Inca Trail

Day 1

Devon and I woke up at 5:47, I like to set my alarm clock in non conventional times, packed up our stuff, stored our bags in the luggage storage in our hostel, and waited in the lobby of our hostel for approximately 44 minutes. Our patience started to become tested because we had expected to wait around 21 minutes not 44 when we finally started to get a little bit squirmy around 6:45am our guide knocked on the large wooden door keeping unwanted intruders away from our hostel. We opened the large wooden door, lightly placed our stuff in the back of a 15 passenger Van, then took a seat in the Van, which would eventually take us to the start of the our Inca Trail adventure.

We made a brief thirty minute stop in a little village to grab a quick breakfast, or to buy anything we may have forgotten. Devon and I decided to buy a small brick of crackers, two sprites, and a bag of coco leaves, coco leaves help both stomach problems and altitude sickness.

We drove for another thirty minutes and then were dropped off at the entrance of the park. After passing through the entrance, our guide gave us a brief introduction to the trail and what to expect for day one. He ended his brief monologue by saying there will only be one Incan Ruin on the first portion of our trek so we could hike as fast as we wanted until we reached the area where we will be eating lunch. Right after he finished saying we could go at our own pace Devon and I took off. The first Incan Ruin was hard to see, so we didn’t dwell on it for too long.

It was supposed to take us around two hours to make it to the place where we would be eating lunch, well we hiked relatively slowly and still made it to the lunch spot in about 1 hour and 25 minutes. 20-30 minutes before anyone in our group arrived to the lunch place.

We ate a nice lunch composed to soup, rice potatoes, and a banana for dessert. Also we took this time to get to know everyone in our group. Here is a breakdown.

Me- I am a 21 year old young man, from Colorado with blond hair, and blue eyes.

Devon- He is a 21 year old young man from Colorado with brown hair and blue eyes.

Ricky- He is a 48+ man originally from Cuba, grew up in Spain/ The states but it currently hailing Connecticut a father of 4, owns a tree cutting business, fluent in Spanish, used to play professional highlander, likes dirty jokes, and becomes a very important player in the rest of our Inca Trail Adventure.

Kody- He is a 14 year old from Connecticut, the son of Ricky a nice young kid, who is often outspoken by his father.

Ana Maria- A 45+ born in Peru, but has lived in Ireland since the age of 16, he is a very kind women with an Irish/ Peruvian accent.

David- A 16 year old hailing from Ireland, he is extremely soft spoken, thus I cannot tell you much more about him.

Augustina- A 22 year old girl from Argentina, the girlfriend of Lucas.

Lucas- A 27 year old from Argentina, the boyfriend of Augustina.

Tom- A 25+ man from China, he had a stomach ache most of the hike and he also asked many irrelevant questions.

Robert- A 30+ man from Peru, he was our guide, and had one of the best laughs I have ever heard.

There is the breakdown… quite a group don’t you think? A picture of the group can be found at the top of this blog entry.

After lunch we were told that there were going to be no other archeological sites on the way to our campsite, so Devon and I of course hiked very fast and made it to the camp site 30 minutes before anyone else.

We occupied the rest of the day playing cards, eating snacks, and eating dinner. We probably fell asleep around 8:45pm because we had to wake up at 5:30 to start our next lovely day, which was going to be the most difficult day of our trek.

Overall Day 1 was good and easy.

Day 2

Well Day 2 started our really messy… I woke up around 3:30am, which is a complete guess I really have no idea what time I woke up, but my internal clock told me it was 3:30am when I woke up. Anyways, I woke up and my stomach was feeling far from good, and I had to remedy the situation. So I grabbed a flashlight, and a pair of socks, because Devon and I neglected to bring an important object used in bathrooms. I stumbled out of our tent and followed the path illuminated by the light in my right hand, to the outhouse in our campsite.

The outhouse was less than ideal, there was no toilet bowl… just a hole in the middle of a porcelain sink like object. Well I am going to skip the details… but I squatted over this hole for about 15 minutes, until my body told me I gotten rid of enough stuff staying inside my body.

Well I guess the 15 minutes wasn’t long enough… because I was back in the outhouse two hours later, and before breakfast had ended I had used the hole in the porcelain sink like object 6 times.

This is how I felt...

Before we started the hardest day of our trek, Ricky supplied me with a roll of toilet paper… some wet wipes, Imodium, and anti-bacterial tablets. Thank you for being a prepared parent.

The first hour of the hike was straight uphill but Devon and I cruised through it, because the altitude wasn’t at an unreasonable level. The next thirty minutes was really rough, my stomach started acting up again, and my body started to become fatigued because I had only eaten two pieces of bread, and I am pretty sure everything I had eaten the past three days was flushed through my system. After the first 90 minutes of straight up hill trekking we decided to take a large break to let the rest of the bacteria in my stomach flush every last thing lingering inside my colon. I have to say I am now an expert at using the holes in porcelain sink like objects.

The next 90 minutes were pure agony. We had to hike up huge stairs until we reached the zenith of our hike, which was just shy of 14,000 feet. Each step got harder and harder, because we were getting higher and higher thus making it harder and harder to breath. Also, my body was running on pure fumes, and Devon had to carry the 12 kilo backpack the entire trek up the beastly mountain.

Despite the less than ideal conditions we chug a lugged up to the highest point of the Inca Trail, relatively quickly.

Getting to the top was great but we didn’t hang out long because it was cold, and there were bathrooms with real toilet bowls at our campsite for the night.

This is how we felt once we arrived to the top

Although Devon had to carry the bad the entire trek and I had released every piece of nutrition from my body, we made it to our campsite 90 minutes before anyone else in our group. Our group was not the quickest.

We spent the rest of the day/ night playing cards, visiting the bathroom, talking and sleeping.

I would like to give Devon a big gold star for being a good friend and helping his poopy friend, by carrying the communal backpack the entire trip up the mountain.

I would also like to give Ricky a gold star for supplying me with everything I would ever need to zap away the bacteria which made me use the bathroom 12 times in one day.

Overall not the best day.

Day 3

Thanks to the Anti-Diarrhea pill cocktail, I woke up feeling pretty darn good. I finally had an appetite, so I ate a huge breakfast, an omelet, two cups of tea, and 4 pieces of bread… with butter and jam. After that breakfast of champions I was ready to rock the third day.

We woke up at 5:30am ate breakfast at 6:00 and were off on the trail by 6:45. Our guide told us the first uphill legs of the hike would take us around 1 hour… it ended up taking us 25 minutes. Although we were moving at a fast pace, we managed to hear the different explanations of the all archeological sites from guides leading groups moving at a faster pace.

We explored a few Incan ruins from leg one, then made a small decent to the place we were going to eat lunch. Our fast paced walking did not pay off, we didn't get a gold star or even a pat on the back, in fact we were rewarded with a two hour wait session. It took two hours for all of our group members to show up once the last snail showed up we finally ate lunch. After we finished lunch, we quickly packed up our stuff and set out for the last leg of day three.

We moved at a pretty fast pace, but to our surprise Kody the 14 year old, pretty much kept up with us the entire way, it was nice to have somebody else to walk with for a little while.

We saw one more huge Incan Ruin then walked to our final campsite. Once we arrived at the campsite Devon and I decided to reward ourselves with a Gatorade and Snickers. Both of us agreed that the Snickers we munched on after our Day 3 trek was the best Snickers we have ever eaten.

We spent the rest of the night talking and playing cards with Kody.

Day 4

The day everyone was waiting for, the final 90 minute trek to Maccu Picchu.

We were awoken at 3:45am, got dressed, packed up ate breakfast, then stood in a large line until 5:30am.

Background—the Inca Trail doesn’t open until 5:30, so on the final day groups stand outside a huge gate until two guards open it at 5:30. Once the gate was opened we grabbed our entrance tickets from our guide, and then cruised to Maccu Picchu. I don’t want to seem too conceited but Devon and I were the first two people from the Inca Trail to reach the Holy City. We accomplished this by being “those guys” and passing every single person ahead of us on the trail.

Maccu Picchu is gorgeous. Since it is sooo gorgeous we did what every person does and took about 50 pictures. After taking tons of pics, we decided to climb to the top of Wayanu Picchu, the huge mountain overlooking Maccu Picchu.

We climbed up this mountain extremely fast, hung out at the top for about 30 minutes, walked half way down, walked another 45 minutes to see some cave the Incas built, walked 45 minutes back up to the Wayanu Picchu trail, walked down, and then found our group.

When we finally found our group my legs were about to give up on me… so we decided to head back down to Aguas Calientes, to watch everyone in our group eat a nice lunch in a restaurant.

The Inca Trail was a lot of fun… if you decide to go, remember to bring Toilet paper.