The Inca Trial, Machu Pichu and a Birthday

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March 5th 2007

Published: March 5th 2007

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pete tree

Machu Pichu

The classic Machu Pichu shot. Happy Birthday Peter!!!

Hello again

The last 5 days have been one of the highlights of the trip so far, the whole inca trail is an amazing experience with the view of Machu Pichu from the sun gate one of the most aweinspiring sights that there is.

Firstly we had been warned about the Inca Trail by several people. We had been told that the walk itself not being that long but the multitude of stairs that make up the trail and the uneven nature of these making the walk very hard.

The experience started with a briefing in our Hotel with our guide who insisted we call him Coco and came up to Trionas shoulder. He was very impressed when we told him we had been in Bolivia and had hiked in and out of the Colca Canyon. At this point he assured us we would have no problems and not to worry. He also explained our intineray to us with the 1st day being the hardest as we had lunch where most other groups stayed the night and the second day would be hard too as we had to walk further. However by doing this we would be able

Our first view of Machu Pichu

Machu Pichu as seen by us at 6am after 3 days of walking! Awesome

to have an easy 3rd day and get a good camp at the last campsite. He also informed us that we were the only 2 bookings the company had for this trip so we would be getting a private tour of sorts.

The first day started very early with our bus picking us up at 5-30am in the main square of Cuzco. The bus then started the drive to the start of the Inca Trial and Coco told us how he loved to start early to get ahead of the other groups. About 30 seconds later a quick Spanish conversation told us we were going back to Cuzco to pick up our tickets and thus wouldn´t be starting early after all. After much driving we arrived at Olantaytambo which is where we picked up our porters.
Triona and I where sharing a porter who carried 6kg of our stuff and we had to carry the rest of our stuff ourselves. The town square was full of guys who were waiting to be picked up by companies, apparently they are farmers from surrounding communities and do the work to get extra cash. We got our 3 porters and continued the

The beginning....

Notice how enthusiastic and ready we look for our three day hike. We are true adventurests......

drive to the start of the trail. On arrival we were attcked by women selling various things including walking sticks which they assured us where "necessary" and we would need if we were going to do the trail. We asked Coco who said it might be a good idea to get one to share. We started walking down the 200m to the control point and it became apparent very quickly that the stick was a major pain and was NOT necessary. We started the trail without Coco as he had to wait for the porters. The first part is pretty much flat and is quite easy- so with our new fitness the 2 of us walked past a few other much larger groups. One of these groups had a lady stuggling already and thanking god whenever they stopped, we are not sure if she ever made it as this was by far the easiest part of the whole walk!
The walk till lunch was fairly easy. We arrived early for lunch and to pass the time Peter patted a bunch of piglets with our magic necessary walking stick, after lunch we started off and after about 20min we realised we

What a show off....

The porters carried around 30kg on there back whilst running past us. They sure knew how to make you feel ridiculous for even thinking that it was tough. We were clearly whooses compared to these guys

left our stick with the pigs but decided not to go back as they would get more use out of it than we would. The first day ended at 3800m with the afternoon being quite hard as it started raining which always makes things more fun. However we were glad to get into camp.

The 2nd day started with us being woken up at 6am and after breakfast having to walk up to dead womans pass, this is the highest point on the trail at 4200m and is consisdered to be the toughest part of the walk. Having been to Bolivia 4200m didnt seem to high and we managed to get over the pass without to much trouble. However a group that left over 30min before us was waiting for thier slower members at the top- which made us glad we weren´t in a big group as waiting in the freezing cold wind didnt look like much fun. The walk down to our lunch site was quite hard as the stairs were of all different sizes and the bags added extra weight making the muscles around our knees quite sore by lunch. The stairs are also of all different

Attack of the llams...

We woke up on the second day to find our tent surrounded by llamas. Luckily these ones were not to phased by people and did not try to attack us!!!

sizes with some of them not being big enough for Peters feet and meaning that at times he had to jump down the stairs.

At this point we should acknowledge the porters. They are absolutely amazing as they carry 30kg of gear and unlike us they run most of the trail and skip down the stairs. Many of them wear only sandals as that is what they wear all the time and they dont like shoes. The porters were simply amazing and really made us feel unfit, many of them were from poor communities and didn´t have much. So anything was greatly appreciated, Peter gave his rain jacket to one of the porters who seemed pretty happy with his new jacket and even happier when he realised he would get to keep it at the end. Our guide told us that the oldest porters they had were 60 and 63 and could only do the Inca trail twice a month as they get tired.

He also told us that the oldest walker he had come on the inka trail hike with him was 70 and his name was Bob and that at the top of all the passes

Stairs, Stairs and more stairs

he would jump onto the ground and do a whole lot of pushups just to assure everyone he was okay, pretty impressive for a 70 year old.

After lunch we had to walk up another pass and down the other side, feeling tired at lunch Peter decided to follow the porters lead and make up a big bunch of coca leaves to chew during the walk. All the porters chew the leaves which are legal in Peru and Bolivia and give you much energy for walking. With the help of these leaves Peter breezed over the pass and down the other side. Triona without the leaves was a bit slower however was happy that her teeth didnt get stained green from the Coca leaves and that she couldnt taste them in her mouth for a few hours afterwards. She argues that the Coca tea has the smae effect of which she drank in copious amounts- however we have agreed to disagree about which is better (tea or chewing). We were the first group to arrive at this camp, however as we were having dinner our guide told us that it used to be an Inca cemetry and that there

Our first view of Machu Pichu

were several reports of spirits living in the area as there had been 2 murders there and that some of the porters had refused to camp there in the past. We questioned him further but he assured us he wasn´t lying and if we put Coca leaves in our tent we would be okay. In the morning it turned out the leaves did protect us and we had been unaffected by the spirits.

The third day was as coco promised relatively easy but the views were pretty amazing which made walking a bit more difficult as we were constantly looking at everything around us. This was a hard part of the walk as the whole trail is covered in Inca ruins many of which are very attention grabbing to say the least and make keeping on the path a bit harder. We arrived at the camp and Coco said we should have a rum to celebrate, however when he asked the porters one said they left it behind while another told us it broke. We can only assume they drank and deservedly so!! So no rum but we arrived early so we were able to visit Machu Pichu twice

Machu Pichu

The classic photo of Machu Pichu as taken by Peter.

but it looked like rain so we didn´t go and left our chances to the next day.
That night at dinner Coco disappeared and came back with all the porters and a cake for Peters birthday the next day, we still wonder how a guy in a tent with a 5kg gas bottle made a cake or a pizza or any of the food from the trail as the food was amazing. All the porters sang happy birthday and wished us luck for a good day the next day. Coco said we should make an offering of coca leaves to Pachamama the spirit of the mother earth and ask for no rain or fog the next morning, we did this and went to bed with rain falling outside.

We got woken up the next morning at 4am by one of the porters and it was still raining this was a bit worrying however as we wouldnt get to Machu Pichu till 6am and we had faith in Pachamama we weren´t to worried. We got to the checkpoint at around 5am and were the 2nd group in the line. By this time the rain had stopped and we were waiting

A confused llama

The llamas at machu Pichu were allowed to roam freely. Unfortunately when they roamed into a tour group they had a bit of trouble getting away

for our chance to get started after the checkpoint. We walked quickly along the trial and with the trail being mostly flat we covered the ground pretty quickly. We arrived at the Sun gate after just 40min even though it is meant to take and hour and a half.
From here we got our first non cloudy, non foggy, perfectly clear sight of Machu Pichu and it was truly amazing. Coco turned around to Peter and wished him a happy birthday and it was an amazing way to celebrate it. We walked down towards Mahcu Pichu from the sun gate where wecame across the top of one of the agricultural terraces and all of a sudden below us was the site of Machu Pichu.
It is very difficult to describe just what it is like but the photos hopefully do it justice. After breakfast we had a 2hr tour of the ruins which was very interesting with all sorts of amazing things about the ruins learnt. We spent the rest of the day just walking around the ruins and sitting and staring at them.

The whole tour was absolutely amazing and was definately one of the highlights of the

The Peruvian Lawn Mower

This is just a classic peruvian picture......

trip so far.

Our excellent tour company was

http://www.sunriseperu.com/

So after everything it definetaly turned out to be a Very Happy Birthday for Peter

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