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We started the hike yesterday afternoon - Choquequirao to Machupicchu, a 9 day hike through rainforests and mountains, and valleys, visiting Inca sites. Our guide is a very nice guy, knowledgable and has a great personality. The group is very small - just us and JN's mom and stepfather. The hike started in the rain, but it stopped shortly after and the sun came out. It was very muddy, and lots of mule poop on the trail. The mules are carrying our bags and tents led by two muleteers, and we have a cook who prepares all our meals on the trek. The first day was a pretty easy day - 4 hour drive and 5 hour hike through a beautiful pass and a valley, crossing the river. The scenery is gorgeous - extremely deep canyons and high green mountains covered in rain forests and snow capped mountains with hanging glaciers covered in clouds. There are colorful flowers and cactuses on the hiking trail. We saw dead horse on the trail, which was pretty disturbing. As we continued, we started seeing more and more land slides, some with big rocks, and others with mostly dirt. We realized that it can actually be dangerous to hike on this trail. Our guide has not been on this trek for a year, though he has been working on the trek for 12 years. Apparently, because it's been a pretty dry season, it rained a lot over the last month or so, and land slides occurred frequently, which was unusual for the area. We started hearing noises, actual land slides happening on the other side of the river. We had to be extremely careful. After we camped at a farm on the other side of the river, we had to hike uphill for 6 hours to the next campsite, where lunch was waiting for us. It was a pretty hard day, but I was happy because I realized that I'm a strong hiker, especially going uphill. Also, it was my birthday, and we got to rest after lunch, and I found a shower at the farm next door (cold, but good enough). We got some bad news that afternoon. Apparently, due to heavy rains, there were more land slides on the way to Choquequirao, and it may be too dangerous for mules to cross, in addition to a river crossing after Choquequirao, that is questionable (two mules died when they tried to cross). Our guide decided to check out the trail that afternoon, to see for himself, and Max (JN's stepfather) decided to join him. They came back and confirmed that it's pretty dangerous, but we decided to wait till the next morning to make a decision, in case the weather changes. The alternative would be to go back and hike the Salkatray trek, which would take us the same about if time. The next morning we visited Choquequirao ruins without the mules, and got lucky with the weather because it cleared up and we had a great view of the ruins from the top. It was pretty impressive and we were happy that we got to see that despite the circumstances. Afterwards, we had to hike back to the first campsite - a tough day for me because it was mainly downhill, and my knees were killing me. Jn and his parents were waiting for me on the bridge, which as we learned
sometime after would collapse, making it impossible to be the trek. I regained my strength tough climbing up to the campsite. We finally had to backtrack all the way to where we started, and took a car to start Salkantay trek.
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