The Inca Trail - Day 1

I didn't have the energy or the mental coherence to be excited the following morning at 04:00 when the bus picked me up from my hostel, but climbed dazedly into the bus and slept all the way to Ollantaytambo (about two hours) where we stopped for breakfast. A little more awake now, we managed to chat a little, what we'd seen, what we wanted to see, who'd gotten sick (both altidudinally and gastronomically). From breakfast another 45 minutes to Km 82, the beginning of our journey back to Inca times (as I was thinking of it). I tried to imagine myself an Inca making a pilgrimage to Machupicchu. They of course would have made the trip in a little over half the time and without so much huffing and puffing, but it would be essentially the same. We got stamps in our passports for the start of the trail, took a "family picture" and we were off!

The first thing that struck me about the trail (aside from the literally jaw-droppingly awesome, majestic, imposing mountain landscape) was how...inhabited the trail was. What to us was an important relic of Peru's Inca heritage, to the Andeans was just the road. Thus many rural Peruvians live along the Inca trail, we passed their huts and occasionally them outside making food, utensils or clothes. There were also many locals leading their horses (taxis, according to Solay) along the trail looking for grazing land. Not to mention the porters whizzing by constantly (more about them later). What I thought would be a peaceful hike in the mountains turned out to be a stroll along a sort of rural Peruvian highway. I can't imagine what it must be like in the high tourist season.

The first part of the trail was fairly flat, and we reached our lunch spot not too exhausted and quite interested to know what would be served up for lunch. Just quietly, considering my previous experiences with camp food, I was expecting it to be pretty simple...sloppy porridge, crappy sandwiches, and tex-mex food. But not only did we get a four course meal (no not kidding) it was delicious. Salad (with alpaca cheese), soup, some kind of traditional Peruvian fish dish, then sloppy jelly pudding stuff for dessert. Then tea. The meal was great while it lasted (even Glenn, a chef at the ultra-trendy River Café in London, was amazed at the standard of the food, saying it was better than most of the restaurant food he'd eaten in Cusco). However, post-banquet, we had 700 metres of mountain to climb up. The morning had been fairly plain sailing but after lunch it was as if the landscape suddenly remembered it was the Andes and that it had better throw some inclines into the mix. So began five hours of slogging up, and up, and up...Surprisingly considering my only above average fitness I was heading up the bunch until the last half hour when my body just sort of said, "Right, that's it, I'm clocking off". Remember, I'd been up since 04:00, and it was now around 16:30, 12 hours later. Thankfully I hadn't suffered any altitude sickness like Bridey, who had felt nauseous all afternoon (how that must have sucked!). Even more thankfully, when we reached our campsite, Llulluchapampa)the porters (who had reached camp aaaages ago) had already set up camp, pitched the tents, and made us afternoon tea.

After a brief but exciting deer-spotting in the surrounding mountains we had our tea, and then basically chatted and killed time until dinner. This again was an amazing experience for me as usually when I'm camping reaching camp means the work is only just beginning - you have to pitch the tent (usually in the dark if it's winter, and the first night it's always a nightmare because no-one can remember how to pitch the tent, you can never find a flat spot with soft ground and usually there's a pole or something missing), then cook dinner, eat, wash up, and by that time it's well past bedtime. Again a huge and delicious meal (all thoughts regarding how much weight I was going to lose with all the walking were slowly but surely dispersing) and then more chatting until bedtime.

I was tired but happy that the first (and hardest walking) day was over. I was in love with the Andes and couldn't wait to start seeing the archeological sites that we were going to start finding along the way.