Retracing the Footsteps of the Ancient Ones on the Inca Trail

Finally, the day of the Inca trail. Fredy picked us up at first light in a van with two porters and a cook, we would meet three additional porters once we arrived. The porters carried our food, tents, and fellow hiker’s packs. I’m proud to say that Ben and I were two of the very few that carried their own packs the whole way, weighing in around 30 pounds each. We headed to another hotel and picked up the rest of our group, three girls from the UK in their 20’s who had traveled all over the world. I could not have imagined hiking this trail with a better group of people. The six of us would become a family over the next four days as we shared this amazing experience. We would start at marker 82, around 8,500 feet. Below, going from left to right, Emily (1), Emily (2), Lottie, Ben, and hey that’s me on the right.


Like I said earlier you can’t just show up and expect to hike this trail. It’s regulated by the Peruvian government and they limit its use to 500 people a day, this includes support staff such as porters and guides, which means only about 200 travelers a day, start the four day journey. You need to apply for a trail permit at least three months in advance. This is really like applying for a visa to another country in that you are required to provide them with your passport information and then wait a few days to see if you are approved. Getting on the trail was also like going to another country, they checked our passports, including close examination of the passport number and photo, and after confirming all our documentation was in order, stamped our passports, and we were in.


This trail is not just a hike to get from point A to point B, if that was the case, the Inca simply could have just followed the Urubamba River from Cusco to Machu Picchu, where another trail exists. To use Fredy’s words (as best I can recall) “This is a scared journey, you learn to respect the mountains, the ground, the trees, and life. You will fall, you will cry, but you will also get back up, and laugh, and understand, you become one…”. Wise advice for any journey.


Only a few steps in and you can feel the power and massive energy of the towering mountains all around you. And this was only the beginning.


This first day was low altitude and fairly easy terrain, the air was dry and the sun was beating down, which required a good four coats of sun screen to be safe.


I’m sorry to say that a few hours in to the first day we would lose Emily (1). She had come in from Bolivian, where I guess the food has you eating at your own risk, and she had fallen victim to some parasite and had to abort the hike due to violent illness. One of the porters returned with her as the five of us continued.


Early in the trail we walked passed a number of people’s homes. They were mostly sitting around drinking Chicha beer and selling bottled water and Gatorade. To avoid going home early you need to check to ensure whatever you buy is properly sealed. It’s important to note that the higher in elevation you get, the higher the prices go, so you have to plan ahead a little. However, once we left any traces of “civilization” behind our porters boiled water for us in the mornings, rendering it safe for drinking throughout the day.






After refueling we continued on.






Until it was lunch time, here is lunch. At least it’s not bugs or anything.


Actually we had an awesome lunch. Our porters who had to wait in line to be weighed before entering the trail, much like a truck on the highway, left about an hour after us. Even so, they were able to pass us, get to our lunch site, setup the lunch tent, cook an amazing meal, and have the table set long before we would arrive. The porters are limited to about 60 pounds on the trail for their health and the health of the trail. We had the best avocado salad I have ever tasted and really tender chicken.


After lunch we started hiking up to a nearby ridge, while the porters would clean up, pack everything up, blow past us on the trail, and then have our tents set up at the first camp site, again long before our arrival.


As you hike and look around at where you are, and what you are doing, you can’t help but be consumed with emotions, this experience, this place, it is something very special.


Family photo time.


Just over the ridge we would see our first archeological site.


This is Patallacta, a village in the meeting of three different mountain valleys that would often provide “hotel” type services for people passing by.


On the side of the mountain they would “bury” their dead, here is a common grave. I guess they have a lot of earthquakes in the area so it was important to lean the body back against the mountain. You don’t want something like that coming out and falling down to the town below.


We hiked on, gaining only a little over 1,500 in elevation, so far, so good.








We reached our first camp site that evening. Staying near a local farmer’s house.


They even had bathrooms that did not require you to squat. However, the first one looked like it exploded all over the place, and the second one was lacking any kind of toilet seat and toilet paper, which seemed to be a common theme over the next few days.


Rather than being a meal, this guy was our alarm clock. And just like my past experience with these things, this one did not go off at dawn, but rather two hours before. Perhaps he will be the next meal.


How hot was it today? It was so hot that, well, you can see how hot it was.


After diner Fredy told us a few true ghost stories, at least he believed them, and with my six year old mind, I would have been awake all night except for the fact that I was so tired. He first told us of how the Inca believe that when they die they retrace all the places they went when they were alive. And that in the past he has seen spirits walking high in the mountains. He also told us that the farmer, who’s yard we were staying in, had a daughter that died at an early age. The farmer allows guides to sleep in his house, and whenever and whoever sleeps there, they always dream of the little girl, so Fredy now stays outside in a tent like everyone else. He saved the last story for the following morning, and thank God he did because this one was in fact very real and would have kept me up all night. If you look at the picture with the tents in it, you can see a stone wall about ten feet behind them. And on the other side of that wall, a graveyard, for real. Night, Night, and Pleasant dreams.