10th - 14th August - Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu, Peru
An early start - 4:30am, swift breaky and then wait for our pickup.
We waited and waited. Eventually at 5:30am Jose (our guide) arrived having lost all his details of which hostel we were in! Still not sure how he found us!!
Wrapped up very warm we were wisked off in a taxi (wishing we'd had that extra hour in the land of nod), and were then dropped at a bus somewhere in Cusco. Herded onto the bus full of sleepy locals, we spotted the other couple we were due to trek with. Phew, we were in the right place at the right time!
There was a lot of shuffling about on the freezing bus and seats were found for us, while poor Jose (and other locals) had to squat on the floor for the bumpy three hour journey. I was squished in on the back seat amongst a family with heaps of small kids who curled up into my fleece as soon as I wedged my bottom in amongst them. They wasted no time going back to sleep so I joined them as much as possible, and they kept me pretty warm!!
Later we arrived at our start point; a pretty mountain village where our group grew to nine, as several other guides seemed to vanish! After the lengthly horse / mule negotiations (which we all had assumed would have been previously organised!) we were well on our way.
The group we were with were great - all from the States (a part from a Brazilian couple who live in Glasgow!) and they even instigated an "American Sterotypes" game! (We were then repaid with the Brit version!) Two of the couples were on their honeymoon, sadly the Brazilians had to return to Cusco shortly after starting out as one of them was sick but they met us on the last day for Machu Picchu. The others were young and very fit scampering up and down all the steep bits like little mountain goats!!
The views we had throughout the trek were just stunning. We started off at about 2700m where the hills rolled about us, gradually climbing to more typical mountain scenes with the snowy peaks looming ahead. After our exhausting climb on day 2 to 4600m we then began the descent into the beautiful cloud forests and on into the lush jungle areas with tropical fruits (passion fruit that you can't even get in Waitrose!!) and orchids to be spotted. It was amazing passing through so many different environments - and of course this meant different temperatures too! With freezing camping on the first night (2 degrees when we got up the next morning!) to burning sun during the days we needed thermals as well as shorts and t-shirts!
Day 2 was definitely the toughest - about 10-11 hours walking starting at 3700m, climbing (with someone punching my lungs with each step) to 4600m, then down again to 2700m. I learned quite quickly that I was not born to be at altitude unless I have a pair of skies strapped to my feet!!
The food was interesting!?! Lots of soup and lots of potatoes, along with random bits of meat - not ideally tasty but when you think of how hard the horses and the cooks had had to work we couldn't grumble...except for the mud porridge one morning - think they were seeing how far they could push us with that!! The coca tea (made with leaves from the plant used to make cocaine) was good though and so was the hot popcorn each night!
The trek wasn't all walking though - a few extras were thrown in just to scare us wet tourists sensless!
We took a 40 year old truck laden with passion fruit (yum) and locals at one point. This was fun in hindsight but at the time I don't think I have ever EVER been so scared in all my life! I just kept telling myself that I was sure the driver didn't want to die either as we bounced down the side of a mountain on a single dust track, negotiating hairpin bends with near vertical drops of hundreds of meters. Sadly we don't have many pictures as James didn't dare let go to get the camera out many times . And I'm sure our pictures or stories would never actually do the journey justice anyway!!
We also had the opportunity to wedge oursleves into a small shopping basket type contraption to cross a river on a zip wire! We could have tried swimming but we thought it best to risk the cables instead of being smashed against the river bolders as the water was moving pretty damn quick!!
65km of fantastic fun and exhaustion!!
We waited and waited. Eventually at 5:30am Jose (our guide) arrived having lost all his details of which hostel we were in! Still not sure how he found us!!
Wrapped up very warm we were wisked off in a taxi (wishing we'd had that extra hour in the land of nod), and were then dropped at a bus somewhere in Cusco. Herded onto the bus full of sleepy locals, we spotted the other couple we were due to trek with. Phew, we were in the right place at the right time!
There was a lot of shuffling about on the freezing bus and seats were found for us, while poor Jose (and other locals) had to squat on the floor for the bumpy three hour journey. I was squished in on the back seat amongst a family with heaps of small kids who curled up into my fleece as soon as I wedged my bottom in amongst them. They wasted no time going back to sleep so I joined them as much as possible, and they kept me pretty warm!!
Later we arrived at our start point; a pretty mountain village where our group grew to nine, as several other guides seemed to vanish! After the lengthly horse / mule negotiations (which we all had assumed would have been previously organised!) we were well on our way.
The group we were with were great - all from the States (a part from a Brazilian couple who live in Glasgow!) and they even instigated an "American Sterotypes" game! (We were then repaid with the Brit version!) Two of the couples were on their honeymoon, sadly the Brazilians had to return to Cusco shortly after starting out as one of them was sick but they met us on the last day for Machu Picchu. The others were young and very fit scampering up and down all the steep bits like little mountain goats!!
The views we had throughout the trek were just stunning. We started off at about 2700m where the hills rolled about us, gradually climbing to more typical mountain scenes with the snowy peaks looming ahead. After our exhausting climb on day 2 to 4600m we then began the descent into the beautiful cloud forests and on into the lush jungle areas with tropical fruits (passion fruit that you can't even get in Waitrose!!) and orchids to be spotted. It was amazing passing through so many different environments - and of course this meant different temperatures too! With freezing camping on the first night (2 degrees when we got up the next morning!) to burning sun during the days we needed thermals as well as shorts and t-shirts!
Day 2 was definitely the toughest - about 10-11 hours walking starting at 3700m, climbing (with someone punching my lungs with each step) to 4600m, then down again to 2700m. I learned quite quickly that I was not born to be at altitude unless I have a pair of skies strapped to my feet!!
The food was interesting!?! Lots of soup and lots of potatoes, along with random bits of meat - not ideally tasty but when you think of how hard the horses and the cooks had had to work we couldn't grumble...except for the mud porridge one morning - think they were seeing how far they could push us with that!! The coca tea (made with leaves from the plant used to make cocaine) was good though and so was the hot popcorn each night!
The trek wasn't all walking though - a few extras were thrown in just to scare us wet tourists sensless!
We took a 40 year old truck laden with passion fruit (yum) and locals at one point. This was fun in hindsight but at the time I don't think I have ever EVER been so scared in all my life! I just kept telling myself that I was sure the driver didn't want to die either as we bounced down the side of a mountain on a single dust track, negotiating hairpin bends with near vertical drops of hundreds of meters. Sadly we don't have many pictures as James didn't dare let go to get the camera out many times . And I'm sure our pictures or stories would never actually do the journey justice anyway!!
We also had the opportunity to wedge oursleves into a small shopping basket type contraption to cross a river on a zip wire! We could have tried swimming but we thought it best to risk the cables instead of being smashed against the river bolders as the water was moving pretty damn quick!!
65km of fantastic fun and exhaustion!!
posted by Polly and James at Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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