Inca Trail Day 1 - Alvin and the Chinchillas

I couldn’t sleep.  I kept thinking I had forgotten to pack something essential.  I went to bed at 9:30 knowing I had to wake up at 3:00am.  I set three alarms, and then for good measure called the front desk for a wake up call.  I’m sure I saw 11:30 before I fell asleep.  As it turns out, I didn’t need any alarm because I was awake at 2:20am for good.  It is what it is, now it’s time to go!  I do a final check and go downstairs to wait for Alpaca Expeditions to pick me up.  They arrived at 4:15, and by 4:35 we had collected everyone in Cusco and were on the road to KM 82, the official start of the Inca Trail.  Once we got our passports checked, we had a quick group meeting to talk about the day and then we were off at 8:45.  Our primary guide is Alvin, and we decided our team name would be “ Alvin and the Chinchillas.”  🤷🏼‍♂️

It was a beautiful day, and the hike started off relatively easy.  We hiked as a group and stopped to talk about what we were seeing throughout the morning, and then the trail started ascending more sharply.  This is the tough part.  Uphill at normal elevation is fine.  Flat at a high elevation is fine.  Uphill at a high elevation is not fine.  It was fun, in a way, because as some people would speed up or slow down it gave us all a chance to visit and get to know each other.  

The group consists of:

• Rene and Lex - a father (50s) and son (19) from The Netherlands 
• Dirk and Elliott - Two guys, one 50s and the other 62, who are gym buddies from Southern California
• Tim and Sarah - A husband and wife in their late 40s/early 50s from Arizona
• Blake - The oldest hiker in our group, at 68, from Las Vegas
• Rosie - A woman in her 30s from London 
• Shihoh - A woman in her late 20s from Japan
• Dez and Ashley - Two retired police officers, late 50s/early 60s, from Belfast, Northern Ireland 
• Scott and Rachel - A mid-20s couple from North Carolina 

After lunch, which consisted of trout, rice, vegetables, potatoes and stuffed avocados, we had a rest in the grass outside before taking off for the final 2-hour leg of the day (all uphill).  I made a friend while we were resting after lunch.  He was a cute puppy, with very sharp teeth, but he desperately needed a bath.  We were all pretty sluggish after lunch, and the afternoon hike was tougher.  We finally made into our campsite at 4:45 where we got our tents sorted out, and I had a beer with a few of the fellas to celebrate surviving the first day.  Then it was dinner time!  It’s amazing how good the meals Maximo, our chef, can put together with limited equipment.  He also hikes the trail and carries a heavy pack all day, and he does it faster than the rest of us.  Then he cooks an incredible meal over an unregulated propane tank.  Once dinner arrived we all ate and quickly broke for the evening.  It’s going to be cold tonight, and Alvin suggested we sleep with wool hats on.  It’s 7:30pm as I write this, pitch black outside, and everyone is in their tents sorting things and talking.  Soon, it will be all snoring and frogs croaking.  I’m very happy to have my own tent.  No one is fresh.

[Photos above: The group starting the hike; Our first lunch; Puppy at our lunch stop; A few shots from the trail; This is what the average porter carries (52lb), and we have two for each of us.  Some of the porters wear sandals while hiking twice as fast we we do with that pack on their back; Beers with (left to right: Ashley and Dez in the back, Rene and Lex crouching down); First dinner of the hike]

I didn’t mention before that our itinerary was changed.  In the spring, which is the rainy season here, the trail is entirely closed because it’s so dangerous.  In early March there were some landslides that damaged part of the trail.  The itinerary changed so that we would actually walk all the way through to Machu Picchu on day 3, tour for a while, then go down to camp at a different site.  The next morning, we would go back up to Machu Picchu for sunrise. That all sounds great, because we get to go twice at different times of the day.  Our guide offered us a secret option:  instead of going down to the campsite after first visiting Machu Picchu, if we all agreed we could go down to stay in a hostel, take a shower, and sleep in a bed for only s/50 ($15).  We all agree that sounds great, so that’s the plan!

[Photos above: A typical toilet on the trail (notice no seat and generally how gross it is); Campsite on the first night; Frog game where you try to toss coins into the frog’s mouth]

Daily step count:  A challenging 26,182 (his would turn out to be the fewer number of steps in the three full hiking days).