So the Inca Trail was amazing...a really really beautiful walk, not too difficult and well worth the effort. The walk goes through arid grazing lands through to thick, humid jungle... On the first day though, we had to wait for 3 hours for one of the porters to turn up, he was too drunk to come to work and called in sick- but apparently if someone on the list doesn't turn up then the whole group can't walk the trail...so luckily he decided to turn up in the end or we would have missed out :(
The breakdown was 4 days of walking, 3 nights of camping, ending up at Machu Picchu. The first day was very easy, only a couple of hours of walking before setting up camp. The second day is the most challenging as there is a very very steep hill which is steps, going up to 4,200 metres, so the altitude is the real killer- I walked up sat there for a minute and then headed back down to the camp site... Our group was apparently one of the fastest, the 3 Canadian boys did it in about 3 hours, and arrived at camp around 10.30am... Sam waited for me but we still made it down by about 11.30am.... the slowest person got in around 2pm... so basically the best thing is to go at your own pace, stop when you need to and don't let your boyfriend run away with the damn coca leaves!!!
The third day of the walk was my favourite, it was incredibly beautiful, the scenery just takes your breath away, and there are a lot of ruins along the way so it's interesting from an historical perspective as well. We ran down the stairs at porter pace which was exhilarating, there were just sooooo many stairs!!!
Our group was super super keen to be the first people at the Sun Gate on the fourth morning, so we got up at 2.30am and went and camped down at the entrance to the park at 3.30am- the gates don't open until 5.30 so we played music and cards and the boys drank rum in anticipation!!! When we were finally let through, we all actually ran the whole way and were the first people to the sun gate- it was only about 3km but we all were pretty red-faced by the time we made it which was hilarious...
