Monday 7 May 2012

Day 38 - Inca Trail (Day 3), Peru (25 April 2012)

Day 38 - Inca Trail (Day 3), Peru (25 April 2012)

We are woken up at 6am with a cup of tea.  We get up and have breakfast which is omelettes, porridge and toast.  And I have the omelettes!!! I actually had an omelette sandwich, it wasn’t too bad.  We then head off for our hike.  Today we are only hiking 10 km.  However, this hike is called the “gringo killer” (tourist killer) as it is down hill, and very steep downhill apparently.  It was a killer on the knees.  You would usually be happy with the downhill but funnily enough I actually enjoyed going uphill more on this hike.  The trail was very tricky with narrow and slanting stairs.  I was very grateful for the hiking sticks now.  I think everyone had at least one small tumble during this downhill section, however Ann had three falls, the first aid kit was even required for one fall.  We descend through the cloud forest (with occasional drizzle which made the steps slippery as well as steep and narrow, not a nice combination, no wonder everyone fell over!).  We ended up in the jungle.  This walk is beautiful is very nice and there were a few different flowers which made the girls pretty happy.  We even get to walk through a couple of tunnels today.  After walking for four hours, we arrive at some ruins that have a fantastic view of Machu Picchu Mountain and the valley adjoining.  We sit there for a break just admiring the few.  At this point we had exited the jungle and the cloud forest so conditions were relatively good.  It is a stunning view to match the conditions.  We can see our campsite below and we are told that tomorrow we get up and walk over Machu Picchu Mountain to Machu Picchu City.  After a good break admiring the view, we get up to walk the final 20 odd minutes to camp.  We have to walk through the ruins, and they have a very long narrow stair case to walk down, so it takes us a while to get down that as no one wants to fall (again!).  We then arrive at our camp site at 1pm just in time for lunch.  Lunch, as usual, is all ready for us thanks to the fantastic work of the porters, and our campsite is all set up for us too, even with our bags in the tents that the porters were carrying (they had worked out which bag went in which tent). We are then given half the afternoon off.  Most of the group were pretty exhausted so they went to their tents to have a wee nap.  I went to my tent and just listened to music, I was rather keen to explore but didn’t know where to go so I would have most likely have got lost.  At 4pm we all get up and go to the ruins of Winay Wanay which is only 5 minutes walk away from our campsite.  I would rather have done this right after lunch but South Americans are pretty big on their middle of the day ‘siesta’ (quite a few shops etc close for a couple of hours for ‘siesta’, even in big cities).  These ruins are pretty cool.  They have the most amazing view of six different mountains ahead and the waterfall.  We wander around here for an hour and then we head back to camp for our dinner.  When we arrive to dinner the cook comes out with a cake that we he has baked us. It says “welcome to Machu Picchu”.  We then put together our tips for the porters and we present them to them.  The porters are not paid very well (180 soles each (NZ$90) for the four days, but apparently that is good money for Peru), so they really need the tips.  We then head to bed as it is a 4am start tomorrow morning for Machu Picchu city.

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