Salkantay Trek

Day 1 – 14km

The main event of Savannah and my trip together was the Salkantay trek, so when the time came to begin we were eager to get going.  However, even being super excited, the 4am wakeup call by our guide David still felt insanely early.  It would take several more hours of sleep in the van and arriving at our last town in civilization to have breakfast that we’d be awake enough to meet everyone.  The cast of characters:

EB – Art designer for sets on movies / commercials from Dallas.  She has a really cool job and a pretty interesting life.  She’s climbed to Everest base camp, Mt. Kilimanjaro, seen the Taj Mahal.  She also carries around a doll head she found in Amsterdam (Bob), who she takes picture of at each destination.  It sounded very strange at first.

Lyn – Retired salesman from Salt Lake City.  He loved to tell a lot of cheesy jokes and had a lot of one liners to add to the group which at times got annoying.  But he was generally a good time, even when he fell and hit his head on a rock on day two, and he continually kept the group updated on elevations and mileage with his GPS.

Craig – Retired teacher also from Salt Lake City.  He was soft spoken but also really funny when he did speak.  He was my favorite of the three (and Savannah said that I was his favorite too – aw shucks…).

David (our guide) – If Craig liked me best, then David decidedly liked Savannah best, like in the morning he’d usually get her up and give her the instruction for the day, not even mentioning me.  But he was also a really good guide, nice, friendly, good pace, interesting things to add, just a top notch guide and probably the best I’ve had in South America.

And then it happened… It’s strange how sickness hits, you don’t really want to admit it to yourself, but you know something is wrong and you just hope to ignore it.  I had my first toilet trouble in the breakfast bathroom and instantly took an antibiotic for travels diarrhea fearing the worst.  The next 30 minutes of windy roads decidedly didn’t help.  Then the hiking began.

It was a fun start to the trek, Savannah and I trying to navigate through all the puddles and mud, us being the only two not wearing waterproof hiking boots, while also getting a nice groove going on the trail.  Everything seemed to have fixed itself since breakfast, with the only noticeable trouble being the sand fly bites that were drawing blood.

However, at snack time, I could only eat a banana, and that was mostly out of obligation to the stop.  I began to get nervous that after hours of hiking I felt no ounce of hunger, and even refused Savannah’s last cracker.  Something was clearly wrong…

At lunch I had to poop again, running up into the hills for privacy and necessity.  I could only manage a couple of bites of soup, bread, and white rice.  I felt worse than at snack time and not hungry at all.  The stuffed avocado with peppers and onions was painful to miss.

The rest of the day was dreadful, stomach turning from mild discomfort to severe pain.  It was a pretty long first day having started at 4am, and when we got to camp I could do little more than lay in the tent and focus all my attention on my bowel moments.  Savannah was an absolute angel and took great care of me, rubbing my back, feeding me sips of Gatorade, and trying to get me to eat (which in way was going to happen).  The cooks were also nice enough to make me a special tea for sickness, which I used to wash down a handful of medication.  Eastern and Western medicine working together, I just prayed my nurse wasn’t overzealous with her assessment of the effectiveness of my antibiotics.

I skipped dinner all together, choosing instead to put on all my clothes inside my sleeping bag to fend off the onslaught of cold shivers I was feeling.  I heard that dinner was amazing and the cooks busted out a flaming banana for desert which sounded incredible.  But to be honest, in that moment, I just wanted my stomach to stop hurting… and to stop pooping.

We camped that night between two towering peaks above, the Salkantay and Humantay mountains.  We’d do the Salkantay pass tomorrow.

Day 2 – 24km

I woke with the roosters feeling better, but that quickly turned to running to that bathroom and only a single scoop of eggs accompanied by a slice of bread for breakfast.  We were on the trail by half six as it continued to rain from the previous night.

The first 3 hours were all uphill until we reached Salkantay pass, 15,000ft.  Craig made a good point, ‘all the things about day 2 I thought would be difficult – elevation and steep terrain – were no problem, it was only the weather.’  The rain, wind, and elevation made it extremely cold most of the day.

I continued to feel pretty terrible and bring up the rear of the group.  Savannah was really great and would try and wait for me, even at a snail’s pace, we still ended up with a sizable distance between the two of us, but she’d still stop and wait for me in the rain.

We discussed perspective and how back home when one thing goes wrong it can be upsetting, but when you’ve been walking in the rain for hours on end it feels like the greatest relief in the world when it lets up for just a moment.

We also talked about how the simplest solution is often the most elegant.  For example, Savannah wore a $100 rain jacket from REI while I wore a free poncho I’d received as a gift from a friend.  Who do you think stayed the driest? (trick quickest – the guy wearing a trash bag….).  Or when after lunch we put plastic bags over our feet to keep them dry and they worked amazingly.  Just imagine how much water proof socks would cost (if they even exist).

Several people called me a champ on that day, and I’ll be honest that with the sickness, weather, and lack of nourishment, I was pretty proud of making to the top of that peak.

Once at the top, we made a sacrifice just as the Inca’s used to make.  We each had brought a rock up to the top, along with 3 coca leaves (which represent the most important animals to the Incan people: puma, condor, snake) for a sacrifice.  We left the leaves under the rock as we made a wish.

After a few hours decent, we stopped for lunch in a hut with a chorus or meowing cats to keep us company.  I was finally greeted with a long lost feeling – hunger, one that I thought I’d never feel again.  I managed to get my first real food of the trip: all my soup, salad, and about half a plate of food.

Sadly the day was only about half done, mileage wise, and still about 3 hours left on the trail.  We all felt defeated, and it was near agony to put back on all our wet gear and reenter the storm after just getting warm and full.  The second half was most flat and downhill, the one kicker – deep mud.  Great…

The trail quickly turned from normal mud to loose dirt, which after hours of rain was just awful.  Actually it was quite fun at first, but when we rolled into camp hours later, we were all over that whole walking thing.  Luckily ours tents were all setup under the comfort of a roof.

We all cleaned our things as best we could, and put on a heavenly feeling change of dry clothes before my first tea time and dinner with the group.  Lyn had brought wine and we finished that off before crashing early, deserving, after a long hard day.

Day 3 – 14km (easy)

If the theme of day 2 was struggle, day 3 was recovery.  We slept in (well 7am), and only had to hike on a flat trail until lunch, and our next camp.  It was glorious. 

That morning I also ate my first breakfast and amazingly felt great all day (odd how much food helps while hiking – who knew).  We opted for walking on the dirt road instead of the true trail to avoid landslides.  We did have to cross one section where a previous landslide had occurred.  There was lots of water and it was super deep mud.  No cars or even horses could get across.

That night the campsite was much more modern: next to a general store, picnic tables, and a shower with about 2 minutes of hot water (but still – HOT WATER!).  It was luxurious.  We sat around drinking and playing cards until dinner and nightfall.  Then we choked down a nightcap pisco shot by candlelight before turning in for the night.

Day 4 – 12km

Today we made a great call, skipping the first 7 miles of pure mud to sleep in and ride in a warm bus to the better trail.

After a much more normal start to the day, breakfast at eight and a bit of sunshine, we got going, riding in the bus along the river for about two hours til we reached the railroad tracks, and our trek continued.

The trail was very mild today, flat and easy with little rain until we reached Aguas Calientes and our hostel for the night.  An actual hot shower and a real bed was an amazing change of pace.

As a group we hit up the hot springs, to share a few drinks and soak our battered bodies.  I was feeling much more myself, nearing 110% (my norm), while Savannah was starting to head the other direction.  After feeling great for nearly the whole first four days, her right knee was starting to act up, and give her serious trouble on steps, mostly downhill though.  The schedule the whole next day, however, was exploring the thousands of steps of Machu Picchu.  Timing for our struggles was not on our side during this trip.

We hit dinner as a group as well, and then to bed early, as hours later we’d be walking up to Machu Picchu.   

Day 5 – Machu Picchu

Up bright an early once again, this time before 4am, in order to walk the forty minutes of flat followed by forty-five up stairs in order to beat the first buses to Machu Picchu.  Walking the start of the day with flashlights and through fog, we made it just minutes before the crowds began to form.

Here are a few of the shots that I got before the crowds and fog rolled in:

David then took us on a 2-hour tour of the ruins, here are the best parts that I remember:

• Cusco (Inca capital) looks like a puma.  Machu Picchu (no one knows its purpose) is like a condor.
• Bingham (from Yale University) – discovered the site in 1911 by accident.  He took all the artifacts (though no treasure was found) back to the US, but I guess we’re slowly giving them back to Peru.
• We saw where the Inca Trail comes into Machu Picchu, the trail to the sun gate, and the temple for the sun – where the sunrise shines through the windows at summer and winter solstices.
• We learned how the Inca’s used to cut stones to perfect proportions and shapes (along the rock’s natural cracks) to make stones that fit perfectly together.
• We saw an ancient sundial and learned of the film crew whose camera fell and broke off a corner.  The Peruvian who authorized the crew was sent to prison as punishment for the damage.

We had the rest of the afternoon to explore, but after several more hours, Sav and I were just exhausted and returned to Aguas Calientes to relax in a café and wait for our train and then bus back to Cusco that night. 

We were utterly exhausted when our journey finally came to a close, but it was well worth the fatigue, for such an amazing experience.