Travelbloggin': Peru (Part 2)

We woke up early in Ollantaytambo to hop on the bus, which drove us to km82 (or P'iskakucho), our starting point for the Inca trail, and after getting our passports stamped and tickets checked we were on our way. When you book the hike, the Inca Trail's management allocates campsites and such for you, so different groups will stay in different places and thus have to hike different distances each day. I thought that the way we were assigned to do it was really good, which gave us more hiking on Day One in exchange for slightly less on Day Two.

Day one we hiked 15km, starting at 2750m at km82, and finished at 3800m at our campsite. The first half of the day was a pretty gradual incline, but most of that full km climb came in the afternoon. The scenery on the way was tremendous though, with a couple more ruins on the way. We made it to the campsite for dinner with snow-peaked mountains in the distance.

Day two I found to be the hardest day of the hike, but we managed to clear two more mountain passes, the highest being Dead Womans Pass at 4200m. It's a really nice feeling getting to the top of a pass and realizing you can start going downwards for a while. I should give a nod to the porters we had, though; these guys pack up camp after we leave in the morning, pass us on the trail, then have things set up for us by the time we get to where we're going. And they're doing all of this with a ton of gear on their backs (the guy carrying the propane tank is really my hero) and in sandals. Kind of made me feel like a wuss with my North Face hiking boots on.

We had only five hours of hiking on day three, but just to add to the experience it poured with rain for several hours on the trail, so we were all completely soaked by the time we got to the campsite. I figure I wouldn't have really had the full Inca Trail experience if it didn't rain at all the whole time. Anyhow, we did pass by a couple more Incan ruins before the rain hit.

Day four we woke up at 4am to be out of our site by 5am, so we could get in line for the last phase of the trail, which was a couple hours away from Machu Picchu. The idea was to get to the Sun Gate (Inti Punku) in time to see the sun rising over Machu Picchu, but when we got there the fog was so dense you couldn't see anything off the end of the cliff, so we kind of missed out on that, but I figure it's such a famous view, and I've seen pictures of it, it's a bit like not getting a picture of the Eiffel Tower, but you can still see what it looks like on a postcard. Anyhow, we decended to Machu Picchu and our tourguide gave us a two-hour tour of the spectacular ruins.

Around 11am, buses start dropping off loads of tourists, so the place was pretty crowded by noon, so after sitting on a higher part of the ruins for a while taking it all in, I got on a bus to go meet the group in the town of Aguas Calientes (Hot Springs). From there, we took the train back to Ollantaytambo, and got a bus to meet us and drive us the rest of the way back to Cusco. This was also Bob's birthday so we all had some drinks at night.

(I've mentioned it in a previous post, but you can see my full photoset at http://www.flickr.com/photos/drowninginreverb/sets/1508456/.)

Next up: On to Lima for a few days of R&R!