Walking with the Inkas

After leaving the teaching business, we headed off to Cusco and packed up or gear and headed out on a four day backpacking trip on the Inca trail arriving at Machu Pichuu. We went with a group of 13 others that included Swedes, Aussies, Canadians and Brits. We started walking the first day through amazing landscape with some of the greenest mountains we had ever seen shooting up all around us. We walked for about 4 hours and then reached our lunch spot. This is when we realized that this trip would be entirly different than any other camping trip we had ever done. When we arrived at our lunch spot, there was a tent set up with table and chairs and we were served a lunch cooked by a professional chef. At first we were wondering how all of this was possible, but we quickly realized that the 21 porters that were along the trail with us were carrying all of these things. The porters were some of the smallest men we have seen on our adventures, but they put incredibly large makeshift backpacks on their backs and take off running with all of our gear so they could beat us to camp and set up. Not only were they kick ass little dudes, but they were some of the nicest and friendliest little guys we have ever met. Almost all of the porters opted not to carry water, because it added extra weight. Instead of water, they stopped at stands along the way to buy the local corn beer and rest while they downed a pitcher of the stuff. The porters also loved receiving little snacks and treats. If we ever had leftover snacks or candies, we gave them to the porters, and watched their eyes light up as if they were little kids.

We walked for 2 more rainy days along a winding path that led us up, over, and around several mountain passes, and all the while we were constantly in awe because of the giant green peaks and scattered Inka Archeological sites that we continually discovered.
On our fourth and final day, we woke up several hours before the sun rose so that we could hike the last portion of the Inka trail and arrive at the scenic overlook over Machu Picchu just as the sun was rising. However,there were about 200 other hikers who had the same idea as our group, so the hike up to the overlook was more like a two hour long cattle herd up the side of a mountain, and instead of cattle, there were a bunch of grumpy tourists. We decided to run for the last two hours to try and reach the ruins before the herds of tourists. All in all, our plan actually worked and we reached Machu Picchu before the rest of the hikers and were able to get our hands on some tickets to climb up to waynapicchu the big mountain that is all of the pictures of the ruins. We spent the day wandering around in amazment of the work these people were able to do and the structures they were able to biuld. After awhile in the ruions we climbed to the top of waynapicchu which let us have some amazing views and spent the rest of our time on top of the mountain in awe. Tonight we are off to Bolivia.