Round the World with Ann and Katie

After being picked up at 4am from the hostel it was a couple of hours bus ride to the village of Mollipata where we were to start trekking from. Here we met the rest of the group and our guides for the next few days and after breakfast we started trekking. The first morning the walking was all up hill until we reached where we stopped for lunch, a place with great views over the valley where we had come from. In the afternoon the ascent was more gradual and it was a nice walk to our first campsite below the Salkantay pass. Unfortunatly the clouds had come down so we were unable to see the mountain Salkantay. It was a cold night, camping at about 3800m and we had an early start the next morning so after dinner everyone went straight to bed. The second day of the trek was the longest and hardest but the scenery made it worth while. After our 5am wake up we started climbing up to the Salkantay pass. The pass is the highest point of the trek at about 4600m between the mountains Umantay and Salkantay, both of which are unclimbed peaks over 6000m. As we climbed higher the clouds lifted and we had excellant views of Salkantay. After stopping for a break at the top of the pass, it was all downhill into the next valley where we stopped for lunch. From here the landscape changed dramatically, we left behing the snow covered mountains and entered the high jungle. We reached our 2nd campsite late in the afternoon and as everyone was tired after a long days walking, it was another early night. The next day we had a lie in until 6am. We spent the morning walking down the valley past waterfalls and plantations of coffee, bananas and passion fruit. We reached the village of Playa for lunch and from here we took buses to the village of Santa Teresa where we had our final camp. The rest of the afternoon we spent at a natural hot springs just outside the village. This was a welcome chance to wash after 3 days of trekking. The final day of the hike we were mostly following a river through more plantations. And just before lunch we had our first view of Machu Picchu from the valley below the mountain. In the afternoon we spent several hours walking along the train track to reach the village of Aguas Caliente below Macchu Picchu. The town itself only seemed to exist for tourists, every building was either a hotel, restaurant or gift shop and everywhere you went people were trying to sell you something.
On the 5th day we had the choice of walking to Machu Picchu or getting the bus. Having walked this far I decided not to give up now and walk the final hour or so to the site. This meant another early start, starting walking at about 4.30 to reach the top by 6am. It was a steep climb up hundreds of steps but we eventually made it to the top as it was getting light and had a bit of time to wait for the people who had decided to go up in the bus. We entered the site just after it opened and spent the first hour or so having a guided tour of the area. Unfortunatly our guide wasn´t very good and spent a long time telling us very little about nothing much, but it was good to finally be there. And luckily our guide seemed to be in a hurry to leave so we soon had time to explore by ourselves. I decided to climb Wayana Picchu, the hill overlooking the main area of Macchu Picchu. This did mean another hour or so of climbing steep steps, but it was worth it, the view from the top looking down over the site was amazing. Somehow I seemed to take an alternative route down and despite it being crowdwd at the top I didn´t see anyone else until I reached the Temple of the Moon at the bottom of the hill. It was an interesting route down as well, not so many steps, but a few long wooden ladders loosely attached to rocks that didn´t look that well maintained. The Temple of the Moon is a small area of ruins in and around a cave near the bottom of Wayna Picchu. Unfortunatly from here I had to climb yet more steps to reach the main path up to Machu Pichu again. I then spent several hours just looking round the main part of the site and walking out to some of the further away parts including the Inca bridge and the sun gate, the enterance to the site from the classic Inca trail. After nearly 9 hours of walking around the area I walked back down the steps to Aguas Caliente where I met up with other guys from the trek for a drink befote we got the train and bus back to Cusco. We eventually arrived back in Cusco at about 10pm so it had been another long day but it had been worth it.

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