Salkantay trek and Machu Picchu

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We were excited to be back trekking again, after our first and very enjoyable trekking experience in the Himalayas in May. This was relatively easy in comparison, only 4 days and with the highest point only being 4,600 metres.


Day 1 - We met our guide, Silberio, the night before for a briefing and arranged our pick up for the following morning. It was an early start. We were picked up from our hotel by minibus at 6am. We had booked what we thought was going to be a group tour, but the company had confused themselves with dates and ended up running a trek for the dates they had confirmed to us, and were unable to find anyone else at short notice to join the group. So we ended up with a private trek for the price of a group trek - bargain! So the whole party was the two of us, a guide, a cook, a cook’s helper and a horseman plus 4 horses.

We drove for around 3 hours out of Cusco, first climbing steeply out of the city and out into the hills until we had a view down a huge steep valley with lush agricultural terracing down every side. We descended a switchback road right into the bottom of the valley and drove along the valley floor until we reached the climb into the next valley where the landscape changed and became rocky and more barren until we stopped in a small market town called Mollepata for breakfast. (The usual - scrambled eggs and bread, or in Sarah’s case just scrambled eggs. I’m going to be hungry!)

After breakfast, we discovered the minibus had disappeared (with all our bags) to go and get a tyre fixed, so we sat around in the square for a while watching the early morning goings on of the town. Finally we were underway again, acquired our rather useless horseman (more on that later) and after an hour of climbing on a steep, rough road, we reached the point where we were to begin our trek. We were to meet the rest of the crew and horses at our lunch stop in a couple of hours.

The first part of our trek was relatively easy up and we arrived at our lunch camp higher up in the valley, overlooked by a beautiful snowy peak. Lunch was cooked and eaten and we relaxed in the sun for a while waiting for our horseman and horses to arrive. It was impossible to go anywhere without them as they were the means of carrying all the food and camping equipment. After an hour of waiting, Silberio, our guide headed off downhill to find them. If they didn’t arrive, we would have to camp here for the night, making Day 2 a very long day. Eventually they did turn up, leaving just enough time for us to reach our planned camp before it got dark. Our guide always tried to find us a place to camp which was away from where all the large trekking groups were camping, meaning our camps were quieter and cleaner, which was great.

It was about 2 hours steep uphill from our lunch stop and starting to be hard work breathing, as our altitude increased. We reached our campsite as the light was beginning to go. It was a wide, grassy, peaceful valley with streams running through it, overlooked by a huge snowy peak - Salkantay. We were at 4,000 metres and it was very windy and getting very cold. There was no sign of the horses or the rest of the crew, so we sheltered behind an old wall and waited. By the time they arrived, we were pitching our tents in the dark and it was time for every layer we had in our bags!
We sat in the ‘dining’ tent playing cards, drinking hot tea and eating our new favourite snack, popcorn (‘palomitas’ in Peru, ‘tangil’ in Ecuador). Dinner was served as the wind howled down the valley outside lashing snow against the tent. Then it was time to retreat to our small tent and crawl into our layers of sleeping bags - first a silk liner, second sleeping bag and third bivvy bag. We slept soundly and warm until we were woken up at 7am with a cup of coca tea.

We emerged from our tent to find that Silberio, our guide had left the camp very early with our horseman to find the horses! Much to Sarah’s disgust, the horseman had tied their front legs together the night before to ensure that they didn’t run away and left them grazing by the stream. Despite this, they had escaped in the night and headed back downhill. He had eventually found them 2 hours walk away and by the time he had returned with them, we had watched a procession of other trekkers walk through our valley heading for the steep climb up to the pass the other side. Another late start! It seemed that the cook’s assistant, who was probably about 16, knew more about horses than our ‘horseman’.

We began our climb up to the high pass, taking frequent stops to catch our breath and put on and take off clothes as the weather changed. As we climbed higher, we climbed into drizzly cloud, meaning the view once we reached the top was fairly non-existent. From the top it was all downhill for the rest of the day. However, it was a relatively easy downhill compared to downhill from Thorung La pass in Nepal! We descended into a drizzly craggy, heathery landscape, which reminded us of Scotland in June and our walk up to the Old Man of Storr on Skye in similar weather. After a couple of hours walk, we had a lunch stop in a wide valley criss-crossed by rivulets and a campsite strewn with rubbish (disgusting and we can’t believe how ignorant people are leaving rubbish so high up in the mountains.) After lunch, we descended still further down into the cloud forest, with more vegetation and hummingbirds hovering around flowering trees. This was steep and uneven and quite slippery, which made it hard going and after 3 ½ hours our legs were very tired. Again, our plan was to walk a little further than the large trekking groups and find a quiet campsite for the night.

We eventually arrived at a smallholding and pitched our tents, the horses were put in the coral for the night and we settled down in the dining tent to play cards, drink tea and eat popcorn! It was already much warmer down here in the valley than our camp the night before had been. It rained hard over night and we woke to find a soggy, but warm and sunny scene in the morning.

Day 2 - We headed off and the mornings walking was a mixture of steep muddy climbs, descending right down into the valley to cross rivers and climbing back up again. We stopped for a rest at a camp site and Silberio bought a bag of passion fruits, showing us how to half peel them and suck the sweet juice and seeds out - delicious and sweeter than passion fruits you buy in the UK. By the time we stopped for lunch, we were low enough to see banana trees and coffee plantations and it was getting hot. After lunch we snoozed in the sun for a while and then headed off to a town called La Playa, which was to be our night stop and where our horses (and horseman) would leave us.

We found our camping site, again at a little family smallholding, high on the banks above the river. There were animals everywhere - dogs, cats, kittens, puppies, piglets, ducks and geese! Worst of all there were hundreds of tiny biting insects like Scottish midges who picked on Steve in particular to his extreme annoyance (and we didn’t bring any Skin - so - Soft!)

Day 3 - From here we had a decision to make. Option 1 for the day was to hike uphill for 3 hours and down for another 3 to reach a place called Hydroelectrica from where we would take the train up to Aguas Calientes, our starting point for Machu Picchu the following day. At this altitude the hike would be very hot and humid.
The second option was to catch a local bus to Hydroelectrica and hike the scenic route for 2 hours up the train tracks through the forest to Aguas Calientes. It seemed that option 2 was preferable, so we caught the bus first thing in the morning, driving down a bumpy rough road to a small and very windy market town, where we had a half hour stop (and half a bottle each of disgusting ‘Fanta’) and then on up the valley on a long, windy, dusty road. We had an early lunch and then the crew were to take all the gear on the train up to Aguas Calientes while we walked.

The train track is only used by a couple of trains a day, so was safe to walk on. However, it very quickly became apparent that this wasn’t quite the easy walk we had anticipated! If you walked on the ballast, it was rough and uneven and you had to watch every step. If you walked on the sleepers, they were all unevenly spread and so again you had to watch every step - sp much for the forest and the beautiful scenery! After a couple of hours of this, it was pretty tedious and we thought that maybe this wasn’t the best option after all. Then it started raining. We sheltered for a while under a train station canopy, but it was set in for the afternoon, so we donned waterproofs for the final forty minutes hike up to the town. We arrived in Aguas Calientes glad to have a rest in our hostal where we were to stay overnight.

Aguas Calientes (meaning Hot Waters) is famous for its hot springs, so we decided to give them a try, assuming that few other people would venture out in the rain to sit in outdoor hot springs. The springs were high up above the town, a series of man-made pools full of cloudy warm water and a sandy bottom. It’s hard not to think about all the trekkers who have been in there having trekked for 4 days with no shower! We didn’t stay in long and hurried back to our hostal to shower and wash off the ming!
Then there was just enough time for a pisco sour before dinner and an early bed. The next day was a very early start.

Day 4 - Again, we had options. The first option was to get up almost before we went to bed, and be at the bus stop by 4am to queue an hour and a half for the first bus up to Machu Picchu. The second option was to get up slightly later and leave at 4.30 am and walk/ climb up to Machu Picchu, which would take about an hour and a half. The idea of getting up ridiculously early to sit in a queue didn’t appeal, so we decided on the walk up the hill option - how hard could it be?!

Day 5 - After a 4am breakfast, we set off at 4.30am in the dark (past a long and rapidly growing line of Gringos in the bus queue). The road which the buses take is a long switch back road, but the route to walk up the hill is much quicker, with steps climbing up between the turns in the road. Although it was cool because the sun wasn’t up, and we were climbing up into mist shrouded mountains, it was still hard going. By the time we reached the top, after about an hour and 40 minutes, and the HUGE queue to get through the ticket gates to Machu Picchu, we were exhausted! We were given a number to enable us to climb still further up Huayna Picchu, from where you can get a view over the whole citadel, but we suspected already that we wouldn’t have the energy for it!

Silberio, our guide, took us up further still to get the best view down onto the whole of Machu Picchu and then gave us a guided tour around the whole place.

It is a spectacular site, it has to be said, particularly the setting, high on a hill and surrounded by hills and high peaks, but we hadn’t realised that it was so new (dated to 16th C). Stratford on Avon is just as old and has houses that are still lived in, not ruined! We probably have more impressive and older ruins in Europe!
The other major detractor has to be the number of people there! By 7am, the place was absolutely packed with tourists and it was getting pretty hot. When Silberio finished showing us around at 8.30 am, we were supposed to head up Huayna Picchu mountain for a spectacular view over the whole site, but we were exhausted, hot and starving; had seen enough and headed back down to Aguas Calientes for a proper breakfast!

Machu Picchu - definitely worth seeing, but “yet another overrated UNESCO World Heritage site” (Steve Blake 25.10.09)

We spent the rest of the day chilling out in Aguas Calientes, before heading to the station for our train and bus back to Cusco. Unfortunately, the tourist train leaves around sunset, so you don’t get to see the fantastic views as you travel down the valley.

We arrived back in Cusco exhausted and glad to collapse into bed at our favourite hostal.

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