Hey all!! We survived our big trek to Machu Picchu! The name of the trek was
Salkantay, and is among the 25 best treks in the world, according to National Geographic Adventure Travel Magazine! We will give you the short version of the trip, without skipping the exciting details! I (Christine) wrote most of this, and Nick added in the details that I might have missed!! :) LOOK FOR THE VIDEOS AT THE END OF THIS ENTRY!!!!
Day One: We left last Saturday morning at 4am... with one large pack and one day pack full of what we thought we would need for the trek! We took a bus to a town called Mollepata and ate breakfast with the rest of our group and met our guide, Jorge. Here the horses (the poor horses) were loaded up with our packs that they would carry the first 3 days of the trek. Of course, it started to rain as we got ready to walk towards the head of the trail. Good thing we were prepared. We were warned that the first and second days were the most diffcult, but we really didn't know what that meant. We hiked consistently up-hill for 4 hours trying to take in the beauty and trying to take in enough oxygen...wheez. We made it to our first lunch spot, which was one top of a great overlook! We were all freezing and starving and couldn't wait to see what we were going to get for lunch! SOUP! Yay! something warm! As we ate we tried to get to know each other a little bit better..... There was a couple from Switzerland about the same age as us, a son and father (who was 67!) from New Zealand, two cousins from Austrailia, 5 guys from Brazil, 1 guy from Isreal, and 1 guy from Lima, Peru! As we finished lunch and got ready to start hiking again it started to rain... "VAMOS CHICOS" yelled our guide (a phrase we would become all too familiar with). We hiked about 30 minutes in the rain and then it it stopped and the sun came out, Nick said "where's the rainbow" and in a matter of minutes a beautiful bright rainbow appeared right beside us! We looked down the mountain and could see where the rainbow started! Like children, we hiked down there and found a pot of gold, a unicorn, and one small lepracon!... no, that's not true.. but it was amazing to see the end/begining of a rainbow!
We continued to hike for another 2 plus hours and it rained more and more... finally at the base of these beautiful snowcapped mountains we found our tents and a few small shacks! The first night was the coldest night, we were over 11,000 ft and the rain didn't help. I sat frozen in the tent waiting for the horses to get to the site with our bags so I could get some dry clothes and my sleeping bag! Nick chatted outside with our group and finally got me out of the tent to look at the stars! We have never seen so many stars... it was stunning. At about 7pm, we crammed 15 people into a small shack with a tin roof for dinner. We got to know eachother as we waited almost 2 hours for our food. SOUP! Yay! Tea and hot chocolate! followed by potatoes.. and some mystery meat. We ate our food and by 9pm we were snuggled in our tents with 3 pairs of socks, 3 sweaters, a coat, longjohns and pants, hat and mittens... we assumed we could keep out the cold... false... worst night of sleep in my life. Nick adding something here -> I slept like a log!
Day Two: 5am the alarm goes off, our guide taps on our tent and offers us some hot coca tea. As we put wet socks and shoes back on and unzipped the tent we peered out into darkness and a dense fog. Crammed back in the shack we wait for breakfast. A tray of different coffees and teas is presented, and a tray of bread. We all eat in silience trying to shake off the cold. At 7am, "Vamos Chicos!" as we headed off towards the snowcapped mountains, which were not visible through the dense fog/snow/rain.
Day two is broken into 5 hours over a 14,000 ft pass and then lunch and then another 4 hours to our second campsite. It starts to rain, we don't care about the puddles we step in or the rivers we are walking through as we hike up and up and up... soon the wind picks up and it starts to sleet. My mood was still pretty good at this point, although I was exhausted and soaked all the way through. Nick, as usual, still had a pretty good bounce in his step! You could see people who were ahead of you start to climb up these switchbacks in the snow, I tried to stay positive as sheets of sleet burned my face. It became almost impossible for me to hike more than 20 steps without having to stop and rest. I was so cold and so tired and it was so hard to breathe. Nick, even in his own misery, was so supportive and helped guide me to the top. The wind was about 40 miles an hour and without goggles it was nearly impossible to open your eyes. I could tell when a big gust was coming because Nick would stop and cover his head, so I would immediately do the same, knowing the same gust would be knocking into me in seconds. There was a huge crack that sounded like thunder and our guides stopped and looked over at the moutain next to us...an avalache rolled down and ended in a huge cloud of snow! We knew we needed to keep moving, but it was so hard to. A horse guide coming in the opposite direction was only wearing sandles, Nick asked him how much further to the top... "Diez" he said as he passed by us. A little hope! At the top we took a short video (I look really happy) and a picture and got the heck out of there!
The desent was steep, and we had another 1 plus hours until we climbed down far enough to have lunch. An interesting sight as we were going down was a woman slaughtering an injured cow right on the side of the trail...it was nasty, but of course we took pictures and then continued. Finally, lunch. We were all expecting to eat inside one of the shacks that was at the lunch site, but of course Jorge had us set up under a straw tarp thing where the wind and rain was still hitting us. Huddled around our little fold out table, the first person spoke, "that was horrible" said one of the brasilians and we all nodded in agreement. This was the first time any of them had experienced snow, and espeically sleet (what WAS that they wondered...)We were so cold and wet and mad that the other groups and our guides were inside the shacks that the Swiss went and found him and asked/demanded that we get moved inside since there was enough room! After a few minutes we were allowed inside but as soon as we got settled we were kicked out by another group and moved into the "kitchen" where we tried to find places to sit to eat our soup and rice. After lunch we continued to hike down. This night we were staying at a lower altitude, in the jungle, so we knew it was going to be much more warm. Another 3 hours of hiking and we got to our site. We piled into this "lodge" that had tables and places to hang some of our wet things to dry. Nick and I noticed that they sold beer at one of the shacks, so we each had a Cusquena to celebrate making it over Salkantay pass. As we sat comfortably in the open air lodge, our guide came up to us and told us we had to move. No big deal because this one was better! Until 10 minutes later when he told us we had to move again, back to the original lodge, but this time another group was already there, so we had to sit on the floor. Up until this point it is has not stopped rainining, and it continued to rain all evening. The horses made it with the bags and the tents and the guides began to set things up. The tents were soaked and the ground was soaked which made it almost pointless to be inside the tent or put anything inside the tent because it was going to get wet. Nick and I sat inside the tent on our bags for 45 minutes just wondering what we were going to do because everything was wet, and even the dry stuff was going to get wet if we took it out of the bag and there was no point in putting dry clothes on because they would get wet.... we were so frustrated we just laughed... then there was a tap on the tent door and one of the guides was offering us large blue tarps to put inside the tents underneath or things. Nick and I asked if we could just put it under the tent and that would prevent more water from coming in. Nick looked at the tarp and it was soaked! Seriously, why would we put that inside our tent. After another few minutes of sitting and being cold we decided to just take the tarp and we would use our only sham-wow to wipe it down.... it was amazing after we got it dried off! happily we unpacked, layed out our sleeping bags and put on dry sleeping clothes! We snuggled in, skipped dinner (Nick had a dinner of trail-mix and oreos) and we played some cards. It was a good night sleep finally, until I woke up feeling sick.
Day Three: 5am, tap tap tap, coca tea and our wake up call. I layed in my sleeping bag feeling like I was going to vomit. I won't go into details, but I had some sort of stomach bug that made the morning and afternoon very very unpleasent. "Vamos Chicos" and we were off again walking down through the jungle. It rained the majority of the morning and finally we saw sun in the afternoon!! This day felt like a cake-walk, it was still extremely steep and the path was more like river, but at least there was sun! We saw beautiful flowers and crossed bridges over waterfalls! it was amazing!! This day we were walking only 4 hours until we met up with the buses that were going to take us to a town called Santa Teresa. When we got to the place where our bus SHOULD have been, it wasn't there. There were 2 other groups there at the same time, and their buses were there! We were all a little irritated, and our guide explianed that we could walk another hour to a town and maybe the bus would be there. I was feeling horrible and so was another guy in our group, so our guide squeezed us (plus Nick!) on to one of the other groups buses that would drop us off at the town they were going to have to walk to. We waited in that town for the rest of our group, and when they made it it was lunch time. After lunch we climbed into a bus that took us to Santa Teresa town! This place was really cool. It was warm out, there were local people dancing (to Michael Jackson, of course) and a pig roast! As we unloaded our bags from the bus, a monkey named Poncho started swinging around us, jumping from bag to bag and even hopping in our bus! We were all so excited to get our tents set up and start drying things out! At about 5:30pm we all decided it was time to take a trip to the hot springs and relax! The hot springs were about 15 minutes away by bus, when we got there it was like a resort in the middle of the jungle. We changed into our suits and hopped in the huge pool!! It felt amazing to swim around and be clean!! We did wish that the temperature was about 10 degress warmer in the spring. At about 6:30 it was dark out and the stars were all out, literally it looked like every star in the sky was out! The Swiss guy came over to us and said "oof, I had to get out of the other pool it was so hot..." WHAT?! here we are in this luke warm pool and there is a really hot one right next to us.. We jumped out and got in the hot one to enjoy our last 20 minutes at the springs!! We setup right where the water was coming off the mountain, very warm and relaxing. Nick talked to Ross (the 67 year old from New Zealand) and learned how to find south in the sky (unfortunately they don't have a "south star"). This reminded me of hanging in the hot tub in rochester growing up and looking at the stars with pops.
Back at Santa Teresa town we got ready for dinner, I was still feeling sick and wasn't able to eat more than one cracker but the dinner they served this night looked amazing! At dinner we were entertained by some local girls who did a few traditional dances!! Nick was pulled from the table to dance with one of the girls which he loved, he even busted out his headlamp and turned it to stroblight mode. After dinner we went back to our tent to find a new little friend hiding underneath our rainfly. A little black kitten was curled up around my hiking boots and of course we let him stay.... He rested there peacfully all night, even playing with our feet at the end of the tent...
Day Four: 7am! Well rested, we climbed out of the tents and got ready for the day! It was gorgeous out! I was finally able to enjoy a good breakfast!! Today was an easy hike to the town of Hydroelectric where we would eat lunch and then follow the train tracks to Aguas Calientes which is the tourist town for people who are visiting Machu Picchu. About an hour into the hike, we were given the option of taking a 20 minute each way detour to a waterfall. Christine continued with 2 other trekers and a guide, while Nick went with most of the group to the waterfall. The hike there was incredible. We hiked uphill, through a plantaition for about 20 minutes, watching locals pick their crop and dry out their coffee beans outside of their house. While they were at the waterfall, another girl and I were walking on the road... and the other group that we have been keeping pace with cruises by in a van and the guide is waving out the window at us! What the heck?! would have been nice to have the option to take a van alone this not very scenic dirt road and then spend more time in Aguas Calientes.... but of course, our guide was not this prepared or organized to offer us such an option!
Aguas Calientes is a fun little town, built for the sole purpose of hosting tourists visiting the nearby Machu Picchu. After finding our hostal room, Christine and I decided that we needed to treat ourselves after finding out the cooks were cooking more soup tonight (we really liked the meals, they just got old). We treated ourselves to a fancy little joint that was completely reserved except for one small table. Christine had salmon, I had pineapple chicken, and we split an avocado/papaya appetizer and a homemade apple pie with ice cream for dessert, YUM!
Day Five: 2:30am.... bundled up and ready to hike up to Machu Picchu gates in hopes of getting a ticket to climb Waynapicchu. They only allow 200 people to climb it at 7am and 200 more at 10am, it's a prized item, especially after hiking 4 days to get there. In the dark, with headlamps, about 20 of us find the stairs that lead up to the gates. After 1.5 hours of climbing rock stairs, we are exhausted and soaked with sweat. Sitting on the 3rd step in front the gates we have to wait for another 1 1/2 hour to get in. The stars were gorgeous again, so many stars!! It was so cool to watch all the other people come filing in filling up the steps! They were backpackers from all over there for the same reason we were. At 5:30 something happened and everyone stood up and started shoving and budging trying to get close to the gates. We stood our ground! At 5:54 the gates opened! We handed them our ticket got a stamp and started running! It was really emotional, like the end of our trip and we had made it all the way there! (cue Rocky theme song) We were running through Machu Picchu before the sun came up and we had the one of the new 7 wonders of the world to ourselves!! As we dodged around stone walls and ran past the llamas on the terraces we made it to the gate of Waynapicchu. We were in the first 15 to recieive the ticket to climb! Although 400 entrances a day may seem like a lot, in less than an hour the tickets were sold out becuase Machu Picchu averages about 3000 visitors every day. As we walked back towards the entrace, we saw the poor people who didn't get up at 2:30 still running to try to get tickets... which we knew were already sold out. HA! :) We had a tour of Machu Picchu set up for 7am with our group. Our Machu Picchu guide, Ali, was awesome! He took us to this great terrace where we could watch the sun rise as he explained some general information about Machu Picchu! After our tour which ended a little after 9am it was time to get ready to climb Waynapicchu. Unfortunately, this was the end of my climbing adventures for this trip. My knee had become so irritated with all the climbing especially the hiking down that I was hardly able to walk. As the rest of the group, including Nick who will explain the climb, left for the mountain I went and sat down on the terreces and just relaxed. I ended up falling alseep, and in the midst of one of my dreams I kind of woke up and hear someone say "do you think we should wake her up?!" and I opened my eyes... to find a llama looking directly at me eating grass. This adult llama was less than a foot from my body eating... not at all bothered by the fact that I screamed and barrel rolled as fast as I could in the opposite direction. Everyone laughed, and I was embarrased. For the next hour all the llamas in the area seemed to be attracted to the area that I was sleeping in... at one point I had three baby llama bottoms in my face as they tried to get down to the next terrece to be with the mama llamas... I didn't have the camera.
The climb up to Waynapicchu was very steep, but there was a handrail made of cable for most of the difficult sections. The views of Machu Picchu from here were absolutely incredible. Since I was alone and very tired, I didn't take too much time but took some photos at the time and started the extremely steep and fairly frigthening initial steps down the mountain.
After I came down, joined Christine and chuckled about her close encounters with llamas, we decided to go take our "classic Machu Picchu" pictures, then get back to Aguas Calientes for some grub. As you can see from our photos, we had such an amazing time and felt so happy to be done with this difficult trek to the most incredible place we've been in the world. As we learned more about what exactly Machu Picchu was, we grew to become more and more fond of it's marvel.
We could have taken those same steps back to Aguas Calientes, but we didn't even consider it, especially not with Christine's sore knee. We splurged and paid the $7 to take the bus back to Aguas Calientes. After eating pizza, guacamole, chips, and drinking TONS of water, we had about 3 hours to just relax before the train came to bring us back. We layed on benches, on the ground in the square, on sofas in the coffee shop watching a soccer game, all signs of how exhausted we were from this expedition.
We boarded the train to Ollayantambo, then got on the bus back to Cusco. We arrived back at the house, apparently with all of the signs of exhaustion written on our faces as our roomates laughed at us. When we told them about our weather they laughed and said how their second day was in t-shirts, shorts and sunshine. What a contrast. But, like they say, what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger!
