunrise, as it was apparently the quietest time of day for visitors (although still pretty busy). Machu Picchu was as impressive as you can imagine, although our views along the way could definitely rival it. I won't overly describe it, you can look at the photos when they're up.
So after five long hard days we took the bus, a train, and finally another bus back to Cusco to get a good nights sleep and rest our feet! xxx
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Mum and Dad Morris
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Quite a trek!!
Hi you two,lovely to hear from you again today.Looking forward to seeing all these pictures....sounded fantastic and exhausting!!I think I'd need a few hotels on the way up!Take care in Bolivia and enjoy the mountain biking!!Lots of love ,Mum and Dad xx