430am is when they told us to wait for the driver. They didn't come until 5 and they parked at the top of the hill. So before the trek even started, we have to hike up those darn excorsist stairs. We're the last ones on to this car bus thing (seriously a foreshadow to what's about to come) There were a few Americans, a German, a British, an a Spainard. The guide made me sit in front. That's my least favorite seat in the car, smack dab in the middle. I spent the first 5 minutes trying to put on my seat belt. If you see the way the Peruvians drive, you'd want to out on your seat belt too. 15 minutes and a stop later, 2 of the guides are trying to pull the seatbelt out, I finally feel a tad safer for the ride. We have to drive an hour out to the initial spot to eat breakfast and where we will start our hike!
Bus selfie
The ride has been fun so far. I'm sat between the driver and one of the guides. I ask for some "musiqua en espangnol!" Don't laugh, my Spanish is non existent. There are donkeys, mules, cows, dogs, sheep, goats and all sorts of other random animals all in the street. It's pretty funny. It's like toads turnpike in Mario kart, but instead of dodging cars, you are dodging animals.
We get to the breakfast stop an hour and some later and ate "American breakfast" aka coffee, eggs and bread. Haha we start the trek and I swear 10 minutes I'm tired! I told y'all I would be the last one. I kept falling behind.
By the time we got to the lunch spot, everyone's caught up. The chef cooked a great meal! Sopa, lomo Saltado etc. Amazing. I told the guide I was going to start hiking first since I'm the slowest. About 45 minutes in the first people start to catch up and pass me. They all tell me "you're friend started walking and she turned around and she's on the truck with the chef" haha maybe another 45 minutes in, Theresa and the truck pass me. They all wave at me and I wave back. Maybe another 15 minutes the tour guide is hiking DOWN the mountain towards me and tells me they stopped the truck because they want me to get in because I'm too far behind. Hahahaha. I told him no it's cheating! I can do this! But he said I'm way too far behind and it'll be dark by the time I get there. So I happily jump on the truck and ride about 2o minutes and hike the rest of the way to the camp site. I am pooped. It's only the first day and I'm like crap! Way out of shape! I told the guide then I might take the horse the next day.
Anyway the 1st campsite had a beautiful site. The snow capped Andes mountains and other mountains all around. It was really breathtaking, and speaking of breath taking, the cold was definitely creeping in and taking our breath away. The camp site was about 3400m up (11,154.86 ft) it's like snowboarding height.
After the sun went down, we pulled out her knit hats, gloves and put on every sweater we had. The tents were already sent up for us and luckily they had built a plastic shelter and put the tents inside it. It got pretty windy so that was a good layer of wind protection!
We had "tea time" at 530pm. Tea time consisted of popcorn, crackers, cocotea, hot chocolate and coffee. Delicious way to warm up. Plus we were all starving. Dinner was promptly at 630pm and the chef cooked up some delicious meal again. Chicken noodle soup and chicken and rice etc.
Tea time
By 73o the stars were out and we were getting ready for bed. Went out and took a few star pictures. Beautiful to see the moonlight bounce of the snow peaks. By 8pm were all in our tents. No one could really sleep right away even though we were all dead tired. Too much cocotea and coffee for everyone.
Day 2 of the trek:
Wake up time. 5am. Breakfast by 5;30am. The chef cooked us up some sort of pancake and we had hot cocoa and tea and bread, butter and jam. Delicious once again.
I think everyone started hiking around 630am and Theresa and I stayed back because we decided we wanted to ride the horses up. It was fun watching them try to lasso this one defiant horse. After they caught it and put a saddle on it, we realized that's one of the horses we were going to ride up the mountain. I called not it! So Theresa said she'd ride the defiant horse. Haha. We had a horse guide and he took us up the mountain and it was about 1030am when we reached the summit. 4600m (15,091.86 ft) it was breath taking. The mountains, the sky and the view! The horses went back down and we had to part ways with the horses :( I never rode a horse in my life before so it was pretty fun to me. Anyway, so at the summit, the guide said there's a lake and we hiked 30 Min to and 30 min back and saw this awesome blue lagoon like lake. All rocks and gravels and this pretty blue lake in between. Well worth that hike.
Horsey
Our horses :)
Photoshoot time
I love it!
Then the hike down. About an hour and some before our lunch spot. By the time we got there, of course the chef is already magically there. He walked with a mule to tug along all our food and gas etc. And he still gets there before us, always. He cooked this awesome chicken curry and rice dish and of course sopa! The rain clouds started to roll in right after lunch so went all pulled out our ponchos and rain jackets ... Took a picture, walked for 2 minutes before realizing it wasn't going to rain anymore. Hahah. All that time dragging the rain coat, we all just wanted to make use of it I guess!
3.5 hours till the final camp site. Hiked, hiked, hiked some more. At times I seriously thought there was no end. My legs were jello and I couldn't wait to get there. By the time we got there, our tents were set up again but soon after the guide thought it was going to rain and that we should've move our tents to this second level tree house looking thing. It was a good idea because there was no plastic tent to block our tents this time. It was just out in the open but the 2nd level atleast ensured the chickens weren't going to steal our shoes haha. we all drank a little beer to cheers. Tea time again, followed by dinner. The guide showed us a game and we turned it into a drinking game. A few, well many shots of beer later it was time to call it a night. With all that, I still couldn't sleep. The river flowed behind the house and it sounded like it was pouring rain all night long. That sound is not soothing to me, it actually keeps me up. So I'm half sleeping all night and at 3:4oam our rain cover tent fell off and it starts to get chilly. But were too lazy to fix it. A few minutes after the roosters start to cockadoodledoo. Back and forth they cockadoodledoo to each other. And I'm thinking to myself, darnit my ear plugs are at the bottom of my compression bag in my big bag that's back at the hostel.
Day 3 of the trek:
Breakfast was fantastical. The chef made us some omlettes. Mmm.
And we began our hike. 5 hours and some hours hiking through the "jungle" part of the trek. Cool flowers, animals, waterfalls, bridges etc. By the time we got to the lunch spot this is where it's weird, the 5 day tour continues to a different city, and since were part of a 4 day tour so we get bussed to a train station. From there we now get our 10 lbs of stuff the mules have been carrying for us. So you have two choices. Hike for 3 hours pwith your gear+ 10lbs gear or take the train to the next city, aguas calientes. We chose the train. Our legs were shot. Dunzo. Kapooot.
When we arrive at the train station, I was seriously overwhelmed with the amount of tourists. It's the most amount of any tourist I've seen so far. Americans, Japanese, chinese, Europeans, Aussies. Our hostel was ok, but our room was on the 4th floor! Ahh more unnecessary hiking!!
Dinner was nice. It was at an actual restaurant. We got combined with another your group since ours was still trekking.
Our new group
Called it a night after that since we had to wake up at 4 am for Machu Picchu the next day.
Day 9: Machu Picchu
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