Inca Trail Days 3 and 4

Day 3, we woke up 6am for another up and down hike. We had already hit the peak of our hike at 4200 meters, but we still had to start the day with a climb from 3600 meters to 4000 meters and then some up and down before decending from 3600 meters to 2700 meters at the end of the day. After some coca tea and a nice omlette breakfast, we headed up the first part of the hike. Luckily, Beth was feeling a bit better this morning (although still not great), so we made it up the first pass without much of a problem. The views from the top were pretty spectacular - you could finally see towards where we started and you could begin to see where the hike ended (although that was still around another mountain). We hung out at the top of this pass for a while, waiting for the back of the group - after hiking off of the pass, we saw the best Inca ruins we had seen to date - Sayacmarca. This site was pretty incredible, mostly because of its location on a granite outcrop on a steep cliff. We spent about 30 minutes here talking the location, the probable use of the site, the architecture, etc....

After the ruins, we hiked about 15 minute to another incredible lunch (sauteed eggplant for the vegis!) before heading off to the second pass of the day. Getting to this pass wasn't such a rough hike and it gave us our first views of the Machu Picchu mountain, although you can't actually see the city until you are there (the mountain next to the city is named Machu Picchu, the city itself is named the city of xxx). The end of the day was pretty rough - we decended 900 meters (almost 3000 feet) in about 4 miles, which was a pretty steep and rough hike - we were all pretty exhausted by the end... the porters, on the other hand, RAN down all of the stairs and amazingly didn't get the slightest bit of hurt. These guys were incredible.

After making it down to the last campsite - know as the Trekkers Hostal (hot showers, beer, etc...), we took a quick hike over to Wiñay Wayna, another Inca farming area - this one had a huge number of farming terraces dug into the mountain - another good warm up to Machu Picchu. We spent the rest of the evening chilling out in the tents, getting showers, drinking a few beers, etc.... before dinner. Immediately after dinner, we had the porter ceremony, where they FINALLY introduced us to the guys that were doing everything for us. We all put in together an gave them a nice tip for all of their help. I only wish we could have been introduced earlier.

Day 4 - after a night of boozing (most people hit the hay early, but some stayed up pretty late), we had to get up at 4am. Of course the wake up call was met with coca tea (can you start a day without it?). After a quick breakfast, we were off... we hiked about 1.5 hours to the Sun Gate, the classic hikers entrace to the park. The gate itself wasn't that interesting - I think it is only a good place to be during the two solstices, when the sun goes through the gate and hits the Temple of the Sun in the city before hitting anything else. For us, it was a nice viewpoint, but a bit far away. After a bit of sunrise watching, we headed down to Machu Picchu itself for picture taking, a tour, etc... We have some amazing shots that I can't wait to share with people. We'll write a bit more about Machu Picchu itself in another post.

Chao,
mike.