Salkantay to Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu, as the sun is rising, is deserted, peaceful and still.
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One can hardly go to Perú without visiting Machu Picchu and I decided to start my trip out with the cherry on top. Dessert first, right?
After a little research in Cusco, I decided to hike the Salkantay trail. It goes up to a higher elevation than the traditional Inca Trail, and has fewer people. This was a big selling point for me.
The first morning was mostly a bus trip from Cusco out to the mountains where we could start our hike. Pack mules carried tents, sleeping bags, food and up to 5 kilos per person of other gear. I didn’t have much else, so my daypack was fairly light. Water wasn’t an issue because the camps were developed enough to have some permanent tents, outhouses and running water in the cooking areas. I added purifying tablets to the “tap” water that was diverted from nearby streams. It was all clear, cold snowmelt and tasted like the mountains.
After a short hike, we made it to the first camp and had time for an afternoon walk up to Humantay Lake. We were camped at 3,900 meters (12,795 ft) and the lake was a steep hike above that. I was going fairly slow, stopping often to catch my breath. I was by far the slowest getting up there, and the guide, Hermo, wondered how I would do carrying a pack up to the pass at 4600 meters the next day. I replied that as long as I went slow, I would enjoy it, but that if I tried to go fast it wouldn’t be much fun.
Our first group dinner was by candlelight in a long, permanent tent that also housed the tents we were sleeping in. As soon as the sun went down, a bitterly cold wind rushed down the mountains and blasted the camp. Hermo warned that it would get much colder around 2am and that we should sleep with as many clothes on as possible inside our sleeping bags. We went to bed before 8, immediately after dinner, to try to stay warm and prepare for getting up at 6. Hermo explained that we had to make it to the pass before noon the next day because the weather usually turned in the afternoon and it could get cloudy and rainy.
The group I hiked with made the trip so much fun. We had a family from Quebec, two women who just finished university in Calgary, a young couple from Atlanta, a woman from Italy and another from Germany who were traveling together, a guy from Quebec who was traveling alone, and me. I was assigned the Quebec guy as a tentmate and he offered to roll me and my sleeping bag in his alpaca poncho, since he had a much warmer sleeping bag than I did. I was wrapped like a burrito inside a soft carpet. The father from Quebec was a very experienced mountaineer and recommended that I sleep propped up on my backpack, in a reclined position to help with my breathing and oxygen intake. I slept like a rock and didn’t notice the temperature plummet between 2 and 3 am. The next thing I knew was Hermo bringing me a cup of coca tea at 6am.
The hike up to Humanity Lake was steep and stunning.
We had the tents and our packs ready for the mules by 6:30, ate a hot breakfast and were on the trail before 7. It was really cold, but the sun was coming down the valley towards us. As soon as we started to hike, I warmed up considerably. With coca tea in my system and almost ten hours of sleep behind me, I felt pretty good as we started up the trail. There were a couple other groups on the trail as well, but it didn’t feel crowded.
We made it to the pass before 11am. The views were incredible and I could hardly believe how good it felt to be up in the mountains again. I’ve missed mountains a lot the past year, since I’ve been living in Bangladesh. We had a rest in the sun at the pass, sheltered from the wind behind a boulder and Hermo explained some of the history of the mountains while we broke out our celebratory snacks. The guys from Atlanta had Oreos. I brought Reece’s peanut butter cups.
The Incas, and modern Quechua culture, revere the mountains as gods and in past history Mt. Salkantay was regarded as a wild and untamable god. In more recent history, a group of Japanese climbers tried to summit Mt. Salkantay but failed: four came down early because of one team-member’s altitude sickness and the other six were swept away in an avalanche. One of those six has still not been found. Nobody else has tried to summit it. Perhaps the Incas were right.
After a few celebratory photos we headed back down the other side. Almost immediately the landscape became greener and by lunch we were almost down to the treeline. We had a wonderful cook and pack crew who got on the trail before we did and were over the pass and cooking lunch by the time we made it up to the pass. It was another two or three hours of steep downhill to lunch but by the time we got there a delicious quinoa soup and main course of roast chicken, rice and stir fried veggies was ready. At every meal I was impressed by the food and everybody else in the group commented that they had expected something much more basic. We didn’t linger over the meal because it was so cold. We were still at fairly high altitude and the afternoon wind was picking up.
Back on the trail, it was another three hours of steep downhill to the next camp. We were soon hiking along a river, though most of the trail was high on the cliff above the river. We didn’t get any closer to the river until camp that night. The camp was even more established than the first, with some rustic wooden buildings and outhouses with flush toilets. The tents were already set up and teatime was ready with popcorn. I opted for coca tea, which I credit with not experiencing the usual headaches and nausea of high altitude. That night, after another delicious meal, we stayed up “late” talking until about 9pm. So close to the equator, the sun goes down around 6 and it’s dark almost immediately. Though deprived of much of a sunset, we had the best stargazing I’ve seen in a long time.
At about 3000 meters (almost 10,000 ft) the sky is crystal clear. We were a very long way from any towns, so light pollution was limited to flashlights. As soon as we turned those off, the Milky Way looked close enough to touch. By some incredible stroke of luck, a meteor shower came by and we saw over a dozen shooting stars. It was a magical night.
Up early again the next morning, woken by another cup of coca tea brought to the tents, we packed the gear and the horses set off while we had breakfast. We hiked all morning along the same river, descending down into increasingly lush jungle. It was hard to believe that this was winter, and the dry season. We came to a few houses with terraced fields around them. Most looked like subsistence farming, but a few also sold treats to the descending backpackers: Gatorade, fruit juices and snacks that were obviously packed up here on mules.
By lunch we were down to a village that had roads and we had a fabulous lunch there before loading into a van to the town of Santa Teresa. Hermo set up our tents while we had popcorn and tea. After we stashed our gear in the tents, we piled back in the van for a trip to the nearby hot springs. The water cascades down a cliff into a large stone pool, which had a lot of people but didn’t feel too crowded. There were a couple other pools lower down, but we stayed in the hottest one, where the water was even hotter on the side close to the cliff.
That night was a shock after the peaceful solitude of the mountains. The campground had a bonfire and another group that was sharing the camping area stayed up fairly late. Since we were in a town, there were street lights that ruined stargazing and a nearby bar that played loud music. The hot springs had felt great, but I’m not sure they were worth spending the night in a loud, developed campground.
The next day started with a van ride to the head of the railway where we could either hike along the tracks or wait for the afternoon train. Half of the group chose to hike and it was a fun walk along a beautiful valley. We stopped often to take pictures and I really enjoyed walking on flat ground. We walked into Aguas Calientes around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and had time to drop our packs at the hotel and wander the markets for a couple hours before dinner. Dinner was good, but not as satisfying as the meals eaten outside after a long day on the trail. It was kind of a letdown to get to choose a meal off a menu rather than be surprised by what the cook had managed to whip up in the basic kitchen tents they used in the mountains.
We got up at 4am for the hike up to Machu Picchu. When we arrived at 6am, the sun hadn’t yet come up over the canyon walls and the whole Machu Picchu complex was empty and peaceful. A few llamas grazing on the agricultural terraces gave the place some life, but it was otherwise deserted. Hermo led us through many of the archeological highlights and we listened to his explanations of the cultural significance and architectural wonders in the breathless silence of ruins still gray before the sunrise. We wound through the ruins, taking pictures of the masterpieces of the ceremonial center before other groups came up from town. Just before sunrise, Hermo took us up to the top of the ruins to see the sun come through the Sun Gate and hit the top of Huayna Picchu, the smaller but steeper peak that towers above the ruins.
After a couple hours of historical and cultural explanations, Hermo turned us loose to wander the area at our leisure. Two hours later, the whole place was overrun with hundreds of tourists. I had no idea so many people could be there at once. It was far more than could ever come across from Mt Salkantay or along the Inca Trail. Peru Rail runs a train to Aguas Calientes and it’s an easy bus ride up to the entrance of the ruins. Obviously, hundreds of people come up every day without walking before they enter the ruins. As developed tourism goes, I don’t think it’s over done, though I’d be shocked if they don’t soon greatly restrict the number of people who can enter daily. Hermo explained that the ruins are sliding down the mountainside at two to three centimeters per year, which is very fast in geological terms. Some of it is surely natural, though just as surely exacerbated and increased by the daily weight of thousands of tourists pounding up and down the ancient stairways.
I loved Mt. Salkantay and the hike we did as a group and am glad I chose that route over the traditional Inca Trail. However, when I go back to Peru I’ll be tempted to sign up for the Inca Trail, mostly out of desire to see the mountains and my curiosity for the history I would learn from a guide about the Inca Trail itself.
