What a day! I am sitting writing this as I sit in my tent after our first day of hiking the Salkantay trail to Machu Picchu. We started the day by being picked up at 5:30am this morning and then driving with our guide and cook to the starting point 2 hours away. This trek is different than the Inca Trail in a number of ways and I will try to point them out as I go along. One big difference is that mules are allowed on this trek because it is not a protected area. There are only three of us in the trek (because it is now the rainy, and therefore, low season), and we only have a guide, cook and horseman who looks after the mules that are carrying our gear. This means we have a lot less people since porters aren’t needed.

When we got to the town we were starting in we had a quick breakfast before heading out. Another difference on this trek is we have choices each day. Today we could either hike from the town to our final camp that would be 20km and take the whole day, or we could take local transportation for part of the way, hike to our camp where we would have lunch and eventually be sleeping, and then do a hike in the afternoon to a lake fed by glaciers. We opted for the second option and it turned out to be amazing!

The ride itself to our new starting point was a lot of fun because we took a local truck and sat in the open bed in the back. It was a flat bed truck with railings and a tarp covering half of it with the other half open. We shared the back with a number of supplies and some locals that included an elderly man, a lady and her baby and a drunk guy. We stood up for quite a bit of the ride because the views of the mountains were too good to not see. Once we got to our starting point we had a fairly easy, flat hike to our camp that took about 2 hours. We had an amazing lunch of trout, ride, guacamole and chips, fries and soup. After lunch we had time for a quick siesta before heading for the lake.

The hike to the lake was beautiful mostly through a grassy hill with lots of grazing horses, mules and cows. It took just over an hour to reach the lake, but the hike was much steeper than earlier in the day and we were at quite a high altitude. Our camp is at about 3900m and the lake was 4200m. The approach to the lake was amazing. The crystal clear lake slowly revealed itself as we climbed over a ridge with a huge mountain topped by a glacier as the back drop. The views were beautiful and we spent about half an hour enjoying the views and saw a few small avalanches. You could swim in the ice cold glacial lake, but I only managed to touch my toe in and was not brave enough to go in!

The hike back down to camp was just as nice as the way up. We had tea, cookies and popcorn as an afternoon snack when we got back. Shortly after we had another delicious meal of soup, pasta, chicken, quiche and stuffed peppers. It is early to bed now to get rested up for our 5am start tomorrow!