Time for part 2 of our trip! This post will cover days 6 - 10 of our trip where we visited the Sacred Valley and hiked the Inca trail. Let's get started!
DAY 6 - SACRED VALLEY
Friday morning we woke up early and boarded our private tour bus headed to the Sacred Valley. The Sacred Valley is an area about 1 hour outside of Cusco and has a lot of historical significance for the Inca culture. Joey wasn't feeling so hot this morning but he gave me a smile for this picture.
Our first stop was at a local village that had a partnership with our tour group. The women in this community allow visitors to come in and see how they make their woven crafts and in exchange, the visitors usually buy them. Here are the women showing us how they turn the alpaca and llama wool into thread.
And this is how they dye the wool with natural resources to be brightly colored.
After the weaving community, we headed through the valley to visit some ruins. On the way we stopped roadside to enjoy the beautiful view. The valley really was majestic!
We visited two ruin sites this day. First was the Inca administrative center of Pisac (see full album for pictures) and the second was Ollantaytambo. Ollayntaytambo, which is incredibly difficult to say, was amazing. The name means "where Ollanta lives" and was named after a famous Inca general. This was probably one of my favorite ruin sites, if not my favorite.
After visiting the ruins, we checked into our little hotel only 3 blocks from the ruin site and had a little free time. We decided we hadn't gotten enough stairs yet and we went to hike a nearby mountain to another set of smaller ruins on the opposite end of town with a couple of other guys in the group. Here you can see the ruins of an Inca storehouse in the background. They built it in the mountain to keep the goods cool from the cross winds (or something like that.)
From there we had a great view of the town and the ruins on the opposite side. AND the best part was we had it all to ourselves!
We finished the night with our last group dinner before starting the Inca trail the next morning.
DAY 7 - INCA TRAIL
The next morning we started our 4 day hike along the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. The section of the trail we hiked was about 28 miles long. The Inca people (the quechuas) build this trail back in the 1400s as a way to get to the city of Machu Picchu which is thought to be something like a royal resort or religious retreat site for the most famous Inca - Pachacutec. Here is the group at the trailhead.
Our super experienced local guide Percy led the way. He had hiked the trail over 500 times! The first portion of the hike was mostly walking through the valley, often alongside the river.
Many quechuas still live in this area even though it is now a national park. We walked by a lot of houses and animals this day.
People are no longer allowed to hike the trail without an official tour group and most hikers do not carry their own gear. The trail is too difficult for the average hiker (well, the average tourist hiker) to carry their own food and equipment so porters carry most of the stuff. Our group of 8 had 15 porters carrying our food, tents, sleeping bags, and other stuff. It was amazing how much they could carry - and many of them hiked in sandals! Each one carried a max of like 25 kilos (55 lbs) and would run ahead of the group to get to the site and set up. It was really crazy! It made us feel like wimps with our specialized hiking equipment, poles, and little day packs!
The first day was pretty easy - maybe about 8 miles or so - and we arrived at our campsite around 2pm. The porters had already been there for hours and had everything all set up and ready for us.
After an unbelievably delicious lunch (made by our professional chef!) we took a short walk to more nearby ruins. These things are everywhere!! The scenery was so amazing!
We lounged about for the rest of the afternoon, had a delicious dinner, and called it an early night. (See the full album for food pictures!)
DAY 7 - DEAD WOMAN'S PASS (Day 2 of the Inca Trail)
Sunday morning we got a 5:30am wake up call and started out in a very foggy and rainy morning.
We pulled on our rain gear and hit the trail! This portion of the trail was the hardest of all three days. We went about 8 miles but had to cross the highest point of the trail - Dead Woman's Pass - at 4200 meters or 13860 feet high. We were climbing steadily uphill for like 5 hours! Here we are at our first break. Joey looks tired already!
As we started to climb, there were less locals and the scenery started to change. It got more jungle-y at parts and was wide open and grassy at others. They say that the scenery changes every 2 hours on the Inca trail and it's true!
The last couple miles to Dead Woman's Pass was just straight up stone steps - as far as the eye could see. It was pretty difficult but Joey and I held up ok. Joey's legs were burning but not near as bad as the Grand Canyon since he was only carrying a small day pack.
Here we are at the top. This was an exciting moment for all of us because we were literally over the hump!
Then it was a steady downhill climb for another hour or two to the campsite. The scenery was crazy and there was fog everywhere. Very cool!
Again, our campsite was all set up for us by the porters and we spent the rest of the afternoon resting in our tents.
DAY 8 - INTO THE JUNGLE (Day 3 of the trail)
The next day started the same as the last with a 5:30am wake up call, a yummy breakfast, and hitting the trail by 7am. We were camping a low spot so we immediately started an uphill climb. We were still a little sore and stiff from the day before so it was a pretty brutal way to start the day.
I tried to take a video with my camera this morning. You can hear how out of breath I am after only 30 seconds of hiking! It's a little embarrassing actually!
This was the longest day of hiking - we went from 7am until almost 5pm, with about an hour break for lunch. The views were really cool this day though. This is one of my favorite pictures I took - a panorama with Joey in it.
At one point, our guide Percy stopped to play some traditional Quechua music for us. He learned how to play from his grandfather. I love this picture too.
Here is a video of him playing:
There were also a ton of ruin sites this day as well. The Inca people built all these stops along the trail for travelers to rest and prepare themselves spiritually for their arrival in Machu Picchu.
As we hiked the elevation dropped and it became more humid and jungle like.
Here the porters are cooking us a super fancy lunch at our stop. You can see the chef is even wearing a chef hat! He also baked us a cake for dessert this day. I had no idea you could bake a cake in a pan!
After lunch we continued on - viewpoint after viewpoint, ruin after ruin.
At one point Joey had a little run in with a llama on the trail. Watch out Joey!
Finally we made it to our campsite and we were exhausted! They brought us little buckets of warm water to take little bird baths to try to freshen up for our arrival at Machu Picchu in the morning.
DAY 9 - MACHU PICCHU (Day 4 of the trail)
Tuesday morning we woke up at 3 am to try to beat the other hiking groups to the sun gate at the entrance of Machu Picchu. We still had a couple miles to hike and the goal was to be the first to the sun gate to watch the sun rise (weather willing).
That morning was a blur - all 400 something hikers at the last campsite trying to make it to the gate. We walked at a pretty fast pace in the dark.
Our group was the first to the gate but unfortunately the weather was not cooperating. We were excited none-the-less.
This was our grand view of Machu Picchu. (Bummer, right!?)
And finally by mid morning it was clear and we got a great view of the ruins.
We spent the morning touring Machu Picchu (lots more pictures in the album) but honestly we were pretty tired and there were a MILLION tourists there. We stayed until about noon and decided we had enough and hopped on the bus to our group meeting point. It was cool but we kind of preferred the other ruins that were less commercial.
After a group lunch, we took the train and a bus back to Cusco. It took like 4 hours and we were beat!
That night back in Cusco, we went out for a casual dinner of rotisserie chicken (a Peruvian favorite). On our walk back we stumbled across a Catholic procession for Easter. Peruvians are like 85% Catholic and are very serious about their religious celebrations, especially in Cusco. They had this GIANT statue of Mary that was carried by like 30 guys. It was crazy!
Here is the video of the procession:
So that's part 2. Part 3 - touring Cusco and into the Amazon - coming next. For the full album click (or copy and paste) the link below:
Have a great week everybody!
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