Inca Trail!!!!!

The next morning we started the Inca Trail and honestly it was 4 days of bliss. Ok maybe bliss is strong because we were still doing an intense hike but the views were incredible, the company was awesome, and the food was out of this world!! I mean we are talking practically gourmet meals with tomato flower garnishes made from food and cooking supplies that were carried by the porters the whole time!! It was also really nice not to have to organize anything for 4 days all we had to do was keep walking:) Our first stop along the way was to have breakfast and to buy walking sticks which we were all initially opposed to but I think after the hours downhill/down stairs we were happy to have gotten them! Once we got to the staging area where all the companies were leaving from it became immediately obvious that we had picked the correct company. Our porters all had matching uniforms that were warm enough for the temperatures we would be experiencing, they had actual backpacks for the 60lbs that they had to carry, and they had tennis shoes instead of sandals like many of the other companies. Some of the other companies didn't issue the porters anything! the didn't even have backpacks to help distribute the weight they literally had tarp-like material that they wrapped around everything that they had to carry. Our porters also all traveled together and although I'm sure they would never say they had an easy job they were always smiling and joking around with each other whereas other companies weren't even walking together. I think the porter treatment was an essential part of our happiness with the trip because it would have been awful if we had to watch the porters working in terrible conditions that we essentially put them in for 4 days! Our porters were great though, literally when we got to a camp it was all set up for us, then when we left they packed it up and then RAN ahead so that they could have the next camp set up when we arrived!!

The first day we had a leisurely hike to lunch and then a pretty serious few hours of hiking straight up before we got to the dinner site. The second day we did 2 mountain passes which was pretty tough. Before lunch we hiked to Dead Woman's Pass which was the highest point of the hike at 4100. Then we headed down for about 3 hours before lunch, which I think was the worst part because the steps were huge so it took a lot more control to go down and it was just murder on our joints- thank goodness for the walking sticks, they took a little pressure off. Then after lunch we did another pass and some more downhill but this time it HAILED so that added a bit to the difficulty- luckily though everyone had brought proper rain gear so we didn't have any problems with the rain. That day we did about 12 hours of hiking! and our guides even suggested when we left at the crack of dawn that we bring our headlamps with us in case we had to do the last part of the hike that day in the dark- luckily though we managed to get in before headlamp use was necessary. The third day wasn't as long of a hike, we were at our camp for the night by early afternoon- the biggest difficulty was that we were sore from the previous day. That afternoon we were able to shower!!! so we would be squeaky clean for Machu Picchu and we went to a ruin very close to the camp site but we mostly just hung out and enjoyed all we had accomplished.


The next morning we had to get up at 4 to start the hike to Machu Picchu- we did need our head lamps for that one!! Linnea, Coury, and Andrea took it even further and got up at 3:30 so that they could run to Machu Picchu in hopes of getting tickets to climb Wayna Picchu which is the mountain next to the ruins. This was necessary because they only allow 400 people up there per day and people who do the Inca trail can't usually get to Machu Picchu early enough to get the limited tickets (it's about a 2 hour hike in the morning/a 1 hour run). The girls didn't actually end up getting the tickets but since some people who got tickets didn't climb they were able to do the climb- thankfully after all that!!!!


Machu Picchu of course was incredible but it honestly felt a little anticlimactic because we hiked for 3 days to get there but we were only there for about 5 hours so it seemed a little unbalanced but the overall experience was still unbelievable! After that we had lunch and hung out in Aguas Calientes (although we didn't go in the gross springs) and then took a train back to Cuzco that evening. That was the only night that we went out though just to a club for a few hours but we were so exhausted it didn't last too long.