Inca Trail day 1

The Inca trail is an ancient pathway through the Peruvian mountains that leads to the legendary city of Machu Picchu.  In modern times, the hike has become one of the worlds great treks, however due to both safety, environmental protection and demand (and for revenue), Peru now heavily regulates the trek to 500 people per day (including guides and porters).  Anyone wishing to undertake the walk has to sign up with an accredited trekking company who provide a luxury camping service as you hike the pathway.  Despite the luxury it’s no walk in the park with a high point over 4,200 meters and numerous climbs and descents over steep and slippery terrain.

We signed up with Evolution Treks, an emerging company with a good reputation for treating their porters well (good pay and loads that are reasonably manageable). We also chose to do the trek over 5 days/4 nights, most people do it one day faster, however the longer option has a number of advantages. You see less people as it generally uses different campsites and you visit the key Inca historic sites at different times of day to the 4 day trekkers. The extra time also allows for longer stops at the ruins and a chance to take a longer detour to visit extra ruins on the first day.

We were picked up at the ungodly hour of 5am in Cusco and transported by minibus to the start of the trail.  The first morning of the walk was fairly easy following the Urubamba river and it gave us a chance to get to know our hiking companions, Amelia and Megan from the UK and Marco, our guide. We saw a few ruins beside the railway tracks and river and Marco pointed out a few orchids that had begun to bloom early in the season.

After lunch in a small village, we crossed the river and took our half day detour that the four day trekkers miss, climbing a steep pathway to the ruins of Wayna Qente.  The weather was overcast with slight drizzle as we explored the very spectacular site high above the valley with no other people present.

Our night 1 camp was next to a small settlement (Qoriwayrachina) a few kilometres back up the valley from Wayna Qente.  Our camp was overlooked by huge Inca terraces in a side valley off the Uranbumba river.  When we arrived the porters had set everything up so we had only a short time  exploring and relaxing before dinner.  This included grabbing some passionfruit from the local vine, the variety was much larger than we were used to in Australia.

We went to bed almost as soon as we finished dinner in preparation for an early start tomorrow.