Abbreviated version of the trek

For those of you who don´t want the entire play by play, here is a more abreviated version my travel buddy jessica wrote to her family and friends... enjoy!!

"Hi friends!

After five days of trekking 75 kilometers through the Andes, we made it back to Cusco exhausted, sore, and ready to relax.

I wish I could say I blew everyone away with my stamina and physical endurance, but in truth I succumbed to altitude sickness shortly after our lunch break on the first day and I was the girl who had to ride the emergency horse. But I did finish the day on my own and the remainder of the trek, even leading the way some of the time. As Julie pointed out, my body was giving me a heads up that there was a reason I was born in Ohio and clearly not engineered to be in the mountains. To that end, I took a picture of myself with the sign that says we reached 4,600 meters as I do not intend to get up to such a height again.

Beyond the physical difficulties, the entire experience was incredible. We chose to do the Salkantay trek to reach Machu Picchu rather than the traditional Inca Trail. While a little bit more challenging, I am so glad we did it because we didn´t see another group of hikers until we reached Aguas Calientes (the entrance point to Machu Picchu) on the fourth day. Our group consisted of 16 people and Lauren, Julie, and I were the only people from the United States. The rest of the group was made up of people from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Norway, and Switzerland, plus our two Peruvian guides. It was awesome to be with such an international group. And, true to the typical patterns of my life, I was the youngest (but the age range was only 22 to 31 which made it a lot of fun) and of the 16, only three were males. Go figure.

The trip came along with all kinds of adventures that we didn´t anticipate, mostly due to flodded roads and landslides blocking our path. At times, we literally had to dam streams and rivers in order to cross. We walked over "bridges" of every possible description and measure of stability. Our first night in the mountains it snowed, we saw two avalanches that seemed only yards away, we found a hidden lagoon, hiked through rainforests, slogged in mud in the cloud forests. At every turn in the road, the Andes just kept rolling on in the distance. 

And, of course, the part you are actually interested in: Machu Picchu. We woke up on Sunday at 3:45am to get in line for bus tickets. I think the only other time I have engaged in such a ridiculous activity was waking up to climb Masada at sunrise, but in this case it was just about beating the lines. By getting up to Machu Picchu so early (at 6) we were able to get access to Wuaynapichu, which is the steep mountain in the background of every picture of Machu Picchu. They only give out 400 tickets a day and it is an incredible view of the ruins and surrounding areas. Plus, we clearly needed one more physical challenge. The sophistication of the city was just as impressive as you would expect. The Incas were so atuned with nature and natural disasters, building their cities in such a way as to protect them from flooding and earthquakes. Mostly, it is just amazing how immense the city is. When it was re-discovered in 1911, the entire city was hidden under trees and shrubs. Standing on top of Waynapichu and looking at the sprawling mountains around us, all we could think about was the possibility that other cities could just be hiding in these mountains. And of course, the insanity/impressiveness that comes with the construction of such a massive network of buildings at the top of a mountain range that we struggled to climb with just our backpacks or even daypacks. After a full day of hauling ourselves around the mountain, we literally stumbled wearily onto a two hour train ride to Ollantambo and from there took a bus to Cusco, finally getting to our hostel at 10pm. Unfortunately, we were starving so we had to suffer slow service at one of the few restaurants still open and didn´t make it to bed until after midnight. Long day.

Since I know most of you probably haven´t read this far (let´s be honest, this email is mostly about me writing down things I want to remember since my journal is fairly incoherent), I´m going to wrap it up. We are spending the rest of today in Cusco taking it easy and enjoying this beautiful colonial city nestled in the mountains. Tomorrow we take a 7:30am flight to Lima, then Guayaquil, and finally arrive in Quito in the afternoon. The current Quito agenda involves getting Julie Indian food and bagels (she´s been down here a while) and catching a bus to Baños on Wednesday morning."