To do the Inca Trail you have to book several months in advance. I don’t do anything months in advance, so I decided to make plans when I got there. By the time I arrived in Cusco I had soured on the idea of going as part of a group. Serendipity provided a buddy and we planned it all in a couple days.
The Salkantay Trek lasts five days, the fifth day spent at Machu Picchu. The first day started with a three hour bus ride from 5 AM in Cusco to Mollepata. We hired a horseman with horse to carry our tent and sleeping bags and food; his name was Pepe, he was 20, he had the gnarly feet of an elderly man and never got tired. All we had to do then was walk and watch the landscape change gradually, come to bends with excitement, knowing another range of spectacular mountains were awaiting us.
The first night was unbelievably cold; how could I be cold with five layers on, inside a sleeping bag in a tent? I was not at 100 percent yet as the food poisoning episode was only ten days old, so the morning climb, a relentless series of steep uphills, clobbered me. But the satisfaction of reaching the 4600m pass was tremendous! After that we passed through Mordor (below) and on to a sub-tropical terrain, passing rivers and a growing number of strange ferns and flora. We camped on a shelf of land in between several mountains.
The third day ended with a ride in a truck meant for cows or pigs with dozens of other backpackers from groups whose bus had not arrived. We were pleased to ride with locals in this truck, we were paying next to nothing. These groups had paid a lot more but they weren’t complaining, as long as the truck didn’t tip over down the cliff edge, which we were dangerously close to at all times. At Santa Theresa we crossed into another dimension through the freezing cold cascading waterfall that thundered on our shoulders and back. When you walked out from underneath it, it’s like you were born again, all thoughts and feelings had dissolved and you were fresh and clean, finally.
The fourth day we took a van to the train tracks that led to Aguas Caliente, the tourist city next to Machu Picchu. The train only comes at 8AM and 4PM so we walked along the tracks, watching as the mountains became more and more like the pictures we all have seen of the famous ruins.
The next morning at 5 we climbed the huge steps to Machu Picchu for over an hour. The city in the clouds is incredible, the hype is all there. You’ve ascended to their heaven, and so a peace comes over you and we napped, watching the fog pass through slowly when we woke. The last climb to Waynupicchu, the mountain behind in all the photos, was no joke either and the sheer drop from the collection of boulders to the ground below was at least a thousand meters. I felt like I could close my eyes and float to the bottom, the magic of this place would ease me down softly and quietly.
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