We arrived in Cusco on Monday, April 6th after spending the night sleeping on the couches in the Lima Airport’s Starbucks. Cusco reminded us very much of the city of Loja, tucked into a valley surrounded by low-lying mountains. After resting a little while we headed out to explore the Plaza de Armas of Cusco and visit the local markets with all of their Peruvian handcrafted goods. At these little shops I got to practice one of my favorite pastimes about living in South America, that is price negotiation. It is almost like clockwork how you can ask the vendors a price for something and at first they give you some absurdly high number, aka the Gringo price, but then once you negotiate with them you find you can get much more bang for your buck if you just hold out for a little bit. One of my favorite things to do, which I think is hilarious and I am sure the vendors think is annoying, is to ask the price of an item, then offer them a substantially lower price that the vendor immediately rejects. Then I offer them a price that is even lower with a big beaming smile…usually this gets a little giggle out of the vendors and then we continue to negotiate until we reach a good price for both.
Anyway, moving on, we really enjoyed Cusco, it is a beautiful little city of about 300,000 people filled with churches, town squares and many narrow streets that have a very European feeling to them. The people were extremely friendly no matter where we went and the food was excellent. Even though we were only there for about a day and a half we were still able to sample some of the staple dishes of Peru such as cebiche and alpaca.
The following day, Tuesday, April 7th, we were greeted by our bus at about 6am to start the 2 hour bus ride to Ollatamba. After winding through beautiful valleys of forests and rivers we arrived at this small town and were immediately inundated by scores of women trying to sell their coca leaves, walking sticks, water bottle holders and pretty much anything else they thought the hikers might need or want. I was lured in and bought a winter hat with some gloves, plus the essential coca leaves with their magical “activator,” all of it cost me about 8 bucks total. After that we headed to the trail head where we sat and watched all of our porters divvy up the things they were going to carry. By the way we had 10 porters for 8 people total, makes you feel a little excessive when you think about it. On us, we carried all of our clothing, personal items and sleeping bags while they carried all of the tents, food, safety equipment and pretty much anything else there was. At the trailhead we all got checked in with the Peruvian governments monitoring staff and then headed out for our initial leg of our 4 day journey.
The first day wasn’t too bad, we only hiked for about 4 hours and stopped about 5 times to see the ruins along the way and have lunch. Just to give you an idea how good the food was, I think that day we had some fried trout with a vegetable medley on the side for lunch!(Oh and one day we even had cake for breakfast, every little kids dream!) We continued to walk for about another two hours where all along the way there were indigenous Peruvian families selling Gatorades and waters from the front steps of their homes along the trail. Also there was a resting point for the porters where a woman was serving “chicha” which is an alcoholic drink made from corn. The drink is supposed to be filled with all kinds of vitamins and minerals to give the porters energy so we stopped to have a little taste and it, like the chicha I had in the jungle in Ecuador, tasted just like gasoline. That night we arrived in our camping site at about 5 to find all of our tents all set up and our dinner being prepared by our excellent team of cooks.
The following morning we were all preparing ourselves for what everyone told us would be the hardest day. So after a breakfeast of crepes and coca tea we all slung our backpacks over our shoulders, threw some coca leaves in our mouths and started the long walk “..up,up,up and up….” as our guide, Saul, would say. The trail wasn’t too bad at first but as we progressed we hit the biggest staircase I have ever seen. These stairs were remarkably made of rock hundreds of years ago and basically take you all the way up to the 13,500 foot summit. The incline was definitely hard at times but we all commented on how the coca really helped with our adaptation to the altitude and opened our lungs for the hike. It was so interesting that I did a little experiment after a snack break we had. Upon resuming the hike I decided not to chew on the coca while we climbed and I could not believe the difference. When I had a coca wad in my mouth I was slightly winded the whole time but not gassed and could keep walking at a steady rate. Without the coca I found myself completely out of breath after walking for about 5 minutes feeling really drained of energy. Apparently after talking about it the coca works by re-directing blood flow to your heart and lungs thus enabling you to climb at high altitudes easier. So after my little “experiment” we continued to climb where we hit some rain from time to time which caused us all to frantically cover our bags and put on our rain coats but we finally reached the top at about 11 o’clock in the morning.
After the summit we immediately started a huge decline down the other side of the mountain on a very steep rock staircase. We all felt that the hike down was harder on our bodies than the hike up just because it was so much stress on our knees coming down. We finally arrived at our camping site at around 3 for a late lunch and a chance to rest up for the rest of the night.The next day we continued our trip down for a little while and then it leveled out. This third day we had the chance to stop at number of different Incan sites that consisted of small towns with signal towers to send signals through the valley or a corn storage facility for the Incans on the trail. This day was probably my favorite because even though the high parts of the trail were usually covered in fog, once we got into the thick forest the trail was covered under a canopy of huge trees where the wildlife was amazingly active all around us.
We arrived at our camp on the third day at about 6pm to find a large building serving food and alcohol with music playing, not quite what we expected to find on the Incan trail! That night we turned in early to prepare for the 4am wakeup to head to the “sun gate” in order to catch the sunrise at Machu Picchu.On Friday morning we all hustled to get our stuff packed and get on the trail to get a good spot at the sun gate. After about 45 minute walk we arrived at the Sun Gate to find it completely covered in fog, if you haven’t noticed there was a common theme on our trip….fog. Anyway we waited around for about an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun shining on Machu Picchu but no such luck. So we grabbed all of our stuff and headed down the trail to Machu Picchu. Once we arrived surprise, surprise more fog…. We could only really make out about half of the ruins from our point of view. But after about an hour or two the sun burned off all of the clouds and we were able to really enjoy the beautiful spectacle that is Machu Picchu and the valley surrounding it.
From there we spent about a half day walking around with our guide, Saul, where he told all about the history of the ruins and of the Incan people. Some highlights of it were the sun dial, sacred rock, the alter where they made sacrifices to the Gods, a mummy rolling rock, the Condor Rock, the list goes on and on so you really should go and check it out for yourself! After our tour we all said our goodbyes to our guide Saul and the married couple that was part of our group. We took sometime for the rest of the day exploring the ruins and then headed off to the town of Aguas Calientes for a little R & R at their hot springs.
So I have to say that this trip was truly amazing and am so glad I did it. If any of you are thinking at all of heading to Machu Picchu I definitely suggest doing the 4 day hike on the Inca Trail if you are able. The trail itself wasn’t too terribly hard (there were a number of 50 and 60 yr olds on it) but just the experience and the beauty of the trail are more than worth your journey.
