Inca Trail - Day 1

  Machu Pichu, Peru
Monday, September 11, 2006

A very early start this morning. We got picked up at our hostel at 4.30 a.m and taken by bus to km 82, the beginning of the trail. We stopped on the way for breakfast at Ollyantaytambo and a chance to meet our group. We were lucky this time and had a good sociable group made up of 3 American girls, a British couple, a Canadian couple, and two Scottish girls. There were supposed to be an additional 5 trekkers but they got sick and had to cancel. So there were 11 hikers and 17 porters!

It was a fairly easy start to the hike - 12km in about 5 hours. Slight uphills but nothing too strenuous. At least we had finally done some exercise to start removing Steve's tubby gut:



We got to the lunch spot and were pleasently surprised to see a glass of juice ready for us and that lunch was on its way. We were impressed by the set-up of a dinner tent complete with table cloths!



They even laid out little bowls of water with soap for us to wash our tender hands.

After lunch was a little more of the same type of hiking. We stopped to view some ruins at Llactapata. Although we didn't hike down to inspect further, the ruins looked in great condition.



We then continued on to our camp at Wayllabamba where we arrived to see our tents already set up and waiting.



By this point we had climbed to 3100 m (10,137 feet)! It was alittle cold when the sun went down, but it wasnīt too bad.

We had a some time to relax for a bit before dinner and then were treated to a feast. We were amazed at what the cook could do out in the middle of the mountains. We enjoyed a 3 course meal and then were off to bed at 8.30pm as we had been warned that day 2 was going to be the most challenging of the trek! We didnīt even have to do the washing up!



DAILY FACTS

- Tip of the day: Take baby wipes to give yourself an in-tent wash in the morning. No showers on the first couple of days of the trail!