Peru: Inka trail, day 1

We got up at 5.25, leaving the hotel at 5.45. We met up with our guide for the trek, Victor, in the hotel lobby, then got on a minibus to take us most of the way to the start of the trail.

We stopped at a small town for breakfast, but were told we only had 15-20 minutes. With such a limited time frame we elected not to get a cooked breakfast, and instead bought some stuff from the supermarket. I also got a torch, since I was planning to use my phone, but I'm not sure the battery will last 4 days. It turned out we had more like 40 minutes, but oh well!

A short, and dangerous bus ride later (the road was really narrow, and bumpy, and often had a sheer edge) we arrived at the start of the trail. We had to wait around for half an hour or so for the porters to pack everything into packs of 20 kilos, which is as much as they are allowed to carry under new regulations. They still looked pretty massive and heavy though.

We had to go through a checkpoint, where they checked our passports against our bookings, and we got an exciting stamp for our passport too.

To start with we were walking alongside the sacred river, which flows through the sacred valley I mentioned in yesterday's post later on in it's life. The going was fairly gentle at that point, though there were a few short rises. It was very sunny to start, but there was a short, light spell of rain at one point.

Our lunch was rather late, especially given our early breakfast, around 2.00, but the quality was superb. We got an appetiser of tuna, mayo and cheese, followed by asparagus, mushroom and spinach soup with garlic bread, then chicken, carbonara-y noodles and avocado stuffed with some vegetables. I was ravenous, and ate everything, plus some that other people didn't want.

After lunch it was fairly hard going, pretty much climbing all the way, and we topped 3k altitude. It's easy to forget abut the altitude when you aren't living it, but I can assure you it makes things harder. Still I feel like I've adapted pretty well thanks to the rest of the holiday, and when we stopped for the evening around 5 I felt pretty good.

We passed a couple of archeological sites in the morning , which Victor told us all about, and of course there were spectacular mountains all around us the whole time.

The foliage was fairly sparse initially, with quite a few cacti. As we continued there was more and more greenery, and new things kept popping up as we got higher. We passed quite a few eucalyptus trees in the morning, and by the time we were done the path looked like something you might find back home, just with more exotic flowers about.

Today we covered 13km, which was plenty enough considering our altitude gain, and the altitude itself.

Tomorrow is the hardest day, where we gain around 900m in altitude, and go through 'dead woman's pass'... WooOOooOOoo

Me at the starting point