Inca Trail Day 1

We departed Ollantaytambo at 8am and boarded the bus to the start of the Inca trail. We passed through the checkpoint with our passports and were officially on the Inca Trail at around 9am! We called our team the 'Pisco Pumas'!

Starting altitude: 2400m
Finishing altitude: 3000m
Distance covered: 12km
Weather: It was pretty warm during the day with sunshine- nice for our first day of trekking!

We made quite a few stops during the first day to adjust to the altitude/conditions, which also gave our guide for the trek, Joseph, time to explain some the the history of the area. We learnt that the sacred valley is ‘sacred’ because it’s shape and landscape mimics the Milky Way and the Andean animals. We learnt about Incan culture including that the Incans did not regularly undertake human sacrifices but they would occasionally in response to events such as bad weather (so our guide joked that hopefully we have good weather during our trek and don't have to sacrifice anyone!)

Our first stop was home to a 5 month old Andean jug puppy which looked exactly like Cody and his name was Kot :) We then stopped at an Incan ruin site which used to be the administrative capital of the valley because it was at the centre of 4 valleys.
We stopped for lunch which consisted of guacamole and fried pastry, vegetable soup, rainbow trout and then purple corn pudding for lunch.

After lunch, it was a short hour or so walk to the campsite where saw another Incan site and got a spectacular view over the valley. We arrived at our campsite around 4pm.

Before dinner we had a meet and greet with the porters and chefs. The porters are our superheroes who are the ones carrying all our tents, food, cooking utensils and basically everything else for each day (around 25kgs each!!) They also set up our campsites and help us with anything we could need during the trip! There are 18 porters in total ranging from 23 to 60 years old and are typically farmers who have joined G Adventures for a more prosperous lifestyle. We also have 2 chefs, our head guide and 2 assistant guides with our group of 18 people!

We then had ‘happy hour’ which is some snacks and crackers before dinner (hot chocolate and popcorn). We enjoyed dinner of delicious soup followed by chicken and rice.

We then played some more games with the group (including an interesting game with our group called Mafia!) before an early night.Read more