Inca Trail

We hiked the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu with Llama Path on a 4 day 3 night trip. This hike was the most luxury hike I probably will ever take part in. For the 13 hikers there were 19 porters and a cook along with a guide and an assistant guide. We would not have saved money by taking our own tent, so the porters carried a llama path tent and set it up for us. By the time we arrived to our campsite the tent was ready to go each evening. Also warm water, soap and individual hand towels were provided before every meal to clean up with. They served us hot tea in the morning inside of our tents. Literally they carried a kitchen table and chairs that they set up for each meal for us to eat from. Dinner and lunch were always 3 coarse meals- a professionally done appetizer, followed by a mouth watering soup, topped off with more food than would feed an army sized entree. We were pampered, and it was nice!
The Inca trail is very busy, thus urinating or otherwise outside of the ´peruvian´squat toilets is prohibited. This made for one of the big negatives for the trail. These peruvian toilets are porcelin bowls flush with the baño floor. Usually they don´t flush and most often the room didn´t have a trash can. You can´t put toilet paper in the toilet so dirty toilet paper would pile up in the corner...gross. As you can imagine the squat pots got pretty nasty. Girls don´t have aim, lot´s of people get diahrea and the smell is enough to blind you.
The hike was challenging due to the elevation changes, however the trail was not too tough comparing it to our last hike in Venezuela. The second day we had to reach our highest elevations and unfortunately Joshua came down with a stomach bug. He couldn´t eat and could barely keep down water, but somehow he pushed through and made it to camp. Well done Josh!
The fourth morning we awoke before the sunrise, ate a very rich cake for breakast-not a good choice llama path, then scrambled to get our bags ready to head to Macchu Picchu. The previos night we had camped on a somewhat narrow ledge, all of the tents in a line. After going to the bathroom I was heading back toward my bag and I fell off the 10foot ledge. Physically I only had a few bruises and scrapes but emotionally I was quite hurt. After the fall I stood up and appologized to the porters as I had landed on a bag of trash. I asked for a towel to wipe off and no one could help me. I just stood there appologizing and Josh yelled, ¨Get up here¨ I was pissed and hurt! Why didn´t any one care that I had fallen 10 feet onto my back on a pile of trash?! Josh and Llama path definetely got a talking to for their seemingly uncaring reactions!
I carried my bad attitude along with a bruised wrist and but the final 3 hours to Macchu Picchu. The old Incan city was impressive. I have a hard time getting excited about rocks, even if they are so nicely cut and placed, but it was still nice to see. We started on a tour with our guide and left at about 10am to meet Josh´s parents.
Sometime in that early morning I was starting to feel a little sick. About midday I had to separate from Josh and his parents and head toward the exit. Uggh, here I got trapped in this huge maze of rocks. Frustrated, overheated and sick to the stomach I got sick over a pile of rocks, hidden by another pile. I made it to the bathroom before I got sick again.
The twisty-turny bus ride down to Aquas Callientes didn´t help my uneasy stomach, I spent the rest of the day in the hotel room, while Josh and his parents explored Aquas.