domingo, 9 de octubre de 2011

Salkantay trek: A 4-day hike to Machu Picchu

With the travel agency of the same hostel we were staying in Cusco, Loki travel, we booked the salkantay trek. After having done the trek we realized that Loki travel was a good option as it was the cheapest, but the quality of the trek was good enough.

The day before leaving, one of the guides gave us a briefing about the trek. There we met two of our trek-mates: Alex, a british guy who was between jobs and took the oportunity to travel to Bolivia and Peru, and Jenny, from Canada.

Our group consited on 10 people, Alex, Jenny, Marty (Canada), Victor Gaspar (France), Benjamin (France) and 3 more german guys. We also had an awesome guide, Edwin and two cooks and a porter, who carried 5 kg of our luggage by horse. There was also another group of 10 people from the same agency with whom we did the trek together.

DAY 1:
They picked us up from the hostel at 4:30 am and we drove to Mollepata at 2.900m. There we had breakfast and we gave our bags to the porter, who weighed them to make sure they weren't over 5kg (although I think that he would carry more with a good tip). However there were two brazilian guys from the other group who had two carry their bags through the entire trip because they were over the allowed weight.

While we were there, a spanish woman stepped on her own shoe string and got injured. She was lucky that it was at the beginning of the trek, because there she was able to go back to Cusco. However it was a pitty that she couldn't continue.

We were told that the place where we were supposed to have lunch didn't have running water and we had to change the itinerary. For this reason we all stepped on a truck that brought us to the beginning of the trail.


From there we walked 2.5 hours and then we stopped to get lunch and have a small nap.




Then we walked 2.5 more hours to get to our first camiping site, Soraypampa at 3.900m overlooking the Salkantay mountain. The tents were set up inside a structure that covered the wind. At that altitude it was very useful! We even had toilets with running water! Our cook surprised us with a hot chocolate and pop corn when we got there. We went to sleep early because the next day was the hardest of our trek.








DAY 2:
We woke up at 5am with a hot coca tea, we had breakfast and at 6am we were already walking! That day we walked more than 10hr! Totally unsane! The first 4h it was all steep up climbing until 4600m. It was very hard to walk at that high because of the lack of oxygen. It was also hard because of the climate conditions. We had rain, sun, snow and fog! When we reached the highest point of the trail we made an offering to the mountain with a stone we picked up at the beginning of the trail and 3 coca leaves that represented the 3 layers of this world: the sky, represented by the condor, the earth, represented by the puma, and the underground, represented by the snake. There we also learned that Salkantay means the wild mountain, and it got this name because it is very dangerous and it has never been climbed. Recently an expedition of 4 japanese climbers tried to reach the summit, but 3 of them died.





Since at the top it was snowing and it was cold, we started our descent to our next camping at 2.900m. It took more than 6hrs! It felt veeery long, especially with the mud and the rocks in the middle of the trail! However the views were amazing! We saw how the vegetation changed from arid to cloudforest as we were down climbing.




On our way down we also met an australian guy, Trent, who was hiking in suit and a tie. We learned that he was raising money for www.coolearth.org, an organization that focuses on protecting the Amazon rainforest.


Our second camping in Chaullay wasn't as good as the first one. That night rained a lot and some tents looked like a swimming pool. Luckily we stayed dry.


DAY 3:
This day we only walked 6 hours to the town called "la Playa". It wasn't as hard as the second day but we were already tired from the previous day. Laura was the only girl who finished the hike, the others took a van to the town.


We had lunch in la Playa and then we all took a van to the camping. There we said good bye to our guide and trek mates, except for Jenny and the two brazilian guys, because those staying were doing the trek in 5 days. We skipped one day by taking a van and a train to Aguas Calientes. Tourists and locals are segregated in different train wagons and we were alone in the first car which had panoramic windows.





Once we got to Aguas Calientes we enjoyed a hot shower after 3 day without one. We had dinner with the group that was one day ahead of us but we had to do it with candles as there was no electricity that night. It is funny because the hydroelectric plant is a few miles from the town.

DAY 4:
Waking up time: 3:15am. The day we have woken up the earliest! We took our headlamps and started walking at 4am to Machu Picchu. We climbed about 2000 stairs and got to the top at 5:45, right before the doors opened.


Then we had a guided tour of 2 hours through the ruins. We took some group pictures but the weather was changing so rapidly that the first pictures were taken under a shiny sun, but in the last ones you couldn't see anything because of the thick cloud that came in. Although we weren't able to enjoy the views for a while they clouds gave a misterious feel to the site.



After the tour we had some time to explore the ruins on our own. We also had tickets to climb the Huayna Picchu (the mountain that lies behind the ruins), but after the 2000 stairs and 3 days of intense hiking we weren't able to go up. It's a pitty because we heard that the view is spectacular, but 1.5 hours of steep stairs was the last thing we wanted then. Luckily we were able to resell the tickets to a couple in our group who wanted to go.


Around 12 pm we took the bus back to Aguas Calientes and waited there for the train to Ollantaytambo.

We went back to Cuzco and stayed at the Loki hostel again. Unfortunately, we got one of the rooms closer to the bar, where there is a huge party every day (some locals say its the best party in town). Nothing that good earplugs can't solve.

NEXT STOP: Lake Titicaca

3 comentarios:

  1. Thanks for this blog entry I've struggled to find any reviews of Loki travel so far. I think i'll book through them now

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  2. Great review, man. Thanks a lot!

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  3. Thank you For the Review. Loki Travel Salkantay is an option i am considering. This blog post helped out tremendously. Hope all is well and you are still blogging along in 2016.

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