Salkantay, Macchu Pischu and beyond!!

Back in Cusco I spent 3 days recovering (and not drinking) on Antibiotics and preparing myself for my next trip, The Salkantay hike to Macchu Picchu. Sadly I had to say goodbye to Dan and Holly who were leaving for Equador and so I booked the trip to do with strangers, and worried about how much slower I'd be after my Choro Trail experience.





They picked me up, along with another girl from Loki, Desire from Sweden and we joined the others at the disgustingly early time of 4am and drove 3 hours to the town where the hike begins. My group was six people, Jacinta from Oz, Desire, Simon from Switzerland, Merri also from Oz who was traveling with Peter from Liverpool. I got lucky with my group, they were wonderful, Merri and Peter kept me laughing the whole way, although Simon's exciting stories about working in the packaging factory at home got old surprisingly early on...





The first day was the easy day, which made me and Merri worry about day two which was to be nortoriously hard. It mostly involved a walk along a country road in the hills, and was delightfully flat. Our Guide was Edy, who wasn't the most informative guide in the world but was concerned when I was lagging behind in points from a sore ankle.





Its pretty hard to talk about a hike, basically its alot of walking with very pretty sites along the way, and alot of getting to know each other very quickly. Food becomes very exciting, as does no rain. The first day however, meant, surprise surprise, I got sunburnt yet again! I think I´m starting to break some sort of record... This one was special though, lasted approx 10 days, involved pain, blistering, shedding of skin in volumes that I never knew possible, and finally a patchy tan...





The first night was damn cold, we were camped at the base of Salkantay mountain, approx 2500ft. We were camped under a shelter two to a tent, I shared with Desire, who had a funny habit of talking in her sleep and begining the day by chatting away to me in Swedish :) . Merri and Peter cracked us up at dinner with there never ending slagging matches, which inevitiably I ended up involved in from day two and up until we parted ways. I learned the finer details of life working in american summer camp, such as the codes words for annoying kids- POS (Piece of Shit). They also found my wonderful Irish accent hilarious... ¨Wheress Da Firee??¨





Day two we started by climbing uphill for approx 4 hours, to 4500 ft, up Salkantay Mountain, where we were met with snow! It was cold but beautiful, and at the top we made sacrifices with cocoa leaves and made stone monuments for the Gods who would grant our wishes. Then it was a descent down the other side, which, as usual, I found harder than up for some reason. It began to rain in the afternoon which was a bit miserable and restricted our vision, but I was happy when we reached our next camp.





Day Three, mostly involved treking through the jungle, which was nice, and in the morning was very exciting. Edy asked did we want to take a shortcut, which we soon found out was a vertical drop down a cliff... We giddily slid down and got very excitable with all the danger involved. The bottom wasn´t the end, we then reached the most terrifying of all the bridges so far, which was falling appart, was made of loosely tied together logs of wood with nothing to hold and a drop into a rushing river. I was terrified, but we all made it!





We walked for another few hours until we came to a road where a bus waited to take us to lunch and then onto a town where we continued by foot along the railway track to Aguas Calientes. At that point my legs were beginning to give up on me, but the thought of staying in a hostel with the long earned luxury of a shower kept me moving!





Finally, Day 4, and Macchu Picchu! We woke at 4am to climb a steep mountain to que for tickets to climb another mountain, Waynu Picchu! The pain had left and that morning I was mostly excited, having had dreams of sleeping in and missing the whole experience. We all made it up, and got our Waynu Picchu Tickets. Finally we were at the amazingly high Inka City, which I´m happy to report was not a disappointment after all the walking! Although full of tourists, it is still incredible. Edy had told us the mountain is sinking and we were lucky to see it before it does or before its closed, but Im unsure how true it is...





We had a more experienced tour guide in Macchu Picchu. Those Inkas turned out to be more than a series of painful stairs, and were very advantanced and impressive when it came to knowing the world around them. Alot of Tombs to be seen but tragically no mummys, ceramics, jewellery etc, because the man that rediscovered it was American, from Yale, and guess where many of Peru's national treasures now are... Yep, Yale.





Aside from the missing artifacts, its kept amazingly well, and we heard the sad story of how 180 spainards defeated thousands of Inkas because they believed the Spanards, in their shiney armor, to be Sungods... They killed the leader, and bickering between tribes made it easy for them to divide and conquer the Inkan empire...





At 10 we set about our Waynu Picchu hike. Me, Merri, and Peter stuck together going at mine and Merri's nice slow pace! It was damn steep and a little scary, but the view from the top was amazing once the clouds cleared and you looked down from Macchu Picchu from a height. Note: Be careful of the cliff edges on Waynu, a Japanese tourist fell of last year when she was walking backwards to take a photo...





After many miles, and alot of walking, it was all over. Me, Peter and Merri climbed down and bused back down to Aquas Caliente were we met Edy and organised our celebratory night for the following night :)