Salkantay Trek (June 15 - 19, 2006)
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 at 4:31PM Our group was made up of us, Susan and Charlie from the US (on their month-long honeymoon in Peru ), Lacy from the States, Randy from the States (he also lives in China part of the year for his work), and Samuel and Nilo from Brazil . Our great guide was Kike, and we also had two cooks and two arreros who looked after the horses, setting up the tents, and transporting all our gear. We certainly were spoiled by having all our meals made for us, our tents set up when we arrived at camp, and brought us hot tea in our tents first thing in the morning! Unfortunately, we had to get up anywhere between 4:00 and 6:00 every morning.
The first day we were picked up at our hostel at 4:30am and then we transferred to a bigger bus that brought us to Mollepata, a town about three hours from Cuzco . There were two other groups on this bus, so we certainly didn’t have the trail to ourselves. This trail has become much more popular since the restrictions were put on the number of people allowed to hike the Inca Trail. The Inca Trail is pretty much booked solid six months in advance, so people are doing the Salkantay one as a replacement. In Mollepata, we had breakfast at a local family’s farm and then loaded up our stuff on the horses. Lincoln and I had brought too much (we were only allowed six kilos per person, but Lincoln ’s clothes alone weighed seven I think!). We were staying longer in Aguas Calientes and not going back to Cuzco with the group, so that was our excuse. Kike managed to split our stuff up and said it was okay, which was good. The day turned out to be very hot so we were sweating buckets the whole time. We started hiking around 9:00 and walked for around nine hours, stopping for lunch for an hour. The food was great the whole trip – soup and a main course for lunch and dinner, and pancakes or fruit and eggs for breakfast. They also gave us snacks for the day of fruit, candies and chocolate. At the campsite on the first day we caught our first glimpses of Salkantay just before the sun set. We had been told the temperature could drop to -5 at night at this camp, but we were happy it only went down to 5.
Day two was the day we crossed the high pass at 4800m. Lincoln and I were glad that we had done the Laguna Glacial trek first, because it made this one seem easy. The views of Salkantay and the surrounding peaks from the pass were spectacular. Unfortunately the sun was at its peak so the pictures are a bit washed out, but the memories we have of those mountains are very clear. The rest of the day was downhill through a huge valley. In total we walked 24 kilometres that day, add the 16 from previous day and our total after only two days a whopping 40 kilometres! We were the oldest in our group by far (everyone else including the guide was between 23 and 25) so we felt like slowpokes, but we managed to keep up for the most part. I liked to stop and take pictures and enjoy the view. Our camp tonight was in a small village in a valley that had a semi-tropical climate. It rained shortly after we arrived but only for around an hour. The temperature tonight only went down to 12 degrees, quite a treat for us after being at high altitudes for a month.
Day three was an easy day. We walked for around six hours through beautiful forests, with orchids and other pretty flowers scattered around. We passed a few small waterfalls and streams. It was cloudy today so the temperature was great for hiking. We arrived at our campsite in Santa Theresa early so that we would have time to go to the hot springs that were a 45 minute walk away. These are reportedly the biggest hot springs in South America , and they certainly were pretty big. There were three pools of various temperatures, and the facilities here had only been built a year ago. The only way to get here is to walk (sometimes you can catch a bus), so it wasn’t very busy. What a treat to soak our weary bones in the hot water! We stayed until it started to get dark, and luckily Kike had told us to bring our headlamps along because it was totally dark by the time we reached the part of the trail that was over big rocks and boulders. Back at camp, our dinner was waiting for us. We were camping beside a school and were allowed to use their bathrooms, but they were way at the back of the school and they locked it at night anyways, so I still used the bushes.
Day four was even easier, but lots of fun. We took a manual cable car across the river beside our campsite. The direction we went the car used gravity to get across, but coming back the people had to pull themselves across the cable. It was a hoot! After we all got across, we took a truck for an hour-long ride to get to the hydro-electric plant where we were supposed to have lunch. The truck ride was fun too, with us all standing in the back of the truck or sitting on the edges. Lincoln sat on top at the front and had the best views, although he had to duck the low-lying branches of the trees. We arrived at the hydro-electric plant around 9:00 and the Brazilians wanted to stay here to watch Brazil play Australia in the world cup. The game didn’t start until 11:00 , so we watched another game first, and people started buying beers to share. In between the two games, Kike took us up to some nearby ruins that are not many people know about. The ruins are a small solar observatory, and from here we had our first views of Machu Picchu in the distance. The observatory here is in direct line with the one at MP, and it is believed that the astronomers used to communicate between the two observatories and used their findings to predict the growing seasons. Mummies had been found at these ruins too, so someone important must have lived here. After watching the soccer game ( Brazil won, of course), we took the train to Aguas Calientes. We had the option to walk, but some people had the train included in their tour and Kike told us he wanted to keep the group together. It cost us US$8 each, so we opted to stay with the group. We didn’t have our horses anymore either, which means we would have had to carry all our gear. Randy did the walk though, and he said it wasn’t very good because it just went along the train tracks and it was hard to walk on the stones. We arrived in A.C. early enough to walk around the small town. We looked for another hostel for the following night because we didn’t like the one that was included in the tour (it smelled very musty, and it was very loud). We decided on Las Rocas, which is at the top of the street beside the hot springs . It is fairly new, clean, and only US$20 per room. The other places we found were more expensive. We met back up with the group at the hostel for dinner, which was cooked by our chefs. We all went to bed early because we had to get up at 4:00am to walk up to Machu Picchu .
The final day was the hardest of them all. We left at 4:30 to start the hike up to Machu Picchu . There is a bus up, but we all decided it would be more rewarding to walk up, especially since we hadn’t walked much the day before. There were more than 1500 stairs going up the hill and we were pretty tired by the time we got to the top. It only took us an hour though, thanks to the fast young people! We were the first tour group to arrive, and there were not many other people there at all. The place was virtually deserted, and it was so peaceful and magical to be seeing it in the early hours before the sunrise. Machu Picchu is in a stunningly beautiful setting, on the peak of a mountain and surrounded by several other peaks. Surreal.
Kike gave us a tour for about an hour and a half, but he didn’t have time to cover even half of the site. After the tour he said we should climb up to the top of Huaynupicchu, the mountain that you see in all the Machupicchu pictures. We started the climb at 7:30am , which was a good time to go because later in the day it got very hot. The climb up was more stairs (we didn’t count them) and was somewhat treacherous being on the edge of the cliff and all. There were handrails installed some of the way so it wasn’t too bad. We made it to the top in about 45 minutes. The views from up there of MP and the surrounding mountain ranges was totally worth the climb. We stayed up there for at least half an hour soaking in the scenery.
When we had left Aguas Calientes to start the hike, we were joined by a cute black dog that followed us the whole way up the stairs. He also followed us around the ruins (he must have snuck in because we never saw any other dogs there!). AND he followed us all the way up to the very top of Huanypicchu! He was a pretty amazing dog. There was one place at the top where there was a ladder to get up the last section. He couldn’t get up the ladder, so he went around the other side of the peak and found another way up. We tried to feed him some Doritos but he didn’t want them. Then he took a nice long nap!
There was another trail leading down on the back side of the mountain, so we decided to take that and see where it went. Turned out it went a long way down and reached the Temple of the Moon. Then we had to walk back up a lot more stairs to get back to MP! Our legs were very sore by the time we got back to the main ruins. We rested for a while, wandered around a bit more, and then decided to head back down to Aguas Calientes to meet up with the rest of the group for lunch at 2:00 . We knew we were coming back tomorrow and the place was totally crawling with tour groups by this time. Because we were all suckers for punishment, we decided to walk back down the 1500 stairs instead of paying the US$6 each for the bus ride. We sure were tired of stairs by the end of the day! Back in town, we celebrated with some pisco sours at one of the restaurants (four for one – they are all desperate for business here) before lunch.
Lunch was at another restaurant, and we then said goodbye to our new friends because they were heading back to Cuzco on the train. We went to our new hostel, showered, and relaxed for a couple of hours before heading out to wander around the shops and eat dinner. Aguas Calientes is a nice, small town and is a good place to relax for a couple of days. The touts for the restaurants are a bit annoying, but we got used to them after a while.
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