Amy Blog....The Inca Trail
The Inca trail was a complete surprise to me. In spite of reading about its beauty on other sites, nothing really prepared me for its spectacular nature. There are many accounts of it out there, but here are some of my experiences, and right from the start let me say thank you, Judy, for lending us those poles!
Trip prep: In preparing for the trail, hiking poles are number 1. I´ve never used them before, I may never again, but this trail is like no other in its rigors and it was wonderful. The second thing I have to say is, I swear by the coca leaf and its activating companion, llipta. Don´t leave home without these. Without it, I would not have had as much joy on the long ascents and long descents and I would never have managed my fear of heights, I´m afraid. Actually the trail is safe and wide, perfectly safe for us, it´s all just psychology. The third important thing I have to say is, girls won´t have a big problem on this trail, there is nearly always an available private bush. Number 4 is, hire a porter to carry your stuff. You are helping the local economy, and carrying your own daypack, fleece, raingear, cameras and water is just about as much as you can manage when you are climbing over the passes. Number 5, bring an alternate pair of tevas or shoes for the evenings. Number 6, rain gear of some kind (we were fine with good light jackets, cheap ponchos which you can buy for 2 soles at the trailhead, and pants that dry easily). Number 7, for girls plenty of TP on your person at all times. Water is not a problem, 2 liters a day is plenty. The campsites are fine, the trash is well managed. With SAS Travel, the company we chose, we got great campsites, handsome porters, good food (big time carbohydrates), happy hour, plenty of boiled water each morning, our porters were not overloaded and we had a very fine guide, Victor Torres. If you are thinking of going, it´s for sure best to be fit and young, and if you are not very fit, just give yourself *plenty* of time to acclimate to the altitude, maybe a full week.
Each day was so different and so influenced by the weather. If there is a high cloud cover, you are most aware of the high mountains above you, and if it is clear you are most aware of the extremely high peaks above those. In the course of the trip you go from semi-arid plains with blooming cacti (tuna, agave, and pillar shaped forms), to grassy plateaus, to temperate type forests, to the cloud forest with beautiful flowers and to the beginings of actual jungle with plenty of orchids. The landscape is astounding, sometimes you are in narrow canyons with rivers and springs, sometimes in meadows, other times you are traveling high traverses with the most amazing peaks surrounding you on all sides. The only thing that is a constant is, vertical change... our guide had a favorite phrase, "inca flat", for the times when you were going up and down, up and down and averaging it out as flat. Most of the time, you are climbing up towards one pass, or coming down from one. But it´s a dream. One thing I never knew from the pictures was that you would almost always be hearing the sounds of water, whether trickling or rushing or waterfalls or torrents, and often smelling the aromas of flowers or fresh rain. You go through a few small villages the first few days, so there are local people, hand hewn wooden benches, stone and adobe houses, chickens dogs cows and donkeys. Later there are some alpacas, llamas and sheep grazing on glacial lakeshores and lawns, and on the last 2 days there are butterflies, hummingbirds and tropical bird noises, even parrots. The best day of all is day 3, when the hike takes you to 4 or 5 ruins which you can explore depending on your strength and you walk on the softest rounded stones of the best-made inca trail -- and some of the hardest flights of stone stairs, some carved into the hillside, that you will ever travel.
The basic outline of the trip was that, from km 82, we hiked about 6 hours our first day from the cactusy banks of the Urubamba River up a plateau overlooking the gorgeous ruins of Llactapata and through a small ruin of our own, then up a farmed, eucalyptus-forested river valley to just above the village of Huaylabamba to camp on the terraces of a farmer who rents his land to SAS travel. Local familes were arouind, moving their farm animals up and down the trail, and selling last minute candy bars and coca leaves. One of the small towns had a little walk-up window that had a sign joking ´we accept visa and mastercard here´, in English. Of course there is no electricity and no phone... We discovered that camp consisted of large clean 2 person tents, and two very large group tents, one with table and camp stools for all of us to sit comfortably together, one for cooking. The porters camped in these tents after we crashed (early because of the altitude and effort). Each camp has some kind of toilet building, often they even flush and they are pretty clean, but because of the vertical nature of things and the tent stakes, getting to them at night is kind of a challenge, thus creating the only drawback of the trip, the scent of ammonia on the air.
The second day, up at 5:45 (daylight now is about 5), was a climb through high elevation tropical forest with a rushing stream, then up above treeline and over a high pass that is like a gash between its bordering peaks. They look like mountains in New Zealand. Then down for our second night´s campsite, which is in a deep, deep valley with bushes and old grassy terraces along a river which cascades so steeply down that it creates about 3 waterfalls above where we camped. We could always hear them, all night. This looked something like Hawaii. Since we got there early, about 2 pm, and we still had energy, we actually hiked up a thousand feet or so to the next ruin, Runkurakay, a fairly simple round-shaped ruin that let us look at the evening light on the Urubamba river valley far down below us.
The third day, again up at 5:45 (but slowed by some lazy young girls who were with us, who just wouldn´t get up in spite of the morning ritual of tea or coffee brought to you in bed), we hiked to a new pass with alpine lakes and then down to my favorite ruin, Sayacmarka, a place which seems to hang in the air, because the Incas put it right there just for its framing of the mountains and valleys. To get to it you actually climb a stone stairway that hangs off a cliff. Not as scary as it sounds, and very, very beautiful. The ruins all have lots of open safe terraces on the edge of nothing, and many trapezoidal windows which seem to be the perfect frame for the landscapes far away, like a special kind of binoculars. All the ruins originally had water running through them in channels and waterfalls, and a lot of them still carry water even after all this time. The Incas loved to channel water in to ceremonial baths. The 3rd day is very long, and strenuous, not from the climb but from the final descent which is long flights of actual stairways, maybe 2500 stairs in all of course not all at once, to Winay Wayna, which has a dreadful hostel but one of the most striking ruins of all, one of the best because it is n´t much rebuilt and it is a beautiful ghostly grey in the greenest of tropical forests.
The last day is just simple, an hour and a half climb with a few stairs up to the Sun Gate of Machu Picchu. I imagine it could have been hard if it had been clear, because of my fear of heights, but there was a very comforting fog hiding the Urubamba river below.
I´m sure Craig will cover more of the route and our experiences, we look forward to sharing photos of the trail, the wonderful ruins, and Machu Picchu, which remains for me after my 4th visit in my life the most marvelous place I know of. I still haven´t explored it all and see new things each time.
One more thing I have to tell about the Inca trail is about the middle of the 3rd day... my favorite part. Sharon thank you for your speedy letter!
The Inca Trail that we walk is just a a part of the vast network of roads the Incas had, and the first 2 days of the Inca trail is on the ancient route, but not the ancient stones... mules who brought contrabrand alcohol up from the jungle sugarcane fields, in the mid 1800s, took out the original paving and it has been restored nicely, but you can tell it´s pretty new.
But on the 3rd day, you walk on and through the real thing. The paving becomes beautiful, regular, almost always 5 or 6 feet wide, and with soft, rounded river stones. Where rocks got in the way, there are tunnels. Where ruins or mountains need to be framed by just the right approach, they are. Underfoot and all around you, the white granite kind of gleams, and at this time, the trail actually runs almost flat for a time, way along the top of a massive ridge, with the most beautiful greenery, and some very nice domes of granite with white and dark streaking just like in parts of Yosemite. The far mountains are quite young and spiky and dark grey, and there is thunder from rain falling in the jungles to the east, with some thunderheads and some fog. As for the vegetation, there are bamboos with festoons of tiny leaves coming out of the base of each section, many tropical bushes, and lovely deep thick spongy mosses in yellows and oranges all along vertical sides of the wet rocks along the sides of the trail, many unusual blossoms I´ve never seen and some familiar plants like princess bush and penstemon, as well as different colors and species of orchids and bromeliads.
And also there are more ruins than I described... one is called Phutupacamarca, or something like that, which means something like City hanging in the clouds. We´´ll put in pictures later. Craig is waiting to eat lunch... bye!
Trip prep: In preparing for the trail, hiking poles are number 1. I´ve never used them before, I may never again, but this trail is like no other in its rigors and it was wonderful. The second thing I have to say is, I swear by the coca leaf and its activating companion, llipta. Don´t leave home without these. Without it, I would not have had as much joy on the long ascents and long descents and I would never have managed my fear of heights, I´m afraid. Actually the trail is safe and wide, perfectly safe for us, it´s all just psychology. The third important thing I have to say is, girls won´t have a big problem on this trail, there is nearly always an available private bush. Number 4 is, hire a porter to carry your stuff. You are helping the local economy, and carrying your own daypack, fleece, raingear, cameras and water is just about as much as you can manage when you are climbing over the passes. Number 5, bring an alternate pair of tevas or shoes for the evenings. Number 6, rain gear of some kind (we were fine with good light jackets, cheap ponchos which you can buy for 2 soles at the trailhead, and pants that dry easily). Number 7, for girls plenty of TP on your person at all times. Water is not a problem, 2 liters a day is plenty. The campsites are fine, the trash is well managed. With SAS Travel, the company we chose, we got great campsites, handsome porters, good food (big time carbohydrates), happy hour, plenty of boiled water each morning, our porters were not overloaded and we had a very fine guide, Victor Torres. If you are thinking of going, it´s for sure best to be fit and young, and if you are not very fit, just give yourself *plenty* of time to acclimate to the altitude, maybe a full week.
Each day was so different and so influenced by the weather. If there is a high cloud cover, you are most aware of the high mountains above you, and if it is clear you are most aware of the extremely high peaks above those. In the course of the trip you go from semi-arid plains with blooming cacti (tuna, agave, and pillar shaped forms), to grassy plateaus, to temperate type forests, to the cloud forest with beautiful flowers and to the beginings of actual jungle with plenty of orchids. The landscape is astounding, sometimes you are in narrow canyons with rivers and springs, sometimes in meadows, other times you are traveling high traverses with the most amazing peaks surrounding you on all sides. The only thing that is a constant is, vertical change... our guide had a favorite phrase, "inca flat", for the times when you were going up and down, up and down and averaging it out as flat. Most of the time, you are climbing up towards one pass, or coming down from one. But it´s a dream. One thing I never knew from the pictures was that you would almost always be hearing the sounds of water, whether trickling or rushing or waterfalls or torrents, and often smelling the aromas of flowers or fresh rain. You go through a few small villages the first few days, so there are local people, hand hewn wooden benches, stone and adobe houses, chickens dogs cows and donkeys. Later there are some alpacas, llamas and sheep grazing on glacial lakeshores and lawns, and on the last 2 days there are butterflies, hummingbirds and tropical bird noises, even parrots. The best day of all is day 3, when the hike takes you to 4 or 5 ruins which you can explore depending on your strength and you walk on the softest rounded stones of the best-made inca trail -- and some of the hardest flights of stone stairs, some carved into the hillside, that you will ever travel.
The basic outline of the trip was that, from km 82, we hiked about 6 hours our first day from the cactusy banks of the Urubamba River up a plateau overlooking the gorgeous ruins of Llactapata and through a small ruin of our own, then up a farmed, eucalyptus-forested river valley to just above the village of Huaylabamba to camp on the terraces of a farmer who rents his land to SAS travel. Local familes were arouind, moving their farm animals up and down the trail, and selling last minute candy bars and coca leaves. One of the small towns had a little walk-up window that had a sign joking ´we accept visa and mastercard here´, in English. Of course there is no electricity and no phone... We discovered that camp consisted of large clean 2 person tents, and two very large group tents, one with table and camp stools for all of us to sit comfortably together, one for cooking. The porters camped in these tents after we crashed (early because of the altitude and effort). Each camp has some kind of toilet building, often they even flush and they are pretty clean, but because of the vertical nature of things and the tent stakes, getting to them at night is kind of a challenge, thus creating the only drawback of the trip, the scent of ammonia on the air.
The second day, up at 5:45 (daylight now is about 5), was a climb through high elevation tropical forest with a rushing stream, then up above treeline and over a high pass that is like a gash between its bordering peaks. They look like mountains in New Zealand. Then down for our second night´s campsite, which is in a deep, deep valley with bushes and old grassy terraces along a river which cascades so steeply down that it creates about 3 waterfalls above where we camped. We could always hear them, all night. This looked something like Hawaii. Since we got there early, about 2 pm, and we still had energy, we actually hiked up a thousand feet or so to the next ruin, Runkurakay, a fairly simple round-shaped ruin that let us look at the evening light on the Urubamba river valley far down below us.
The third day, again up at 5:45 (but slowed by some lazy young girls who were with us, who just wouldn´t get up in spite of the morning ritual of tea or coffee brought to you in bed), we hiked to a new pass with alpine lakes and then down to my favorite ruin, Sayacmarka, a place which seems to hang in the air, because the Incas put it right there just for its framing of the mountains and valleys. To get to it you actually climb a stone stairway that hangs off a cliff. Not as scary as it sounds, and very, very beautiful. The ruins all have lots of open safe terraces on the edge of nothing, and many trapezoidal windows which seem to be the perfect frame for the landscapes far away, like a special kind of binoculars. All the ruins originally had water running through them in channels and waterfalls, and a lot of them still carry water even after all this time. The Incas loved to channel water in to ceremonial baths. The 3rd day is very long, and strenuous, not from the climb but from the final descent which is long flights of actual stairways, maybe 2500 stairs in all of course not all at once, to Winay Wayna, which has a dreadful hostel but one of the most striking ruins of all, one of the best because it is n´t much rebuilt and it is a beautiful ghostly grey in the greenest of tropical forests.
The last day is just simple, an hour and a half climb with a few stairs up to the Sun Gate of Machu Picchu. I imagine it could have been hard if it had been clear, because of my fear of heights, but there was a very comforting fog hiding the Urubamba river below.
I´m sure Craig will cover more of the route and our experiences, we look forward to sharing photos of the trail, the wonderful ruins, and Machu Picchu, which remains for me after my 4th visit in my life the most marvelous place I know of. I still haven´t explored it all and see new things each time.
One more thing I have to tell about the Inca trail is about the middle of the 3rd day... my favorite part. Sharon thank you for your speedy letter!
The Inca Trail that we walk is just a a part of the vast network of roads the Incas had, and the first 2 days of the Inca trail is on the ancient route, but not the ancient stones... mules who brought contrabrand alcohol up from the jungle sugarcane fields, in the mid 1800s, took out the original paving and it has been restored nicely, but you can tell it´s pretty new.
But on the 3rd day, you walk on and through the real thing. The paving becomes beautiful, regular, almost always 5 or 6 feet wide, and with soft, rounded river stones. Where rocks got in the way, there are tunnels. Where ruins or mountains need to be framed by just the right approach, they are. Underfoot and all around you, the white granite kind of gleams, and at this time, the trail actually runs almost flat for a time, way along the top of a massive ridge, with the most beautiful greenery, and some very nice domes of granite with white and dark streaking just like in parts of Yosemite. The far mountains are quite young and spiky and dark grey, and there is thunder from rain falling in the jungles to the east, with some thunderheads and some fog. As for the vegetation, there are bamboos with festoons of tiny leaves coming out of the base of each section, many tropical bushes, and lovely deep thick spongy mosses in yellows and oranges all along vertical sides of the wet rocks along the sides of the trail, many unusual blossoms I´ve never seen and some familiar plants like princess bush and penstemon, as well as different colors and species of orchids and bromeliads.
And also there are more ruins than I described... one is called Phutupacamarca, or something like that, which means something like City hanging in the clouds. We´´ll put in pictures later. Craig is waiting to eat lunch... bye!
posted by Craig and Amy at 9:06 AM
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