Well… I keep starting my blog posts with “well” as if I’m always starting with some sort of apology. In this case, I probably am as there is no way I can do full justice in any write up of walking the Inca Trail, arriving at Machu Picchu or any of the activities on the seven day Inca Trail tour I’d booked. So I think I will just try to capture the essence of the four day trek, with useful information for any future travellers, and a repository for the photos and memories for those on my tour. I travelled with G-adventure (7 day 6 nights trek) and two friends. The group consisted of 15 trekkers.

Hike Day 1 started in Ollantaytambo for a short drive to Km 82 where the trail starts. The kilometre refers to the distance along the railway, which goes to Aguas Calientes. You start to realise the scale of the operation with the buses and porters of many tour operators doing final packing of loads. The load each porter carries is limited, and our personal allowance after sleeping bag and inflatable mattress (thermarest) was allowed for was 2.5kg. Any personal items above that weight was carried by ourselves, which in my case resulted in a pack of around 10kg, including 2.5 litres of water (which in hindsight may have been too much, but best to be on the safe side).

At this rate, this blog is going to be longer than the walk! I will become briefer after the trail formalities are done. Before starting the trail, you need to have your passport checked against the Trail Ticket. Only 500 tickets a day are issued, covering everyone, tourists, porters, and guides. Based on our tour with 15 hikers, 2 guides and 25 porters, there would only be around 175 tourists each day, as such the trail never felt busy and it was always possible to find some peace and quiet.

Anyway, onto to the actual walking. The first stage, after crossing the railway line, was to cross the Urubamba River, which forms Peru’s Sacred Valley. The first days walking was realitivly easy, still with some steep climbs, but all done at an altitude lower than Cusco, where the majority of us were staying. My key memories are of getting into the flora and fauna, some interesting Inca sites, but mainly getting into walking, becoming used to walking poles (an absolute essential in my book) and being impressed at the loads the porters were carrying.

I can’t remember the exact distances or timings (essentially we walked from 9am to 5pm), but we had a number of stops on the way where our team regrouped. Our guides Elias and Elizabeth did an excellent job of shepherding our group, which consisted of a variety of ages and some debilitated with gastric, altitude, or heat issues. Of the three of us in my party, each of us suffered from something at some point during the hike. I’ve taken more pills in a week than in a whole normal year!

Lunch was a major surprise and a taste of things to come. It was the first time we had seen all the porters and the scale of the operation surrounding our hike. A dining tent and kitchen tent had been set up on a campsite. We were warmly greeted and sat down to a three – or four course meal (the biggest meal of the day), which had all been prepared on the trail – amazing! We then all had a (what we thought was) a well deserved rest while the lunch camp was efficiently dismantled around us.

The walking continued (as it would for the next few days) to the evening campsite. All the tents were erected, and inflatable mattresses pumped up. Some crashed in their tents straight away, the tent buddy I had been paired with had been very unwell so I decided to stay awake outside until dinner, as he needed to lie down far more than me! The site was in a small farmyard, and we ate in a small barn. The toilet was fine with a proper WC (and cold shower, which I didn’t use). Before coming, I’d heard so much about the sanitary facilities on the Inca Trail, so I’ll report what we found. It was nowhere as bad as I had feared. After dinner, we all went to bed, probably around 7pm, to be ready for the hardest day on the trail. Two groups would be heading off, mine with a 4:30 am alarm call.

Hike Day 2 started with a 4:30am alarm, breakfast, and hiking just after 5. It was pitch black and cold, but it was soon dawn, and the sun and climbs warmed us up so we could lose some clothes. This is the hardest day of hiking, over Dead Woman’s Pass at 4,215m/ 13,828 feet it is a big challenge for altitude, as well as over 1,100m of climbing in the day. The first and last stop before the pass had water for sale and very good toilets. It was hard, slow going. I was feeling light headed, despite chewing coca leaves and took an altitude tablet from a friend (and an energy gel). I’m not sure which helped most, but slow, steady progress with the mutal encouragement of the group got us all to the top.

Going down is both harder and easier, if that makes any sense! There were a lot of steps down to the camp, which we reached for lunch. The afternoon was spent resting, lots of people sleeping, with others like me just mooching around, trying to stay awake until dinner time. The biggest problem with all the campsites is that they are dusty gravel, preventing sitting around the tents. I had been envisioning lovely green meadows, and with a bit of searching, I found a spot to relax. There are very good toilets on this site, and I even had a shower, which was freezing but rather good upon reflection. Dinner then bed, ready for a 5:15 alarm.

Hike Day 3 is the longest section of the hike. I won’t be able to do it justice in any detail as we descended through cloud forests with numerous incredibly impressive Inca sites along the way. The flora and fauna really changed, I thought I saw cheese plants (indoor plants in the uk) and brightly coloured flowers on bushes and trees everywhere. There were dense forests around Inca sites, which looked like the Forgotten Kingdom. Hopefully, the photos give a flavour of what it was like. A hummingbird flew close to my head on its way to a suitable flower, the first time I’ve seen one and quite an experience. The lunch spot was on an amazing viewpoint looking down onto the back of Machu Picchu, and the food matched the location. A whole variety of buffet foods were passed around from deep fried quinoa, beef in gravy, pumpkin sauce, fresh salads, and more. The skills of our chef Emerson, supported by Gabriel, were really displayed when he presented a cake, cooked on the trail and all the ingredients carried with us, amazing.

The forest and Inca sites continued to our final campsite which we arrive at about 5pm. Not very good toilets, all squat types (the lunch spot was worse) but there were showers and I had another freezing shower, but not as nice as yesterday. With regard to the toilet facilities, G-adventure always set up a rudimentary toilet tent (for numbers 2s) close to the camp. I didn’t use it, so cannot rank it on the international toilet quality scale, but was definitely a positive addition. Our last dinner together was a nice affair culminating in speeches of us thanking the porters and chefs, and reciprocal speeches about the value of tourism and employment for them and the benefit to families in these remote areas. Portering is definitely very hard work but the impression I got was that if the tour companies operate ethically within the rules (on maximum weight etc) and equip the porters properly, it is a tough yet rewarding job. From what I saw, the G-adventure guys were amongst the best equipped (other operators had porters in training shoes or even one in sandals!). So hats off to Porter Group 4, we couldn’t of done it without them. After dinner straight to bed for a 3:15 wake up call.

Hike Day 4 was the last time we needed to pack up. After a brief breakfast, we left camp at 4:15 for a 20-minute walk to the Machu Picchu entrance gate and sat in a queue for it to open at 5:30. There was a slight push as the gate was opened, and passes were checked, but the 1.5 hour walk to the Sun Gate was a nice affair, just passing and repassing a few other groups. The view from the Sun Gate was awesome with Machu Picchu laid out below, it brought a tear to my eye, this is definitely the way to see it – really tough but making the experience even more worthwhile. We waited at the Sun Gate for Machu Picchu to emerge from the shadows and more photos. It was a short walk down to the city itself for even more photos, a really good tour of Machu Picchu, proper toilets, and coffee (not necessarily in this order). I particularly enjoy mingling with people off the tourist coaches who have no idea what we have been through (and some in our group had had a really tough time) compared to the easy bus ride upto Machu Picchu. There is so much more to say, but I’ll stop at the end of the hike – and thank my travel companions, Cathy and Kimrey, the rest of the group, the guides, the porters, the chefs and anyone else who knows me!