I got picked up at 5:30am on the first day, and we drove the about two hours to Mollepata. It is a small town that is the traditional starting point for this trek. After an expensive and unsatisfying breakfast in town, we started hiking. The whole day was a steady uphill at high elevation. This is why I got to Cusco a few days early, you have to learn to breath at that elevation. The town is over 10,000 ft above sea level, in comparison, Denver is a mile high at just above 5,000ft. There is a lot less oxygen and your body feels it.
The hike was pretty, we had some great photo ops of mountains. We followed the road all day. At lunch we realized we would be getting great food on the trek. Soup followed by traditional plates. No room for complaint. By the end of the day it was cold, I mean really cold. We camped at 12,500ft and it was COLD. We were all huddled around waiting for dinner wondering if waiting for dinner was necessary, knowing that sleeping bags were in tents. No one slept well, I can´t even explain the cold.
The next morning was sheer will and determination that got everyone up. We had to take off clothes to get ready for hiking, and most people paced and ate breakfast at the same time to keep the body moving to not cool down too much. Before noon we reached the saddle of Salkantay and Umkatay mountains. The saddle is at 4650m or 15,255 ft. That is high people. Our guide led us through a traditional Incan thanks giving ceremony to pachamama, or mother earth. Then we went down.
My knee lasted most of the way down, then I tried to wrap it, but had no idea how to wrap a knee. We went down almost 6000ft in that afternoon. The good news was that it was so much warmer down there! Everyone was out and talking and having fun. We were taught a peruvian card game called ¨Chancho va!¨or ¨Pig go!¨ It is really fun and I shall teach it to people when I get back to the states.
The next day was almost all downhill. We hiked all day and it became more jungle-y vs the highlands we had been seeing. By the end of the day it was almost exactly like Honduras, even to the point that they had coffee plants.
Then we learned the Russian knife game. Now, the first time we heard the rules we all thought that it was like playing russian roulette whether anyone was going to throw a knife and get it stuck in your foot, but it turns out it is a safe and fun game to play with knives. Later when the ground was too hard but we all wanted to play, we found a away to play with rocks, which makes it available to younger people as well.
The next day we hiked until Aguas Caliente, which is the starting point for Machu Picchu. The town kind of looks cute at first, but there is nothing all that great about it. It was made to house all the people going to MP. I also highly recommend skipping the hot springs, they are NOT WORTH IT.
So, last day of the trek was the Machu Picchu day. Now, there is a peak behind MP called Waynapicchu and they only let 400 people climb it a day, so only the first 400 in the place get it. How do you get to be one of the first in there? You wake up at 3:30am and start walking to the start gate for the hike (400m or 1,300ft) up the mountain. Now when I say up, I mean up. There is very little horizontal distance covered, it is almost like a constant spiral staircase up. It was funny, people who later when up on the bus were saying how crazy that road was and all the hikers laughed because the road did major S turns and the trail did not.
Machu Picchu is amazing. We got the guided tour for the first few hours and managed to get some pictures before thousands of people entered the ruins. They are really big so can hold that many people. I have limited time so cannot go into the history of machu picchu right now, but it was amazing.
Yeah, then I came back to town. I started a conversation with other travelers on the bus and we chatted for a while. I came back and had a nice discussion over dinner with two canadian girls. Life is going well. Tomorrow I head to Lima and then down to Ica.
Jill
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