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AHH so the pinnacle of our tour... the Inka Trail trek.
Matt flew into Cuzco the day before we were to start our tour... we met up perfectly in the town centre of Cuzco - Plaza de Major. i was sitting on the fountain in the middle of the square so he saw me easily- we put his stuff in our hotel we were to stay in that night and went to have breaky at Jacks! we introduced him to this wonderous food... although i dont think he was as excited about as us cos he has been eating western food only 2 days earlier! so after 3 days he was pretty tired, so after breakfast we put him in the hotel to sleepand me and seb got stuff prepared for the trek like snacks and drink bottles etc. we managed to see the cathedrals finally too after 2 weeks there!
the guide came to the hotel at 6pm to take us through the plans for the next 5 days...we were shattered with our guide already from how SLOW he spoke english and how much he repeated every word - our hopse was that we would have another guide or something to take the strain off listening to him! i managed to bag him big time too while the other guy was sitting next to me... i NEED to remember that SOME people do speak english here... haha oops! heard me bagging off his friend/employee BIG TIME.
So 15th August we began our trek... woke at about 5am to have breakfast and be picked up by the guide at 540am... of course the bus broke (either the steering or the horn we coupldnt work it out/didnt really want to ask aha) and so the bus didnt actually turn up until nearly 8am. we took the bus to the little town where the train comes in and thats where we began our trek! i think it was about 9am and the walk here was fine, we were thinking - ´this will be sweet if its all like this!´ nice and flat and just cruisy. Itwas dusty but ok and no mozzies so we could wear our zip off shorts - all three of us... we were VERY classy over the next 4 days! half way through the day we came to a hill that seemed to go forever... this was called training day... itell you what by the end this hill we struggled on on the first day would have looked like NOTHING by the end of the four days! our porters just took our tents and the food and stuff, we still needed to carry our sleeping bags and mattresses which sucked... my bag was not made to be a hiking bag! think it was just made to be a day pack! we were all carrying about 10kg every day (i was lucky in that matt took my mattress... otherwise i would have struggled to tie it anywhere on my pack!). the porters se4t up lunch in a tent which was cute - they did this every day. i think we arrove in our final destination at abou 5pm that night. we found out soon enough tha, like the amazon, we would be eating 3 courses a meal for every meal! crazy stuff.... the food was pretty good though which was great that the porters could produce such good food on a trek!
our tents were good- 4 people tents so me and matt had one and seb had her own... the worst thing was the mattresses which SUCKED! it was like sleeping on concrete... which was MAYBE better than the ground... still not sure!
the second day we we started off at 6am i think... the second day we had heard was to be the hardest day so we were DREADING IT. we needed to walk for 5 or 6 hours (depending on our hiking, ´prepare our organs´´ and ´prepare your minds´was what we heard from our guide UHHH killer already we were annoyed with him.). anyway so we had to go down from there for about 2 hours. Pretty big day all up and we couldnt eat lunch until we got down to the bottom cos otherwise we would get sick. this day we were going up about 1km in altitude (so EXTREMELY STEEEEEEEP) and then after that we went down about 400m in altitude. we were at about 4200m at highest point. we were with a french dude which gunned it up it was insane... he was a fit man. all three of us were nearly at th esame fitness which was good which meant that we could pretty much stick together and stop when one of us wanted to cos it was pretty certain tht if one of us wanted to the others would too! and when i say up... i mean UP... there were no flat bits... it was either really steep or steps for 6 hours... NO BREAKS in the uphill... absolute killer i tell you that. like doing the 1000 steps 50 times for 6 hours traight! matt got pretty bad altitude sickness so it was lucky that i had my altitutde sickness tablets otherwise we dont think he actually would have been able to do the trek! we were lucky that he only ended up with headaches and a bit of feeling sick at the highest point. we all felt pretty dodgy though by the end. the last 50 steps or so we were so close to the top... but i dont think something so close has ever looked so INCREDIBLY far away! it must have taken us half an hour to do those last few steps. everyone screamed when they got to the top of this pass... called dead woman´s pass. it really was thincredibly hard and everyone on the trek struggled with this day. we got to camp about 3pm after going down for another 2 hrs which i struggled with with my knees but we got there in the end!so we didnt do too bad which we were happy about!
matt slept for a bit before dinner this night... we were all stuffed! then we played some cards - the guides played cards too and when we asked what game they were playing they replied with ´just normal´ we were like huh! there IS no NORMAL??!!! they tried to explain but it was massively hard so we gave up and played 21 for a while instead haha. early night this night cos we were stuffed.
the third day we woke at 6am again and went to start treking, we were SHATTERED to realise that they expected us to walk up again! we thought we had come to the end of the up!!! so up for 2 hours (after checking out some ruins and having our guide explain more in 2 yr old english about the ruins.. KILLER guide... he killed our will to live by the end... ´so the rain, the rain, the rain, it was the snow, the rain was the snow, so the rain, the rain,.....´killer english uh. ) then down for another hour and a half, then lunch, then up tot he next pass which was 40 minutes away or so... then down for 3 hours... matt hated the down steps (the steps were steeper than any steps i have ever seen... the steps went for 1 and a half hours down with no breaks!) so matt ran down and we saw him just at the end! me and seb walked for the 4 hours and nearly went insane by the end... we didnt even know where camp was so we were just folllowing a trakc and it was a killer... we had hysterical fits by the end where we both decided to give up and camp on the trail... although given we wouldnt get dinner we decided that wasnt such a good idea. we had a great time though crazking up and all the things our guide had said that we wanted to pick on him for! he wasnt there for this part as we just had to follow a trail... so it was great to be able to just goss abotu how annoying he was. the 2 yr old english was seriously getting to it by then! we decided taht we were in a horrow movie and that he was going to give away our organs... hense why he kept saying (look after your organs) haha. anyway we were hysterical by then! we stayed in a camping site which actually had a bar in it which was good.. i had a beer but then just wanted to go to sleep! the second day was hardest on our bodies but the third killed our souls with the 8 hours of striaght walking.
the fourth and final day we got up at 4am to get to machu picchu. we walked for 4 hours and by 820am we were standing at the most amazing inca ruins! the killer thing was that our GREAT guide with LIMITED english skills at best was taking us through for 2 and a half hours, when we wanted to sleep or look around on our own, took up through explanations about every place. we didnt enjoy it at all unfortunately as NONE of us had the patience for him by this stage! we almost had to take it in turns listening to us... he knew we were bored though as he kept saying ´this intersting no?´and ´you are boring?´ absolute killer to our kill to live...
it was great to end the trek here as it was a beautiful sight... hard with the guide thoguh and too many other people there to be honest. people were even using their mobile phone which sort of wwrecked the feel to the place. we then headded on the bus back to town... (BUSES! no walking! woohoo!) where we tried guinea pig (matt dry reached hahahahahaha) we were meant to meet our guide for lunch but we didnt realise so we ate somewhere else... thank god we didnt eat with him.. we wanted to push him off the mountain at that stage! we then we went to the hot springs there which was great fun and good for our muscles by that stage cos we were pretty sore! and caught the train back to cuzco that night, arriving back there at 9pm.
this trek was one of the, if not the, hardest thing ihave ever done... both physically and mentally. to know that you just have to keep going and that the up/down isnt going to end for another 5 hours is a hrard thing to realise. when your pack is so heavy that you get bruises on your shoulders but you have to keep going and put the pack back on. that you are walking on a 1m wide cliff face with no way to stop you going off it (we found out at the end 1 tourist dies on it eah yeah with MANY getting hurt or not making to the end of the inca trail every day) that you cant drink water too much as there is nowhere to go to the toilet and no more water to buy... but you are trekking for hours per day. you cant sleep and you get up early... it gets hard to function and you have to keep going... there is no other way and there is nothing you can do about it. our guide didnt speak good english so we also hd to restrain from breaking his legs and throwing him offf a cliff!
the veiws of the mountains and the inka ruins were amazing... the trek was a great experience in my life and i wont ever be able to replicate it... its also though something which i feel like i could never do again... leaves we wishing of rhte beahces and the beds and feeling like everything has never felt so good or so soft, that showers have never been warm, and that soap never existed before!
the photos i have are amazing and i will put them uip soon... hopefully you can follow the days and the blog to the photos... i hae never seen such a beautiful sight with mountains and landscapes... and i dont think i will again as im not going to do the trek again... if i never see another stone step in my life it will be too soon!!!!!!
´This intersting no?´
´You boring?´
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