The Inca Trail

July 03, 2018

Machu Pichu - the end of the Inca Trail. (Marie's Photo)

One of the things on many people's bucket list is to hike the Inca trail. This is really an experience of a lifetime. This is a hike and not a work in the park! You are either going up or going down. Not sure which is worse. My knees seriously do not like the going down. The rest of my body does not like the going up, so it was either sore knees or sore body. The highest point of the Inca trail is "Dead woman's pass" at about 4300 m above sea level. By the time you get up there, you can really understand where the name come from, although it should be called "Dead Person's Pass". You are feeling pretty "dead" by the time you get there. And there is just no air! Then from there it is down hill for quite some way. There are normally quite a few groups of people walking on the trail. It is highly regulated, but there are many people on the trail. When you look up the mountain and you see the trail going all the way up, you realise just how far you have to climb.

The start of the Inca Trail

A brief stop with the guide

First camp site

Not a walk in the Park

It is really a beautiful hike. In the Andes mountains. All alone a stone "highway" which was built by the Inca many hundreds of years ago. All along the route are ruins of rest stops or guard posts. A truly wonderful experience.

Inca ruins along the way (Marie's Photo)

Another brief stop

Dead woman's Pass

When we did the trail, it was winter. Apparently the best time to do it. It was very cold at night, but during the day, very pleasant. There were also many different beautiful flowers on the route. Always a good excuse to say you want to take a photo of the flower, meanwhile you just want a rest. Needless to say, I have many photos of flowers. In my previous post, I spoke about shearing a camera on this trip. Now that the camera equipment had to be carried, I had it most of the time! So lots of flower photos.

The guide and I (Marie's Photo)

The people we were walking with is another story altogether. Most were very pleasant. There was a nice young girl from the U.K. Then there were the Americans! You can understand how Trump could become president after spending a few days with these people. There were three of them. A man, woman and I guess what you might call a child, but a monster of note would be closer to the truth. The eating was the worst! The kid would dive into the food like there was no tomorrow, or nobody else who needed to get food. Not that he would eat so much. More like he would pile his plate so high, almost in an attempt to stop anyone else from getting anything, and then not eating most of it. They were always the first in line when it was time to eat. Except, of course on the last night when there was a small function to thank and tip the porters. Then they were nowhere to seen. Yes, they did not tip the porters!


Up and up again

The porters are also a totally another story. Our group had quite a few porter (probably about 10 or so). These guys were just amazing! They literally carried everything, including the kitchen sink, all along the trail. We would be woken up very early in the morning with a steaming cup of whatever you wanted. We would then have a wonderful breakfast in the dinning tent. Yes - they had a dinning tent and a kitchen tent, complete with kitchen sink. After breakfast we would start walking. Please note, I did not say we would first pack up our tent or anything like that. Just leave it as it was, and by some miracle, the tent with all our stuff would magically appear at the next camp. About an hour or two after we started walking, the cries of "porters" would start up. When you hear this, you move to one side of the trail and the porters come running past you, with a load that would make a grown man cry! When we get to the mid morning break place, a tent had been set up and there was tea and a snack. They were absolutely amazing!

Standing aside for the porters (Marie's photo)

After the tipping ceremony, the porters, in the morning, took the gear down the mountain. We had a really early start on the last morning, so that we would reach the "port of the sun" at sunrise. This "port of the sun" is a bit of a valley in the mountains and as the sun rises, it is seen, exactly at the port, in the morning. What a view! Machu Pichu in all its glory. It still took about another three hours to get there - mostly a nice gentle downhill. All the time getting closer to Machu Pichu.

When we eventually arrived at the magical site of Machu Pichu, the destination that we had all worked so hard to reach, the guide started explaining some of the amazing sites. Of course, the monster American run off. It suddenly had a burst of energy again. The other two came and told us that we all have to go and look for "it". I was speaking on behalf of the other group

members when I politely told them to go forth and multiply with themselves. Fortunately that was the last we saw of them and we could continue exploring Machu Pichu. This will have to be another post.