Day 3 - The Hike Begins! (Day 1 - Sunday)

I didn't sleep much last night and Sharon and I actually stayed up a little late after we got back from dinner repacking our packs again to make sure we would stay under the weight limit for what the porters were allowed to carry.

We met for breakfast in the hotel lobby at about 6am as breakfast was included in our hotel stay. At 6:30am, Boris met us at the lobby of our hotel and we boarded the bus for the start of the adventure. I was happy that I woke up this morning and my headache was gone.

We met a wonderful young Australian couple, Peter and Kate, who would be joining the group. They had been travelling for over 8 months through Europe and South America. We later found out that Kate had asked for a leave of absence from her job working in HR to travel, Peter did the same, but ended up quitting his job in banking when both of them called their employers after 6 months saying they weren't ready to come back yet. How cool is that? They are at the tail end of their adventure and will be heading back to the real world in Australia in a few weeks. I'd never be brave enough to do something that adventurous.

In talking to Peter and Kate, it was disconcerting to hear how they were affected by the altitude. Kate mentioned she was pretty sick (really bad headaches, nausea) for the first 3 days that they were in Cusco; they had been here for 5 days to make sure they were acclimated. I think they were surprised that we were starting the trek with only a day in Cusco. Lorry's son, Tucker, actually got oxygen last night in the hotel lobby while we were having our pre-trip meeting with Boris. (Boris later told us he was a little nervous that we had only arrived one day earlier before the hike was to begin. Seeing Tucker having an oxygen mask on his face didn't help give him much confidence either!)

The mountains of Peru were very beautiful and Boris gave us a talk about the areas we were driving through. Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the names of the areas. He explained about the local economy, how the houses were built, what people did for a living, etc.

We stopped in a little town called Ollantaytambo, to use the restrooms and buy any drinks, snacks, equipment (batteries, walking sticks, etc) that we might want to take. Upon exiting the bus, we were immediately surrounded by local people selling hats, walking sticks, ponchos, etc. since this is the last stop before the hike begins. Several in the group purchasing the walking sticks which were actually quite cool. "Hey lady, do you need a walking stick? poncho? hat? Only (fill in the blank) soles..." No thank you....I just bought a Gatorade thank you very much.

Our starting point was called KM82 (elevation 8528 feet), we had to show our passports and go through a checkpoint to begin the hike. Access to the Inca Trail is highly regulated and you can only enter as part of a guided tour (i.e., no self guided hikers are allowed on the trail). There are only 500 people allowed on the trail at a time (which includes hikers and porters). Here is a picture of the group at the start of the hike: (L to R: Lorry, Tucker, Kate, Peter, Pam, Cynthia, Nathan, Sharon)

We hiked over a bridge over the raging Urubamba River and hit the first part of the trail. The first part of the trail was relatively flat with only minor inclines. You can kinda see the trail start to go up a little on the left sde of the bridge. As you can see in the pictures, we had beautiful weather today, it was warm on the trail, but not too bad!

We got to see our first glimpses of some of the Inca ruins. Boris explained to us that the Incas built the trail as a way to get from Cusco to Machu Picchu through the mountains which could be done in a few days (yah right!) as opposed to bypassing the mountains in which it would take 3 weeks to get from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Each of the Inca sites we were seeing were stopping points along the route.

Right before lunch, Boris warned us that we would be getting our first exposure to the "steps" that we would be seeing over the next four days. And, steps they were! Big old huge granite ones, those were leg burners as some of the steps were quite tall (like just below my knee) and required a lot of effort to go up (well, if you are 5'2" anyway!). The combination of the steps and the steeper inclines made it challenging, he warned us that this is what tomorrow will be like, only it will be like this constantly with no breaks in between. Every so often we would stop at some designated rest stops so the group could re-group; there were usually local people selling bottles of water, gatorade, and snacks.

I began to get a taste of how the altitude was affecting me, I had to hike and take breaks every so often in order to catch my breath. Luckily today, the trail leveled off in some places so you could recover. I made sure to keep myself hydrated and kept trying to snack; I think I drank almost my whole Camelback. And, today was supposed to be the easy day, I didn't think it was so easy, and that's what I was worried about!

At some point, we reached our lunch stop. At the lunch spot, the porters were there clapping, handed us a cup of fruit juice, and pointed us towards a row of bowls containing hot water and soap for each person so that we could wash up. A porter was standing there with a paper towel so we could dry off. A big meal tent was set up with small plastic chairs, table, napkins, silverware (no plastic utensils here!), plastic cups, etc. It sure felt good to sit down. And no, we aren't being spoiled on this trip. ;-)

Boris said we would be served a "light" lunch, but that light lunch was not very light in my opinion. We had soup, half an avocado with some wonderful stuff on top (kinda like salsa), and a sandwich on Peruvian bread with ham and cheese. The hike after lunch was similar to the one right before lunch, steps, uphill, etc., more of the same...

Today I realized that I was probably the slowest one in the group. I could keep up with everyone when it was level, but would fall behind when it came to the uphills. We all pretty much stuck together though, each going at our own pace. Well, except for Peter and Kate, they powered up the hills and left the rest of us in the dust. Tucker did great and ended up walking with Peter and Kate a good portion of the day, oh to be young! Peter and Kate have been trekking in South America for the past several months and are a lot younger than the rest of us...that's my story, and I'm sticking to it! Sometimes we would be walking with eachother, sometimes, not.

We arrived at camp at about 4pm. Keep in mind that the porters had to beat us up the hill to set up the lunch tent, prepare lunch, and tear down after we were done eating. Then they beat us up the hill again to set up camp for the night. When we arrived at camp, we were greeted by clapping porters, the tents were all set up, with mattress pads inside. Each tent had two bowls of hot water and soap so that we could wash up. A porter was nearby to hand us a paper towel to dry off. What royal treatment! Dinner for the night was soup, fried fish with a type of marinara sauce, and I can't remember what else, plus dessert! It was all delicious! The weather during the hike was beautiful, not too hot, not too cold. At night, the temperatures definitely dropped and we had to put on our fleece jackets and hats. Peter had a huge bottle of beer that night too! The red tent in the back is our meal tent, the porters were staying in a tent to the left of the meal tent (under the hut).

We enjoyed hanging out together and getting to know each other and had some beautiful views from the campsite. There were flushing toilets (well, sorta...the "toilets" were essentially a porcelin hole in the ground, no throne to sit on); even going to the bathroom required a hike and made you get out of breath. One time there was a horse in the middle of the trail who wouldn't move, he scared the crap out of us because it was starting to get dark. All I know is we're walking to go take a pee and all of a sudden we run into a horse. Luckily Cynthia who was behind us knows about horses and she was able to move him off the narrow trail so we could continue our trek to the bathroom.

This was the view we had from our tents, the glaciers were amazing, it was such beautiful scenery and weird to think that we were so close to the clouds!


I thought I would sleep well that first night because I was so tired from the hike. Instead, I had a fitful sleep, tossing and turning all night. I think a big part of it was that I was really worried about Day 2 of the hike; it wasn't just me either, I think us four girls were worried the most. It was going to be the hardest day, all uphill, lots of elevation gain, mostly steps....holy cow, there was no turning back now!

Life inside then tent was comfortable during the night (another one of my worries was that I would be cold at night). It was pretty cold outside in the evening, but I was actually hot inside the tent during the night and peeled off some layers of clothes during the night

And tomorrow we climb...

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I thought it would be cool to take my GPS with me to track our progress on this trip. So here are my numbers for the day:

Odometer: 7.09 miles
Moving: 3.09 hrs/minutes
Stopped: 3.08 hr/minutes
Max speed: 10.5 mph
Moving average: 2.2 mph
Overall average: 1.1 mph
Elevation at camp: 9830 feet

Elevation gain: 8528 ft. to 9830 at camp

I knew we had hiked for about 6 hours today, but it took me another day to figure out that my "stopped" time as tracked on my GPS was so much because at times we were moving so slow on the climbs up that it was probably not measuring some of the time as "moving"; that's how slow we were walking!