Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu

I arrived in Cuzco last night, and I've booked myself on a 5-day trek along the Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu. The Salkantay Trail is a longer and more challenging alternative to the Inca Trail, which is always booked up weeks in advance.

I leave early tomorrow morning and return late on Monday night, so hopefully I'll tell you all about it on Tuesday. The cost of this trek is suspiciously low (about US$200 compared to the US$450 that the first trekking company quoted me), so I'm not really sure what to expect...

EDIT: OK, I've been back now for a couple of days now and have just about had time to recover. Firstly, to address the issue of the price, I needn't have worried because $200 is the going rate for treks booked in Cuzco (although it definitely didn't buy luxury). $450 is way over the odds, and I don't know what extra that would have bought me. Right, it's time to write about the trek.

It was a 4am start on day 1. I was picked up by bus from my hostel, and the bus took us to the start of the trek in a small town called Mollepata. It was there that I met the other members of my group (all 16 of them, a lot more than I was expecting). The group included people from many parts of the world (Australia, USA, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France and the UK), but the person that immediately stood out was Adrian, who I soon learnt was an Argentinian-born American living in Miami, where he drives a taxi for a living. Adrian turned up dressed in army fatigues (he served in the US army until 2005) and carrying his big backpack containing all of the belongings he'd brought on his trip, which turned out to be a big mistake (everyone else left most of their things in their hotel). Adrian was a very funny guy and kept us all laughing even when we were suffering (and when he was suffering even more).

Day 1 was a hard day, involving about 20km of walking and a vertical ascent of nearly 1km up to Soraypampa. The scenery was spectacular, particularly as we approached the snow-capped Mt Salkantay itself. It was a particularly hard day for me, because I'd caught a cold a couple of days before the start of the trek and wasn't feeling 100%. I completely lost my appetite, but forced myself to eat lunch anyway, and as a result I felt sick for the whole afternoon. In the end it was probably the hardest day of physical exercise I've ever had, and I only just managed to stagger up the last hundred metres to the campsite at the foot of the Umantay glacier. Needless to say, it was a freezing night and I didn't get much sleep.

Day 2 was billed as the hardest day, because it involved a 4-hour uphill climb to the highest point of the trek, the 4600m Salkantay pass. It was a tough morning, but as I was feeling a bit better it wasn't as bad for me as the first day. Here's a group photo taken in front of Mt Salkantay before the climb got serious, here's me at the highest point, and below is a photo of Mt Salkantay as I saw it from the pass.

It was five hours downhill from that point, which wasn't much easier on the legs. The scenery continued to look like something out of Lord of the Rings. We descended to our campsite at Challway, which at an altitude of 2920m was slightly warmer than the previous night's (at 3200m), but still I didn't get much sleep.

Day 3 was jungle day, as we descended into completely different scenery, including a large waterfall. There was only half a day of walking, so once we reached our lunch spot at Playa Sahuayaco, a minibus took us to our third campsite at Santa Teresa. It was an extremely uncomfortable ride - they managed to cram 22 people into a minibus with 15 seats (although strictly speaking three of those people were on the minibus rather than in the minibus). I would rather have walked. At least there were a few more facilities in Santa Teresa, so I was able to have my first shower of the trek.

Day 4 was the hot day, as we were at comparatively low altitudes. After about an hour's walking we had to cross Rio Urubamba in a cable car - unfortunately every other group following the same route had to do that too, and we were at the back of the queue, so we had a two-hour wait for our turn to cross. Shortly afterwards, we passed an amazing waterfall coming directly out of the cliff face - I'd never seen anything like that before - quickly followed by another even bigger one. At Hidro Electrica the route joined the railway to Aguas Calientes, but fortunately we only had to dodge one train. We also passed an unreal-looking group of boulders in the river (the photo doesn't really convey how weird it looked). We finally arrived in civilisation in the early evening, where we were thankful to be able to sleep in a proper bed for the first time in four days.

However, we didn't get much sleep because we were woken at 3:30am the following day to allow us to get to Machu Picchu when it opened at 6am. Most of the group chose to walk up, but I'd been advised to get the bus, and I think I made the right decision, because it's a horribly steep walk. I was in the queue for the bus before 4:30am, even though they don't start leaving until 5:30am. I got on the third bus to leave, and arrived at Machu Picchu just before 6am, where I met up with the others. Our guide, Reynaldo, then gave us a two-hour guided tour of the ruins. Here's a picture of some of the group during the tour. I then climbed up to the House of the Guardians to get the famous view of the city, below.

There are some other photos here and here, and of the Temple of the Condor here.

At 10am we began the climb up Wayna Picchu, which is the mountain in the background of the famous view of Machu Picchu. This gave us some amazing views, including this one looking back towards Machu Picchu. And below is a picture of Machu Picchu and me, taken near the top of Wayna Picchu.


I walked back down to Aguas Calientes at 2pm, after about eight hours at Machu Picchu. Our train to Ollantaytambo wasn't until 9:45pm, so we had a long wait. I met up with some of the others in Aguas Calientes, and we spent most of the afternoon eating and drinking until it was time to catch our train. I finally arrived back at my hostel in Cuzco at 2am. I was aching in my neck, back, legs, feet, and pretty much everywhere else, but it was worth it because I got to see Machu Picchu, and anyway the pain and discomfort are a distant memory now. Looking back on it now, it was a pretty great experience.

I'm going to be staying in Cuzco for the rest of the week (and maybe longer) while I take some Spanish lessons. I'll write some more about that in my next post.

2 comments:

  1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8683075.stm

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  2. @Anonymous, in fact I already spotted that article, because it was one of the most read on BBC News a couple of days ago. Someone at the BBC must be reading my blog...

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