The first day was fairly easy. After an amazing night's sleep, we woke up bright and early and had our bags weighed. Jen and I finally got ours down to 2.5kg- I had to take the baby wipes and my fleece out and into my day sack. The only frustrating thing was that it was quite bulky but everyone was in the same position. We drove in the minibus to the start of the Inca Trail, took a group photo and went through the first official checkpoint where they matched your passport with your ticket and stamped it. We then set off up and down gravel terrain, stopping fairly frequently, every 45 mins or so. I personally thought the day was quite easy and Jens agreed- it was no Kilimanjaro or Colca Canyon. The group was really interested in the fact the pair of us had climbed Kili and asked us loads of questions about the altitude and things, as some people wanted to do it one day. Everest base camp came up in conversation too and me and Jens shook on it to say we'll do it one day...one day. We began walking at 10am and arrived at lunch three hours later. The porters had set up tents for us to sit in and we had soup, trout and tea for lunch. It was so nice! Another couple of hours walking and we arrived at camp. The mixture of sunscream, deet and sweat wasn't a very nice combination, so it was great when we had a bowl of warm water outside our tent that afternoon. We washed and had a wet wipe shower (being ultimate pros from Kili, we knew the routine!). The only trouble was, I was feeling worse than the day before, my glands were more swollen and I was blowing my nose all the time. The last thing I wanted was a cold! We had afternoon tea at camp, which consisted of tea, crackers and popcorn (I couldn't taste it) and then I had to go lie down for a bit. I'm not sure if we fell asleep, but it was good to close my eyes for a bit. For dinner we had soup again, spaghetti with chicken in an aubergine and courgette sauce and some jelly type stuff for dessert. The food on this trek is awesome! Bedtime at 8:30pm, we got tucked up in our warm sleeping bag and fell asleep.
DAY 2:
Day two is the hardest day of the Inca Trail so we were expecting the worst. We climbed from 3100m to 4200m. We started the day with porridge, bread and pancakes mmmmm. The first few hours of walking were varied. We climbed uphill, but it wasn't that steep, taking regular breaks. It began to get steeper and steeper and the terrain was steep steps. After our longest break we climbed loads more steps, the air getting thinner and hiked through Dead Woman's Pass. I was the third person to arrive at the top and we had a great view over the valley. It was chilly at the top, so we layered up while we waited for the others to arrive. The fastest time someone has climbed the entire Inca Trail is 3hr45, successfully completed by a porter, who was unfortunately not working on our trek. After making friends at the top of the hill and chatting to Marie-Lou and Ian from the Colca Canyon trek, we descended to our campsite. I hate going downhill as my knees kill and my legs shake. However, we arrived and had our usual wet wipe shower. We then had a great lunch of soup, beef, rice and chips and a creme caramel type dessert. It was delicious.
We then had an afternoon nap which was great and afternoon tea. We then had the porters introduce themselves to us and they told us what they carried and how old they were. The oldest porter in our group was 54 and the youngest 18. We then went round and introduced ourselves. Everyone had a good giggle when 'single' or 'married' came up. We played cards, namely 'shithead'. The day before Maria had got the crown of 'shithead', but after passing on the crown to various people throughout the game, it got to 6:30pm and there had to be a loser. After a long game of Rock Paper Scissors, I became 'shithead'... Boooooo! Dinner was great. Our chef actually won an award for best chef, so we were really lucky to have him cook for us. We had soup with chilli, mashed potato, chicken in mushroom sauce with some pasta and a cake with syrup for dessert. After a cup of tea we had a good laugh, but it started to pour down, so we're now all tucked up in bed listening to the thunder and lightening. Alice gave me some Olbas oil so out tent smells of eucalyptus! 8:30pm bedtime again.
DAY 3:
On day three we woke up early at 5:30am and started walking from our campsite soon after. It was a long day, arriving at our campsite at about 5pm. The trail was varied, up and down, some steep, some fairly flat. It took a while to get to lunch and it was pretty cold during the day. When we were walking it was hot but as soon as you stopped you felt the cold as there were clouds and a lot of mist. It rained in the afternoon when we were on route to lunch so we grabbed our waterproofs and got going. I wore the same shorts the whole time cause it was hot walking, but also skin is waterproof! We were so happy to arrive at lunch and it was buffet style. We were amazed when a pink iced cake with jelly appeared. If this chef can bake on a mountain, this is one great chef! Our lunch site was filled with llamas. It was pretty funny when a llama casually started to do his business in front of us. Nice. The afternoon was good and we stopped at a few Inca ruins. The group is definitely bonding loads, we're having a hell of a lot of fun! We arrived at the final Inca site and waited for the rest of the group to catch up. We'd formed a speedier group at the front with me, Jens, Josh, Maria, Adam and Selvan. 'Sexy' Berto (our second guide's nickname) usually walked at the front with us. He had trousers with a zip down which was undone, so thoroughly living up to his name. We could see the campsite down in the valley. Once we arrived we discovered the campsites for all the other groups were really close beside each other, so there was no weeing in the bush, so we had some 'lovely' toilets to contend with. After a wet wipe shower we had tea and played a good drinking game with our imaginary drinks- a celebrity name game going around the circle. It was really good fun and we had a great laugh. Berto asked whether we knew any chat up lines which was pretty funny and as a group we wrote a load of lines in his notebook. Sneakily, Fernando wrote a love note in his notebook, which Berto believed was from a girl in a previous group. It was hilarious. Our dinner consisted of a slice of pizza, chicken with spinach, rice and veg. Mmmm yum! We all chipped in and gave the porters a tip. They all gathered around in the tent and Evelin, who spoke Latin-American Spanish gave a little speech and said how grateful we were for their help along the trek. We then went around and shook their hands to thank them. The tip went to the head porter who was to share it amongst them all.
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