The Inca Trail

Inca Trail, Peru 

After the home stay experience, we had around a day to recover before one of the most exciting things planned on our trip. The Inca Trail. With the Inca Trail having to be planned around 6 months in advance in order to get a space, we had basically planned our whole South American trip around this. Getting to our hotel for the night, we met our team and were informed that we had to get everything packed that we wanted to bring down to a weight of just 2.5kg each for the whole trek. So saying goodbye to luxuries (bye shampoo!), having a carb-heavy dinner and early night, before we knew it we were heading to the start of the trail. 

We did our tour with G Adventures. A company we cannot recommend enough if you are planning on doing the same tour. The nice aspect of booking with them is that a part of the money you spend on the tour is put towards community projects in the local area you are visiting. This was made clear to us as we began our tou, with an amazing 5- course gourmet lunch in the newly built G-Adventures restaurant near the Sacred Valley. Built and run by locals, G Adventures backed the project financially and committed to training each employee to exceptionally high standards. It was easily one of the best meals we have had on our whole trip! 

After a couple more stops and an overnight stay in a local town called Ollantaytambo and a good breakfast, we came to the entrance of the Inca Trail. Through passport control and security (they only let 500 people on the trail each day and this is including tour guides and porters), the first day was a fairly straight walk of around 5 hours. The walk began through the valley of the mountains and was a good opportunity to get used to the pace and terrain we had to face for the next few days. The walk ended at lunchtime where we were greeted by our porters and sat down to another amazing lunch. The job the porters do on the Inca Trail is absolutely incredible, they each carry around 25kg through-out the trek, make it to the campsites around 2 hours before us mere walkers and set up our tents, beds, dining tents and cook a 3 course meal all before we make it to the camp! The fact that the porters clapped us every time we made it to a camp was crazy... And did I mention they also made us 3 courses every meal time and a huge cake on a camp stove on our last day?! They did an amazing job, I mean, carrying my small backpack all 4 days felt like hard work! 

The second day was by far the hardest. We walked to the highest point of the trail, 4,215m above sea level, which included around 4 hours of relentless, up-hill climbing and a few hours after walking down. The views were spectacular and definitely made the climb that much easier. The sense of team spirit really became apparent at times like this and we were lucky enough to have a really good group of 6 all spurring each other on and helping to make the gruelling parts that much more bearable. The celebratory rum shot once we made it up to the top was definitely needed. 

We then climbed down and ended the second day camping by a waterfall before the third and longest day on the trail. The third day was a full day of walking in order to get as close to the checkpoint for Machu Picchu as possible ready for the next day. Parts were tough and the terrain was varied, but we were just grateful it was nothing like the climb of the second day. 

The final fourth day was tiring but our favourite day of our trip. The night before we were faced with the option of what time we wanted to wake up in accordance to what position we wanted to be in the queue for the gate into the national park that lead us to Machu Picchu. We were quick to realise that there was fierce competition between the trekking groups who are all keen to be first in line and grab one of only 50 seating spaces available (reminder - 500 people are let on the trail each day). We ended up getting to the gate at 3am and to our utter dismay, discovered we were second in the queue (out of all of the losers, we were the BEST losers) and had to sit and wait until it opened at 5.30am. At that time in the morning, we grateful for somewhere to sit and ultimately were happy with second place. After a couple of hours of sitting up dozing, we began the walk through the park to the sungate. The walk was 45 minutes and it must have been the quickest pace we had through-out the whole trek, with the reality of the end in sight, everyone seemed to want to get there as quick as possible. After climbing the 'monkey steps' - vertical steps which you need to climb on your hands and knees and watching someone snap their walking stick in half stopping themselves from almost falling over the edge, we made it to the sungate. The first glimpse of Machu Picchu below at the bottom of the mountain. We had made it. The sun was rising and we didn't stop for too long as each group wanted to make it to Machu Picchu before it got too busy. The walk down the mountain was exciting, with adrenaline kicking in that after 4 days of walking we had made it and that the end was in sight.

Machu Picchu in reality is even better than the pictures. The site itself is huge and worth trekking for 4 days straight. It's an incredible sight with lots of history that luckily our tour guide informed us all about. Before doing the trail, I was skeptical about how underwhelming the sight could be after having to trek for that long and expecting so much, but I'm happy to say I was absolutely blown away and was one of the best things I have ever done. If you are even thinking about doing it, do it (like right now). If you're not, you should.