Top 3 Reasons to Hike on Your Next Trip

The travel season is starting – summer in the northern hemisphere and the dry season in much of South America. Are you planning on hiking during your vacations this year?

Here are the top three reasons why I love hiking when I travel!

1. You can go at your own pace 

Most hiking trails don’t need a guide, just a good paper map or interactive map on your phone. Even if you do need a guide, it’s understood that different people hike at different paces. The photos below are from a hike in Chapada Diamantina, Brazil where I went with a guide. We didn’t all hike at the same pace and it wasn’t a problem at all. On your own two feet rather than on a bus or van tour, you’ll be able to stop where you want to take photos and enjoy the view.

2. It’s good exercise

It’s not always easy to keep up an exercise routine when traveling. Between the sitting we endure in cars, busses and planes and the standing we do in museums, we’re left with little time for a real workout. If you’re visiting a city, your feet may get tired of pounding cement and want a day on a trail. Also, I eat much healthier when I’m at home versus when I’m at restaurants for every meal, so I appreciate opportunities to be active when I’m traveling.

3. There are fewer crowds

It’s a fact of travel that places you can drive to get more tourists than places you have to walk to. When I was in Brazil, the caves on the bus tour of Chapada Diamantina were packed to overflowing. The very next day I went on a hike where I didn’t see anybody besides our group.

Case in point: Machu Picchu (above). It’s popular because it has good marketing and good transportation. It’s the only major Inca archeological site that you can get to while sitting down. Yes, you have to use your feet to walk around the site, but the approach is train and bus.

Rather than bemoan how crowded Machu Picchu is, choose another site, especially one that you have to hike to. Below are some of my favorite photos of Choquequirao. The day I visited the archeological site, often called Machu Picchu’s sister site, I saw exactly two tourists who weren’t in my group.

I admit that the hike to Choquequirao was hard, even for me. The Apurímac canyon is beautiful, but the trail is a steep down to the river and then steep back up to the Choquequirao archeological site. Read about my Choquequirao hike on this blog.

Blog

Pinkuylluna Hike in the Sacred Valley of Peru

This is one of my favorite hikes in the Sacred Valley and you can do it in as little as an hour! I’d recommend two hours so you can stop to see everything and take lots of pictures, but if you’re pressed for time, you should still go! It’s one of the few archeological sites in the Sacred Valley that’s still free and one of my favorite examples of Inca engineering.

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Three Alternatives to Machu Picchu

Here are my suggestions for alternatives that give you a short walk, a one-day hike or a multi-day trek. None of them have even half the crowds that Machu Picchu gets! Spoiler: Choquequirao is the multi-day trek. (This article is from last year when there were political protests that closed Machu Picchu. I just wrote to the editor to ask him to take off the warning about “current” protests).