The Inca Trail

We started the Inca Trek a day late because of a Peruvian bus strike but began the actual hike on schedule.



Day 1

Bus to Ollayantotambo at 7pm and stay and a cute uber Peruvian hotel. Enjoy a good meal and go to bed early to be ready for the hike tomorrow.



Day 2

Wake up call at 6:30 and meet with a local to buy walking sticks and Coca leaves. The Coca plant helps with altitudie sickness. You roll five or so leaves and chew on them ( not unlike tobacco) to help alleviate the sympotms. We share them with portors along the way. Board the bus and head to kilometre 82, where the trek begins. Our portars way our duffle bags and they can´t exceed 6kg. Aimey has to take out a Gatorade but then we´re ready to go. We go through the check point, get a fancy stamp in our passports and we´re off! The altitude is high but lower than Cusco. Even so, the sun is intense. I apply and re-apply SPF 30 throughout the day. We take a lot of breaks and our guides, Manual and Roddy, ensure that we´re all okay. We arrive at our lunch spot to a round of applause from the portors and wash basins for our hands. We eat an incredible meal of pasta, chicken, potatoe salad and tea. We hike more that day and after about 6 hours we arrive at our campsite. The scenery is beautiful and there are warm wash basins outside our tents to wash our dirty feet, hands and faces. We relax for a few hours before dressing in our winter best and head lamps and wander out of our tents to look at the stars. I see the southern cross! Dinner is, once again, fantastic. Early bed after using the squat-then-flush toilets. Thankfully one of the Irish ladies has peppermint oil to put under your nose!!!



Day 3


Wake at 6am with Roddy knocking on our tent with Coca tea and then head ot the tent for breakfast at 6:30. It´s oatmeal, omlete and bread. Today is going to be the toughest day. We hike to the top of Dead Woman´s Pass at an elevation of over 4000 meters. It´s short but gruelling. We head off in the cool weather, thankful that the sun is not pounding down on us. We start to climb. We climb and climb and climb and I think that if I see another stair, I will cry!!! It begins to rain. And then hail. Then wind and sleet. And we are still climbing stairs for 4 hours!!!We see a Llama, which is a good photo op, as well as a good time for a rest. Andres (Denmark) and Aimey head ahead, while Signe ( Denmark) and I work slowly and steadily. EVerything I have is wet, I´m cold and my breathing becomes increasingly laboured because of altitude but I see the sumit and Roddy is there with a big hug!! Now, we have to descend. We´re wondering how long this will take. We´re hungry and tired of eating Snickers. It´s raining and cold and so we start to sing. Every song we can think of with "sun" inthe title. They include:

- You are my Sunshine
- Tomorrow (from the hit broadway musical and John XXIII production of Annie!)
- Let the Sun Shine in

And it stops raining.....for 10 minutes

The steps down for the next 2 hours are actually harder for me because of my bad knees. I slow down. I´m getting tired. Aimey is setting a good pace and I´m trying to keep up. Finally we make it to camp for lunch. At 5pm our cook, Boris, presents us with a cake and we sit in the tent until dinner at 7. We are camping at about 3800meters and so it´s very cold and very damp. And the rain sets in --- not before giving us a stunning view of the Andes .
(I should say, at this point, that all this talk of rain might sound like complaining. It{s not. It really was bad. Our guide has done this trek over 100 times and he said his has rained but he{s never before had to use his poncho!!)



Day 4


This was to be our long day. Our long descent down the trail. We begin in the cold and wet with a 5:30 wake up call. It´s all downhill today, which is hard on the knees. There is no sun and the rain won´t let up. My clothes weren´t dry from the night before. But in the few breaks we do get we see the scenery around us and when there isn´t fog, we realize what a beautiful place this is. Lunch was fantastic and after Peruvian potatoe pancakes, we were treated to Irish Colm singing "And the Band Played the Waltzing Matilda". It had us all close to or in tears. For those of you not familiar with the song, it is about Australian soildiers during WWI who were wounded in Gallipolli. Before he headed back on the trail in the rain, Welsh Gemma and I had to visit the ladies room and it was neither a sitting toilet, nor a flushing one. Shall we say hole in the ground? And a guy was in there while we were waiting and when he came out he said to us "Sorry" - as if it was his fault the place stunk like a combination of a dead animal and human feces. But then we realized why he was apologizing!! Apparently he was not able to keep things in either and missed the hole altogether! We were mortified but felt that any toilet we saw from that point one would be considered a golden throne. (Side note: it is amazing how much you talk about barfing and pooping with complete strangers while travelling. But it does seem to be a hot topic of conversation - even around the dinner table!) We contineu on to camp and arrive at our final spot (still in the rain) to a place with a pub and showers. Now, I don{t want you to think this was luxury. The "pub" was more like a ski lodge that had been left abandoned years ago but with a few bottles of beer hanging around. It was cold, though, and that is what mattered! Aimey and I opted out of the showers (why get washed and into clean clothes which are just going to get wet again!) and instead, induldged in a half beer before supper. Supper was at 6pm and we had a chance to formally thank our portors. Colm gave us another song - this time it was You{ve Got a Friend by James Taylor. We all knew the chorus so we joined in. It then became a bit of a sing-song. Danish Signe had us up and singing and jumping to a Danish kids song about the days of the week and Irish Anne gave a beautiful Celtic love song. Then it was to bed in the wet tent to be ready for our early rise the next day!

Day 5

Wake up call was 4am. Yes, folks. 4 bloody in the morning! The point was to get to the Sun Gate for sunrise to see the sun coming up over Machu Picchu. Unfortuneately I slept well only until about 2:30 when I was awoken by someone snoring. It sounded like a cross between a very loud zipper and a chain saw. Aimey and plotted how we would best kill said sleeping monster until we were somewhat laughing at the insanity and somewhat wishing we could get to sleep. Let me remind you, once again, that it was still raining at this point! 4 am wake up call and we get dressed and packed and down for breakfast. I beg for a plastic bag for my back pack and we all meet in the "ski lodge / pub". Manual, our guide, suggests we wait a bit for the other groups to get their first. Otherwise, we{re all at the gate at the same time, waiting and getting more wet. When we eventually got our energy enough to get going, we grabbed our walking sticks, turned on our head lamps (it{s dark at 5 am in the Andes) and marched single file toward our destination. We were a quiet bunch. I think we were all secretly disappointed with the weather and hoping, against all odds, it would clear before we arrived. I felt like a minor, heading into the depths of the earth looking for coal. In my head, I heard an old Cape Breton Song:

"We get up in the black, down the coal town road
And we hike along the track, where the coal trains load
And you make the ponies pull, till they nearly break their backs
And they´ll never see again, down the coal town road."

As we walked, we realized we were getting closer and - by God!! - I think there{s blue sky!! Okay, not really, but we were hoping. We reached the sun gate and Welsh Gemman and Matt are shouting "There it is! There it is!" And Aimey is helping me get my camera out because it has stopped raining and you can see Machu Picchu between the fog. And the minute I get my camera out of the plastic bag, out of the case, get the lense cap off and focus --- the bloody Inca city disappears behind the fog and stays there for a good 20 minutes. We decide to head down to get another view and the rain is holding off!!! It{s still holding off when we round the bend and get another view. And, what{s this? The fog is lifting too? THANK YOU, INCA SUN GODS!!!!! This was our reward. We deserved it!! It was beautiful. We kept wandering down. Our pace was slower because every time we caught a glimpse of the city we had to snap as many pictures as we could, just incase this fog jumped between us and our reward.

We spend the morning around Macchu Picchu and realize what a great achievement it was to build. So impressive. Our guide drags our sorry and tired legs around with the enthusasim of a teacher trying to get his grade 9 students to care about Canadian politics..... A few of decide to make our way to Agua Calientes down below where we are going to get our swimsuites and sit in the hot baths. We are nearly involved in a head on collision on our way down but when we make it and lower our bodies into the pools (they were pretty grosse but we didn{t care!), we sighed and thought "Wow....we did it!!"

We boarded a train for Cusco at 5pm and we were quiet. Very quiet. It rattled along the Andes toward the town most of us were either asleep or taking some time to reflect on the journey. We did it and it was worth it!