Sunday – Oct 1, 2017 Ollantaytambo to Llaqtapata

Inca Trail Day 1

Our hotel at Ollantaytambo, the Sol de Ollantay, was very charming. The rooms were on two levels and spread along the perimeter of the building. This allowed a multi-level view of a lovely central garden on the main floor which was open to the outdoors, but was covered up above to prevent rain from pouring in to the hotel.

I got up early to wash my hair and have a nice shower. I expected this would be my last shower for the next three days, since we were staying in tents on the trek. I also thought there was no time like the present to start getting accustomed to a 5:30am to 7:30pm routine. I was expecting it would be pretty hard to go to sleep at 7:30pm tonight.

The hotel room was comfortable but very basic and somewhat lacking in condiments!  Attempting to keep the weight of my duffle bag as low as possible, I was hoping there would be bottled water, soap, shampoo and conditioner at the hotels in Ollantaytambo and Aguas Calientes (also known as Machu Picchu Village). Unfortunately, this was not the case at Sol de Ollantay, so I ended up exhausting most of the meagre supplies I had brought with me.

There were a lot of youth in the halls outside the breakfast buffet when we went in. Thankfully we had gotten most of our breakfast just before they all entered in a massive group, but not before virtually every seat was occupied. I think it was a school group, and they were just waiting for the teachers to arrive before going in for breakfast. Some of the kids moved around a bit to make room for Russell and I to sit down at the same table, which we thanked them for. I’m pretty sure they weren’t about to set off on the Inca Trail, more likely they were there to visit the Inca ruins of we visited yesterday. We were checked out and ready to leave by 8am, so went to the store and picked up some Gatorade and water. Carlos had said we were responsible for water on the first day.

Carlos arrived right around 8:30am, then we went and picked up Mike and Sue-Anne. It was a 45-minute drive, mostly on dirt roads, to get to the trailhead at km 82. The road followed the river Urubamba and the railway tracks from Ollantaytambo to Machu Picchu. Most people going to Machu Picchu take the train.

There was a mass of trekkers all about to set off from km 82, at Piscaycucho. The altitude there was 2668m. A maximum of 2,500 trekkers are allowed on the ‘official’ Inca Trail, including guides and porters. You must have a permit, and a guide. 500 permits are issued per day. Guided groups on the ‘official’ Inca Trail take 3 to 5 days to get to Machu Picchu. There are several other trails to Machu Picchu as well, some of which do not require guides, and some allow horses. Most people trekking to Machu Picchu are guided.

We met our 12 porters and got organized to begin the trek at a location up and away from the masses. The porters offered to fill our water bottles with purified water, even though Carlos had told us we were responsible for our own water on the first day; they took our duffle bags; we had a bathroom opportunity; got a snack consisting of a banana and some sweet potato chips; applied sunscreen etc. and set off at around 9:30am. It was a beautiful sunny day.

First, we went down to the Camino Inca – Inca Trail sign at Km 82 for a photo opportunity at the popular starting point of the classical Inca Trail.

After the photo we turned back and had to do a bit of climbing before beginning our trek on a section of the Inca Trail few have visited. Most people cross the Urubamba River at the trail sign.

Instead, we followed the river downstream to cross at Km 88, setting the tone for the rest of the trek and creating some space between us and the crowds.  

The classic Inca Trail is the undisputed draw for most people coming to Cusco. Considering that you can get to Machu Picchu in four hours on a train, there must be something intrinsically exciting and rewarding about the Inca Trail to merit spending four fairly grueling days walking to the same destination. I was looking forward to finding out!

The first 6km or so of the trek was downhill. We took a break after walking about 4km and had our snack. Russell and I shared one of the bananas.

It was getting very warm, and I took off my t-shirt under my bug suit top. In the picture below, you can barely see but there is a long procession of pilgrims across the river from us.

It would have been very crowded and slow going over there. Shortly after that, we saw a train to Machu Picchu go by.

Ancient Peru is one of the oldest civilizations on earth, yet it is one of the most isolated. Until the relatively late arrival of the Spaniards in 1532, the Incas and the many cultures that preceded them had a unique way of looking at the world – one that excluded writing, the wheel, and many other of the necessities of the ‘Old World’, but managed to build magnificent monuments and a stable society in a terrifyingly unstable landscape.

It was only after 1400AD that the Inca’s started to expand out of their heartland around Cusco, so their empire only lasted for little more than a century before being brutally cut short by the Spaniards. The Inca’s were the last in a whole series of cultures predating the Spanish Conquest that stretched back to around 3000BC, and just one of many of a number of competing tribes around Cusco, before beginning to build up their substantial empire under a series of dynamic and capable emperors.

The astonishing expansion of the Inca’s across a few generations can only partially be explained by their dynamic leadership. Other factors contributed to their success: a facility for trade, their opportunism, and the curious Inca laws of dynamic inheritance. When each Inca emperor died, his estate continued to maintain his household as if he were still alive – he remained ‘resident’ in his old palace as a mummy, to be brought out on feast days or for the coronation of his successors, and each of those successors would have to build themselves a new palace. When a new emperor was crowned, the mummies of the whole previous dynasty of dead Inca emperors were carried in procession alongside him. The mummies got to keep all their land, wealth and palaces. At the time of the Spanish Conquest there were 12 such estates in existence.    

And therein lies a powerful engine for continual Inca expansion. It was a powerful incentive for every new emperor to go out and conquer new lands, since he would not simply be inheriting them!

The first Inca ruins we encountered along the trail were at Qanabamba. We visited a stone temple with many niches for altar pieces and took a break sitting on the stone terraces.

We stopped for lunch at Q’oriwayrachina. 

The toilet tent was set up, a very welcome sight for the next three days. 

There was a building that the cook was preparing lunch in, which had a lot of bullet holes in it. Carlos said it was from target practice.

Lunch began with a typical homemade Peruvian soup, and buns and ham were on the table to make a sandwich, which I did.  I thought that was going to be it but, after the first course, a meal of chicken, rice, and vegetables was served.  I felt bad declining the second course, but the first course was way more than I wanted to have for lunch when hiking, or for any lunch for that matter. When Russell and I have done our numerous camino walks, we usually have breakfast, hike to the next place, and then eat lunch, unless it’s more than 25km, and then maybe we’ll have a snack along the way. I just can’t hike after eating a big meal.

We waited a bit after lunch to let the porters get a head start – they travel much faster than we do, which lets them arrive and make meals/set up camp before we get there.  They headed down a very steep descent to walk along the railway tracks to the bridge over the Urubamba River at Q’ente.

We took a much gentler descent, but walked further along the tracks to the bridge. Carlos and the porters know the times of the trains, and our exits were timed accordingly.

To pass over the bridge we had to show our passport and permit for the Inca Trail to the guards at the Warden’s Hut.  Carlos had all the permits with him, and distributed them to us to present with our passport to the park officials, who stamped our passports and returned our permits to us which we kept as a souvenir.

Crossing the bridge put us on the official Inca Trail at km 88, but without the crowds that entered at km 82. We did have to backtrack a bit on the other side of the river to get to the official trail, climbing gently through a stand of eucalyptus trees above the southern bank of the Urubamba river.

Shortly after crossing the bridge, we happened upon what we believe were members of a family that were preparing to cross the river gorge with a motor on an aerial platform attached to a zip line. We watched and helped a bit as several men carefully loaded the heavy motor onto the platform, and then a Dad and his two children hopped on board and they let go the zip line to the other side. Thankfully the trip ended successfully.

This may have put us a bit behind schedule. I’m sure the aerial river crossing show consumed a good 30 minutes. Shortly after this, Carlos discovered a dead, medium sized, tarantula on the path. I had an opportunity to get a good look at it. Sorry, no picture!

The rest of the day’s trek continued to be a gentle climb up to the mouth of the Cusichaca Valley, down which flows a river of the same name. At the junction of the Cusichaca and Urubamba valleys lie the sprawling ruins of Patallacta, sometimes called Llaqtapata. Our private camp, Chamana Camp, was across the Cusichaca River looking right out on the ruins.

The tents were all set up when we arrived. Sue-Anne and Mike, and Russell and I each had a blue three-man eureka tent, and our guide Carlos had a blue two-man eureka tent. The larger tent in the picture is our dining tent, which the porters slept in.

We were provided with bowls of hot water shortly after we arrived. This is something I had been wondering about. The brochure said we would get bowls of water in the morning for washing, but no mention of what happened at the end of the days trek.  I was very relieved that we also got water then, since you always arrived sweaty and dirty after a challenging day of hiking. 

Getting bowls of water after the trek, however, wasn’t necessary here because much to our great delight, there were showers and flush toilets at the camp.  I was the first one to take a shower, and in retrospect that wasn’t ideal, because the solar heated water was extremely hot for my shower.  Everyone after me, in chronological order, had cooler and cooler showers. I prefer a cool shower! There were also a lot of wires hanging around the shower head which made having a shower look like a rather risky undertaking. The building in the picture below was the shower/ toilet complex. The table with a bucket was in front of the dining tent, and provided a place to wash our hands. Very environmentally conscious – the hand washing waste water was disposed of in the washroom.

We had outstanding views from our campsite. We have pretty much exactly 12 hours of light a day, as expected being so close to the equator. Here, it is from 5:30am to 5:30pm. This is important, because it means we pretty much have to get to our camp at night by 5:30pm.

We met for appetizers at 5:30pm and dinner at 6pm. Dinner always included soup to start, a meat, potato/rice, vegetable entrée, and dessert. Wherever I am, at home or away, I have a lot of trouble drinking different waters, even different varieties of bottled water. On this trek, we were drinking water during the day that the cook filtered, boiled, then added a disinfectant to. I always drink a lot of water hiking, and it is even more necessary at high altitudes, so I was drinking a lot of the water. As a result, my stomach really wasn’t very happy on the trek, and it was ruining my appetite. I also can’t eat too much while hiking.  I pretty much gave up on the soups, because they filled me up too much, and just ate as much as I could of everything else. That was too bad because the meals were authentic Peruvian meals and very tasty. Russell, on the other hand, greatly enjoyed the meals.

I went to the flush toilets after dinner and there was a spider about 6 feet up the wall in there that I’m sure was a tarantula. It disappeared into the exposed door framing when I went in.

Contrary to our expectations, we both fell asleep instantly when we went to bed at 7:30pm that night. I woke up once during the night and considered going to the bathroom, but the thought of the tarantula helped convince me that I really didn’t have to go that bad.

Day 1 Distance: 11km; Ascent: 100m; Descent: 178 m; Elapsed time 6hr (9:30am to 3:30pm); Moving Time: 4.0hr.