This entry certainly is going to be the longest one yet, as it summarizes two weeks of our stay in Cusco, tightly packed with activities.
After only 2 days in Lima, my friend and I took a plane to Cusco, mainly to quickly and appropriately acclimatise to the high elevation, which we would be important for our planned hike to Machu Picchu.
Collecting all the information on the different treks to Machu Picchu (where they start, how much they are, if you can do it without a tour, etcpp) took quite a while and the process had already started around beginning of February.
I tried to gather info from everyone I met along the way, as A LOT of travelers around here are on roughly the same route through South America and chances are high that they either already did a hike up there or are about to.
There’s 2 “big” hikes to Machu Picchu: the Inca Trail and the Salkantay Trek.
The Inca Trail is by far the most popular and busy one and you can only do it with a tour organisation. The cost for that is around $500 per person and the permits are limited to 500 a day. The reason is that the trail was once overrun by tourists, and wherever people go, they often leave behind trash and cause damage. To minimize these negative impacts, the trail eventually became regulated.
For a couple of different reasons, we decided to do the Salkantay Trek and wanted to hike without a guide.
So, after arriving in Cusco we quickly set out to gather information and planned the start of the hike, only to learn that both of the above treks to Machu Picchu are inaccessible right now because of landslides caused by massive rainfall.
It took around a day to wrap our heads around the fact that we couldn’t to what we had planned to do for the last 2 months.
To pass the time, we rescheduled our previous timeline a little bit and went on a trip to Rainbow Mountain before instead of after Macchu Picchu.
As beautiful as Vinicunca (the original name for Rainbow Mountain) is, so sad is the reason we even get to see it – up until around 10 years ago the summit was covered in ice and snow but due to the changing climate, this is no longer the case.
Towering at 5.036 meters, this probably is going to be my highest summit for quite some time.
Machu Picchu trek day one
After recovering from the blow that we couldn’t do the Salkantay Trek, we settled on a guided tour called the “Inca Jungle Trek” instead, which doesn’t take you across mountain ranges at high elevations but rather through parts of the jungle surrounding Aguas Calientes, the town at the foot of Machu Picchu and the main port of accessing the historical site.
The main activity of the first day on the Inca Jungle Trek was a mountain bike ride downhill from Abra Malaga, a little town outside Cusco located at around 4.200 meters, to Santa Maria at 1.500 meters, where we continued to hike into the forest to spend the night at a jungle accomodation.
As the main business in that area of Peru is coffee, we had breakfast served with coffee we made ourselves – from raw coffee cherries to depulping, roasting and grinding the beans.
Machu Picchu trek day two
The second day was filled with hiking through the jungle from Santa Maria to Santa Teresa, where we spent another night. Not much to report here, except for a wonderful full-day hike 🙂
Machu Picchu trek day three
The third and also last day of the trip from Cusco to Aguas Calientes started with zig-zag Zip Lining across the Urubamba River to get the juices flowing in the morning
After this wake-up activity, we set off on our last stretch of hiking from Hidroelectrica to Aguas Calientes and reached our final destination in the early afternoon, which gave us enough time to decompress and relax before the grand finale, visiting Machu Picchu at 06:00 AM the next morning.
Machu Picchu
The big day.
Wake up at 04:00 AM to set off to the hike up the mountain. That means an half-hour hike to the bottom of the mountain and then walking up 1.700 Inca steps. Not an easy task, especially after another farewell party the previous evening.
After reaching the summit and entering the site at 06:00 AM, behold the sight that awaited us!
We waited for around 3 hours for the fog to clear and luckily, everything worked out in the end and after Salar de Uyuni, I can add another tearjerker location to my list 🙂
In the evening we took a train and a bus back to Cusco and recovered for two days.
Because the reason we were both excited for the Salkantay Trek the most was the high-altitude mountain scenery, we spontaneously went on another tour to the Seven Lagoons quite close to Rainbow Mountain, to have another hike close to mountain summits.
Now, as my friend has to leave today, the 27th of March, because it’s the end of her holiday, I decided that I’ve seen and done enough things in the past three months to be satisfied with my trip.
My time here was filled to the brim with amazing experiences, awesome people and stunning landscapes and it would feel redundant and as if I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it thoroughly anymore if I’d stay longer now.
So, this is my last entry, Cusco was my last destination and I’m taking a plane back to Austria today as well – this way I can acclimatise and decompress back home for another week or two before the real world sucks me up again.
As I’m writing these lines, I’m waiting for my taxi to the airport in Cusco.
See ya at my…
Next stop:
Vienna