Inca trail, day 1
Well the day of the inca trail dawned, (incidentally also marking moving beyond the 1 year point of my trip!) I was already up and waiting for a pickup from the tour company and not feeling the greatest. Felt bad the whole previous day (I think from altitude or food, likely a combination) and hadn’t done anything, the morning was better but still not great, especially getting up at 4:30. Anyway, the pickup never came so we had to get a taxi to the meeting point for the bus to the trail starting point (2 1/2 hours from Cusco). This was a sign of the wonders of our tour company for the trip.
2 hours into the bus trip we stopped for breakfast, I felt a bit better and ate that, also bought the things we weren’t told we would need until our pre trip briefing the night before the trail started, and never ended up needing at all. SAS travel is the company in case anyone reading this is thinking of booking any trips in Peru. Don’t use them, they screwed up lots of stuff in the office including several peoples passport numbers that were correctly submitted online, also misinformation about weights of sleeping bags and mattresses provided beforehand.
Moving on from the un-endorsement of the tour company… When we got the trail head the weather was perfect and after organizing the bags for the porters we headed to the checkpoint to verify our passports and then crossed the river to the start of the trail.
We started hiking at about 11:00 and got to our campsite around 5:45, just before dark. Most of the day was gentle uphill and then downhill sections, following the river valley in between some very high mountains. Sharing the trail with locals, including donkeys hauling packs in and out of the mountains.
We passed a couple inca sites along the way but mostly the scenery was just natural. Trail mainly dust/dirt and wide, not and inca built stone trek at this point either.
I didn’t hire a personal porter for the trip so I had to carry my own sleeping bag and all my belongings in my pack, the porters carry the tents for everyone. By the end of the day I was tired and while not regretting my decision not to pay the extra for a porter the whole way I decided to hire one for day 2, when you can hire locals just for the day since it’s by far the hardest day of hiking and the highest altitude. After dinner at the campsite with our group (12 people + 2 guides) everyone pretty much went straight to bed, 8:00. The stars that night were amazing.
Tags: Peru, Travel
Adam
Holy this sounds like fun.