Peru 2014: Hiking the Inca Trail

The views of the trail, from the trail, looking up to the peaks, looking down from the peaks were all more breathtakingly beautiful than the last. If you want to know all that then you can read any travel brochure about the trip. I’m here to tell you the nitty-gritty of the trip as it would be impossible to write to you about how much I learned and describe all that I experienced while in Peru.

Early June 2014 my husband and I checked off one of our bucket list items: hiking the Inca Trail. We chose the four day hike with the whole trip lasting seven days. We went with Valencia Travel Cusco and I highly suggest them!

In Cuzco we did the typical sightseeing things. We took half day tours which were offered through Valencia to various locations in and around Cuzco. We even saw “Black Jesus.” It’s a real thing, I swear it. Look it up here.  We did this for the first two days as we acclimated to the altitude and my Spanish slowly returned. In truth, the Spanish helped little on the hike since most of the people we met along the trail were English speaking tourists like ourselves and the others were the native Quechuan descendants of the Inca who, believe it or not, spoke Quechua.

Quechua woman weaving at the animal sanctuary. The style of her hat helps others identify her native village.

We started the actual hike along in high spirits. This was my our first overnight hiking trip. What a way to start, huh? The high spirits didn't lat very long; my dear husband had some sort of stomach bug. Whether it was acute mountain sickness or food poisoning from all the rich food the night before, we will never know. Our amazing group, a total of eight people including our guide, actually helped us by lending him poles and dividing up all of his pack so he didn’t have to carry anything. And let me tell you, we were the typical newbies and way over packed. They added a lot of extra burden for us. We could not have made it through that first day without them.

It wasn’t until day two of the trip that I truly understood that every ounce DOES count when backpacking. Trust me, you feel every square of TP when carrying it up and down various terrains. Also, being newbies once again, we did not take advantage of our porters. Please pack light and use the porters. I would assume it would make the hike more enjoyable (especially for your knees). 

Condor, puma, and snake in the grass outside a monastery in Cuzco. The Inca believed the puma represented life on Earth as fierce and strong. the condor took souls to the spirit world. lastly, the snake represented the underworld. These are considered holy animals and you can see them on the Andean Cross (aka the Chakana). We saw these three animals often during our time in Peru.

By the beginning of the second day the hubs finally felt better which is good because this was to be the toughest day. We were able to hire a porter last minute which saved us. That second day was killer. To start that morning with extra pep our guide offered us some charcoal paste and coca leaves. Yes, coca as in what makes cocaine. Don’t freak out or judge! This whole trip we have discovered the importance of coca to Cuzco. Coca tea, coca granola bars, coca leaves, coca tequila… the list goes on. So against my husband’s advice I tried the coca leaves and charcoal paste concoction. Chew two minutes, spit, rinse, then do again but don’t chew, let it sit like dip. You can let it sit for up to an hour. I made it about 5 minutes before I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.  Eventually we reached, and survived, “Dead Woman’s Pass," no thanks to the coca-dip-near-heart-attack earlier in the day. That pass was down one peak and up another on stairs. 

 

Here I'm happy that"Dead Woman's Pass" is now behind me, Literally, you can almost see the trail and the peak we reached is behind me.

Let me sum up days two and three in one word: STAIRS. My knees ache from thinking about it! Combined I think it was over 15 miles of up and down 500 year old stone stairs. It was really awesome thinking about it at first. But then after about the 1,000th step your no longer looking at each step and thinking, "Wow, someone carried and placed this here hundreds of years ago." You're thinking, "Left foot up, right foot up, left foot, right foot...." Fortunately I had the camera so I had a good excuse to stop every so often. "Photo op" was my not so discreet cover for "Imma sit down."

"Wuv, twue wuv."

On the third day my husband and I stopped at one of the various sun temples, Intipata. On the terraces were some llamas grazing. The hubs and I had a couple of spare peaches from breakfast. Naturally, we tried to feed one to a llama. At first attempt the llama dropped the peach. Ok, dumb llama. Second attempt the llama spit out the peach and it landed on the next terrace down. So what do we do? Try it again. This time the llama made its point by biting the peach and then flinging it all the way down the 30 terraces which were about 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide.We leaned over the edge as we watched it gather speed, not rolling as much as bouncing down. It nearly hit a different tour guide in the head! My bright self yelled out, "Sorry! It was the llama!" Yeah, likely story, gringa.


But the third day was worth all the sickness from day one and physical pain from day two. When we took the extra few minute hike away from our campsite. That was when we saw Winaywana. Those ruins, including an old orchid plantation, the “fountain of youth,” and a special room with seven windows for the rainbow, were the highlight of the trip for me.  Honestly, I preferred that over Machu Picchu. The aqueducts still had water flowing from them, the stairs (of course) led from one amazing viewpoint to another. Plus, there was only one other tour group there. That is much like Machu Picchu which is flooded with tourists. 

Winaywana

The last day was a bright an early start. Well, not bright, only early since we arose before the sun. We did take on the “monkey stairs.” Those are stairs so steep it’s essentially a 500 year old stone ladder. Once that was conquered, we reached the sun gate. We missed the sunrise of Machu Picchu because of cloud cover but they cleared and we had a nice sunny day. By the time we got to Machu Picchu we were so exhausted, so stinky, and so over seeing more Inca ruins (I can't believe I just admitted that last part!). Then there were the tourists who arrived on train complaining about all the steps on the ruins themselves. Ha! 

In the end, Machu Picchu was beautiful and it doesn’t matter how you get there, just GO!

It’s no wonder it’s one of the world’s wonders! (Too cheesy?)

My Inca Trail Advice:

DO hire porters

DON’T over pack

DO drink coca tea

DON’T chew coca leaves

DO take a lot of pictures

DON’T forget extra batteries

DO work out on stairs before the trip

DON’T forget hiking poles

DO learn the rules of trail bathroom etiquette/how to go while squatting
DO drink plenty of water
DO learn the switchback hiking technique
DO take llama selfies

DO ENJOY EVERY MOMENT!

We made it!

And P.S. I was serious about the llama selfie...