Treking Days 1 & 2

Our trek turned out to be pretty different than I was expecting, but amazing all the same. Mainly there were more miles and more rain than I was expecting. Despite these downers we saw a ton of stunning scenery and met a lot of wonderful people along the way. While it is currently 'winter' in Peru, it is also their dry season. This means that while it is chillier than the rest of the year, it’s actually the best time to be there because it's dry. Supposedly.

The trek is called the Salkantay Trek and is known as the 'back door' to Machu Picchu. Most people who hike to Machu Picchu do it via the Inca Trail. This is supposed to beautiful, however it can only be done with a certified tour guide, and costs a pretty penny. It’s also rather overrun with hordes of tourists. I mentioned this in my last post but I'll say it again: we try to avoid those! Salkantay is supposed to have better scenery anyway: much more varied than the Inca Trail, and also goes over a 15,500ft pass. Despite being the 'back door' it is still done almost entirely by guided tour groups, just much fewer of them. We made the decision to do it by ourselves. The biggest part of this decision is that the guided groups have mules that carry their gear so you only have a very small day pack. We were all hauling between 35-60lbs and were at pretty high elevation, so it was hard work.

We started out from the town of Mollepata and spent the first day hiking to a ‘town’ called Soray.

The flat green spot at the base of the mountain really far in the distance, thats Soray. I took this picture at 4pm. hahah

We had a book that described the trail, but quickly discovered that having a three year old book meant that some things had, well, changed. We were greatly helped by a number of very kind locals who pointed out short cuts to us and yelled at us to turn around when they saw us going the wrong way. Despite all this we got completely, totally, lost day one. The problem is that the locals also use these trails to get around and as a result they branch off to houses, fields, communities, etc. We spent 3 hours wandering around until we came upon a tour group and begged them to point us in the right direction. After a quick tip (the trail simply disappeared for 100 yards and then picked right up again) we were on our way and it was smooth sailing to Soray from there. Unfortunately, being so close to the equator you have only 12 hours of daylight. Its pitch dark at 6pm so we spent the last hour with our head lamps.

 

Day two dawned to me waking up in our tent and saying to Matt 'honey, I had this dream. I woke up and it was pouring down rain. We laid here waiting for it to stop, but it never did and we laid here all day long.' Unfortunately, this was both reality, and a premonition. It had rained hard in the middle of the night, which was probably the cause of said dream. As soon as I stepped out of the tent, it began again. We cooked our oatmeal and Via in a light drizzle and headed out. Day two we crossed over a 15,500ft pass. At the time this was the highest any of us had ever been by about 1,000ft and we were all glad to have it over without anyone getting sick.

If you haven't seen our Ireland pictures, it looks exactly like this. Ireland in Peru. Weird.

Despite a day of steady drizzle it quit soon after we headed down from the pass so we decided to call it an early day and made camp at four. We warmed ourselves with the two bottles of wine we had brought in a Playtypus. Delightful. Then we made Mountain House brownies. This was a good night in camp. The clouds cleared as the moon came out and we discovered we were sitting the shadow of some gigantic snowy mountains.

**Not alot of picutres from day 2. It was raining. My camera was in my pack staying dry. Ashley has a few from the pass but... I don't have them yet!