Mar 19, 2013
Peru Part 2 - The Trek
Happy Tuesday all! It's taken me some time to digest my photos and thoughts, (and recover from SXSW and St. Patty's day), but here I finally am with more Peru talk.
Read part one of the recap here.
In the middle of our 9ish days in Peru, we scheduled a three-night and four-day hike of the Inca Trail. (Just a little bit of history: the Inca Trail is a treacherous, but beautiful mountain trail that the Incas took when they were trying to escape from the Spanish conquistadors to Machu Picchu city.) On the advice of some friends who had done it, we signed up to go with a tour group. The tour company provided all the camping gear, guides, food for the three days and porters to carry lots of our stuff.
So in hiking boots and zip off pants, we embarked.
The scenery was just absurdly beautiful. The Andes mountains were like nothing I'd ever seen. This kind of gives a sense of how just crazy mountainous things were. We were super high up and and really rocky/uneven terrain.
Camping, oh there was camping:
Read part one of the recap here.
The Inca Trail
In the middle of our 9ish days in Peru, we scheduled a three-night and four-day hike of the Inca Trail. (Just a little bit of history: the Inca Trail is a treacherous, but beautiful mountain trail that the Incas took when they were trying to escape from the Spanish conquistadors to Machu Picchu city.) On the advice of some friends who had done it, we signed up to go with a tour group. The tour company provided all the camping gear, guides, food for the three days and porters to carry lots of our stuff.
So in hiking boots and zip off pants, we embarked.
Here are some random scenes from along the way:
As for the actual hiking part, I'll admit it was hard, real hard. Particularly the second day. We had to climb to the tallest summit of the journey before lunchtime then had 5ish more hours after lunch. There was some dark moments that day. Here's our whole hiking group at the top of the peak:
All the dudes in the blue in the top picture are our porters. They carried the entire camp, all the food and some of our personal stuff down the ENTIRE TRAIL. They also did it at what seemed like inhuman speed in crappy shoes. It was mind blowing. Our little camp was quite the oasis after a long day of trekking.
And just for funsies, enjoy these selfies from along the trail. I went on a very un-like me selfie spree apparently:
I was dirty and cold for a lot of it, but mostly happy. :)
Machu EFFING Picchu
When we finally arrived at the city it was actually alot more awesome than I thought it would be. Not only was it so much larger than I expected, very little of it is blocked off. Like you can really explore all around the thing. There were a weird lack of rules. We had a few hours there to take a tour and explore on our own. I could have stayed there so much longer...
And thats around 1% of the photos that were taken. Seriously. The whole thing was just very mysterious and magestic. The hike was worth it, mostly. I'm not sure if I'd do it again, but would go back to Machu Picchu in an instant.
I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and really cannot say enough good things about getting to have a girls getaway. I feel like we are all growing up and the chances to do stuff like this with them will just get smaller every year that goes by. Bless their sweet hearts for dealing with me at certain parts. #bestbuds.
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Love these photos! Seems like so much fun but so tough. Congrats for making it through!
ReplyDeleteWay to go sista! These photos are amazing...what a life-changing trek! I hope to do this very hike in my lifetime...
ReplyDeleteAMAZING! I want to visit and see all that stuff but without the hiking! I can't believe the porters! What a job. This trip is so unbelievable!
ReplyDeleteThat looks so incredible. I wanna go!!
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