15.10.10 Five day Salkantay trek including Machu Pichu on the 5th day!

On Friday, 15.10.10.; the first day of the trek, I had to get up at 4am in the morning as the tour company picked me up at 5am in the morning. 15 Minutes later I met Matt and Susan, my trekking mates for the next 5 days. Matt and Susan are from Chicago and quite quickly I found out that there are both actors. At the main plaza in Cusco, Plaza d'Armas, we picked up our tour guide Antonio. Antonio (28 and from the Sacred Valley) introduced himself and told us that he has been a tour guide in Cusco for the last 7 years. Wow…..and I was impressed how good his English was.

We drove about two hours to the town of Mollepata to the beginning of the trail. After a breakfast of copious amounts of bread rolls we began our walk. On each trek they bring what is called the 'emergency horse', this is an extra horse to carry anyone in case of an emergency, hence the name. Well even though that I wasn't keen to be carried by the emergency horse BUT it quietened my mind a lot.

That day we walked about 16 km through some amazing scenery, to a campsite called Soryapampa. I was glad that I asked for a -20 degree sleeping back as it was freezing cold that night. During the first night it snowed and we couldn't believe it when we got up at 6am that morning.

After a very good breakfast prepared by our cook Fernando we took off at 7am to begin the toughest day that would take us to the highest point of the trek at 4600 metres. After a couple of hours we stopped as it was surprisingly quite warm and we took of some of our 5 layers of cloth. Walking through the snow was just amazing and we started to build a snowman followed by a snowball fight. After about 5 hours of a continuously incline we reached the top of the Salkantay pass at 4.600m. Wow…..I was so relieved and I knew from there it only went downhill! Unfortunately it started raining during the descent. After 9 hours of tough hiking we finally arrived at our campsite where we got an absolutely delicious 3 course dinner cooked by Fernando. That was exactly what I needed……as I could have eaten a whole pig!

On the third day there was an easy enough trek through the jungle and we slept in a small town called Santa Teresa. We arrived in the afternoon and helped our horseman setting up our campsite for the night. An hour later we took the bus to the hot springs. It was a welcome reprise after three days of no showers and a lot of walking. That night in the campsite a bit of a party kicked off and we enjoyed a few and well deserved "cervezas" (beers)!

The next morning breakfast was accompanied by the sound of a squealing pig and some very annoying roosters. We didn't know why and how you can make a cake without an oven but Fernando our cook made the most delicious cake for us.....so we had bread, marmalade and cake for our last breakfast.

Aguas Calientes (for those of you who are not fluent in Spanish like myself this means" hot springs" was our next destination).We left Santa Teresa at about 8am and hiked down to the river. There was only one way to cross the river and that was by a "cable car" (so called by Antonio). First we had to pull the cable car by a robe over to our side. Matt was the first one who went over as he had to pull the rope from the other side to get us girls across the river…….wow it was so much fun! Check out the photos from my "Salkantay Trek" album.

The trek on our last day took us through a valley and along the active railway line to the town of Aquas Calientes, the stop off point to Machu Picchu. We arrived at around 3pm in the afternoon and each of us was looking forward to check into a nice hostal with a hot shower and a proper bed. After our well-deserved shower we checked out the tiny town. Even though that the town is quite touristy it is very unique as it is surrounded by beautiful mountains.

On your last morning we had to get up at 3.30am to begin our hike up to Machu Pichu at around 4.30am. Unfortunately it was lashing rain and we were already soaked when we arrived at the gates. I was very close to take the bus up to Machu Pichu but Matt convinced me to hike up to Machu Pichu. Honestly, I think it was much harder to walk up the mega big steps then the whole Salkantay Trek…..and the darkness and the rain made it even worse. Finally we arrived at the gates of Machu Pichu at 5.45am and we were steaming like a railway locomotive.

Antonius toured us around Machu Pichu for an hour and showed us all the interesting parts of Machu Pichu. We couldn't really take any photos as it was just too misty and foggy. At 8am we decided to go back to the kiosk to buy a few coffees which hopefully would warm us up. At around 10am it finally stopped raining and we decided to climb up the mighty mountain of Wayna Pichu. Wow….what a steep and dangerous climb but we made it in an hour and it was absolutely worse it. The weather cleared up and we had a fantastic few over the mysterious city of Machu Pichu.

As the mist was gone we went back to Machu Pichu to take a few more photos. At around 1.30pm we decided then to take the bus back to Aguas Calientes instead of hiking down.

Back in town we went to a nice Pizzeria to spoil ourselves with a huge pizza before we took the train back to Ollantaytambo at 7.30pm and from there the bus back home to Cusco. We arrived at 11.30pm in Cusco and all of us went straight back to our hostal to get a good night sleep.