Day 1 on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu: A Test

BY KAREN RUBIN

For me, the first day of the fourday, 26-mile Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu is a test. It is the second hardest (Day 2 is the day I have been dreading), when we will hike 8.7 miles, climbing 1,866 feet to an altitude of 10,829 feet where our campsite will be. My strategy is that if I find it too difficult, I will simply walk back the way I came, rather than continue on to Day 2.

The day actually begins the evening before, when our group meets at 6 pm at the Alpaca Expeditions offices in Cuzco for an orientation (we arrive late from our Sacred Valley day tour) and to pick up the duffle bags (we are limited to 7 kg which includes the sleeping bag, so only about 4 kg of stuff), as well as a rain cover for our day packs, a rain poncho and hiking poles that we have rented. (We will leave the rest of our luggage at the hotel or can store it with Alpaca). A team of porters will carry not only our duffels (they carry 3 plus their own!), but the camping gear (tents, sleeping bags and mats), a dining tent and stools, cooking stuff, our food, and even a private potty tent.

Our adventure starts with a pick up at our hotel, Amaru Inca, in Cuzco’s historic district at 4 am. We pick up the other participants at various locations (didn’t realize we could have overnighted at Ollantaytambo!) and are taken to Piskachucho, Porter House, where we enjoy a marvelous and energizing breakfast. This is a bunkhouse where the porters – who come from mountain villages hours away – stay between expeditions.

We drive to Km 82, and go through the first Inca Trail checkpoint to begin our trek.We have to present our passport and be checked off against the list of permits, which are limited to 200 trekkers a day (which is why you have to book this trip sometimes months in advance).

Machu Picchu became a national sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. There is a small museum there and our lead guide, Lizandro Aranzabal Huaman, uses this opportunity to gather us all together to reintroduce ourselves (after the orientation meeting the night before), and give us a little intro and pep talk.

We are a group of 15: a couple on their honeymoon (he from Italy, she from Netherlands), a couple from New York (actually he comes from my hometown and she from

Miami) who just got engaged (surprise!); a couple from Norway living in Guyana; a couple (she from New Zealand, he from Ukraine) doing remote work in Lima; a group of six ladies who actually did not know each other until the trip, but were friends or friends of friends, who come from NY, Kentucky, California; and Eric and Sarah who are finishing a six-month travel odyssey with this grand finale and me. Every one is well traveled and adventurous (also between 25 and 35 years younger than me. (On the trail, I find a family taking a private tour where the parents are in their mid-60s, so I believe I am the oldest trekker on the trail at this point.)

What we call the Inca Trail was part of an immense network built Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, the ninth ruler of the Inca, in the mid-1400s.

These roads linked the main cities of the empire with Cusco, the capital, and Machu Picchu. During the time of the Inca, the trail was the only way to get to Machu Picchu.

We head out and cross a bridge over a rushing river after scouts tell us the trail has been reopened. It had been closed down for a month after a rock slide killed two porters. We are the first group of trekkers on the trail – which saves about an hour of hiking.

Lizandro stops to point out an insect on cactus – cochinillia – which the Inca used for dying textile; a bean used in aspirin; green agabe used to make string, while ichu grass was woven into rope, strong enough to haul the massive building stones and build suspension bridges (an Incan invention).

Indeed, the Inca did not use currency, nor, apparently, have slave labor; their society was organized on a system of Anyi (reciprocity, like barter); Minka (communities work together) and Mita (a labor tax, where every man was obligated to do two to three months of service to the government or serve in the military each year).

The first morning’s hike takes us through a few mountain villages, now set up to sell drinks, snacks and items to the hikers.

At the last village we encounter before ascending into mountain wilderness, Lizandro tells us this is actually where he grew up and where 96 families still live. From the age of 5, he was leading a pack horse on the trail. There was no school in his community, so his parents sent him to live with an uncle for three years, until his parents couldn’t afford to

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