Salkantay Trek : Day 1

 

And now for our favorite part of our trip to Peru, the 5 day/4 night Salkantay Trek to Machupicchu.

We woke up at 4am to pack up the rest of our bags and head over to the meeting point for the bus to take us to our first day of hiking. Sadly, I slept terribly and came down with some sort of food poisoning...damn you San Pedro Market! Anyway, even though I wasn’t feeling well, we trekked on and made it to the bus. We took the bus to the first stop, breakfast in Mollepata.

From Mollepata, all 17 of us piled back into the bus and headed on our way to come to a truck in the road that had gone over the edge. Of course, my studly husband hopped out and helped the Peruvians pull the truck out of the ditch. Once the truck was safely back on the road we were told that our bus was too big to make it around another truck that was stuck in the road and we all had to wait for our alternate form of transportation. What was that, you ask? It was an open back pick up truck. Yes you read that right. All 17 of us piled into the back of a pickup truck with our 2 guides, our 2 porters and 3 cooks – oh and all of our stuff too.

Needless to say, my tummy was not happy with this alternate route!

We all laughed and got to know each other, which we likely would have taken much longer than before lunch the first day.

After about 2 hours of standing in the back of a pickup truck we made it to our first stop. We introduced ourselves: names and country of origin and started a 2 hour hike. Of the 17 of us, Rich and I were the only Americans, there was a couple from Finland, 2 gals from Sweeden, 1 guy from France and the rest from Britain.

We hike to our campsite and had lunch. After lunch, all but myself and another gal, Jenny, went on an additional hike to this beautiful lake (the 2 of us that stayed behind weren’t feeling so good, so we jumped in our tents and slept until dinner).

The group, minus Jenny and I.

When the group got back, we had dinner and all went to sleep. On Day 2 we were to summit Salkantay and hike a very long distance so we needed to get up very early in the morning.

Oh and it was FREEZING! Did I mention we visited Peru in their Dry Season which equates to their winter temperatures? That is why we are all bundled up! The first night camping, we almost had a full moon, it was spectacular.