The Inca Trail - rain, ruins, lamas and more rain

Bear with us as we’ll add pictures later. We have really slow connections right now So we’ve recently completed one of the legs of the trip we were looking forward to the most. It was great! We hiked for 4 days from km82 to Machu Picchu about 50km in total which isn’t a ton but when you take into account that the hardest day has you climbing about 1400 meters in elevation to a total of 4200 meters you respect it a bit more. Especially when you work a desk job and live at sea level as we do. (info at http://www.sastravelperu.com/english/inkatrail.html) The first day started in Cuzco where we got on what I’ll call a monster bus (I wish I had a picture). The cab for the driver looked like a tractor trailer cab and the back was separate and looked like a bus that’s on steroids. The monster bus took us from Cuzco to km 82 where we start the hike.

On the way it took us through fields, farms and over numerous obstacles. The hike was beautiful and the trial had plenty of gradual ups and downs. We saw some ruins (getting bored of ruins by now) and more importantly for me we got so see a magnificent white cap mountain poking out from the valley. Day 2 is the hellish day. We got up early (groan) and then started our very first step on the trail with an uphill step and it didn’t really change until after we topped out over dead woman’s pass (the name is a different story). It proceeded to rain for most of the afternoon as we hiked our not so little butts off. As we reached the top the rain clouds parted and we could see the magnificent valley below.... yeah right! That would have been nice but it just continued to pour! There was a friendly family of lamas at the top which Ewa befriended in order to take their pictures.

Day 3 was a lot of up hill and a lot of downhill to the only shower you get during the trek. We passed a ton of ruins during this part of the hike which was cool but we all just wanted to see Machu Picchu at this point. The shower was great and we all appreciated that we didn’t stink as bad anymore (only so much clothing you want to carry over those hills). Day 4 starts at 4AM and we were on the trail by 5AM hiking towards the "spectacular" sun gate only to arrive there in a dense fog and all out downpour. Yeah! Our guide Habi then took us around the ruins and explained their significance to his "ancestors". Much of our group left to go enjoy the hot springs as visibility was still poor but Ewa and I stuck around and walked up to the top of the ruins. Shortly after we got to the top, the clouds parted and we had a fantastic view of what we had hiked all that way for. Over 6000 steps up and down and we did indeed get a great view of the ruins of Machu Picchu!