Kilometer 104 ... Don't Forget Kilometer 104

The (early) day had arrived and at 0445 we were on the road where a combination of taxi cab, bus and train would take us to kilometer 104 where we would meet our guide and start hiking the Inka Trail. Not knowing what to expect, both of us tried to problem solve/predict what we would need to carry with us for the next two days. Armed with a camelback filled with 4 liters of water, snacks, change of clothes, long underwear, a toothbrush, sunscreen, a raincoat and walking sticks I was feeling fairly prepared, and maybe even a little over prepared; whatever, we were about to tackle the INKA TRAIL.

The sun started to come out about half way through our bus ride and before we knew it (2 hours later) we arrived at the train station. As we handed over our tickets we made a huge deal of saying that we needed to get off at kilometer 104. The tracks followed the river and when they made the announcement about our stop, only six out of a packed train got off; we pretty much hopped off in the middle of nowhere.

Sure enough, Diego was sitting on a rock and we headed to the first check in point.

The sun was shining and things were pretty warm as we started climbing. The morning would pretty much be all uphill; thankfully between the bus and train ride we had dropped a couple thousand feet so we were feeling pretty good as we headed off. As e continued up the mountain, every now and then we could see the trains heading off to the final destination at the base of the ruins.

A couple of hours we came across Winaywayna which translates to forever young. This city was at one point used as an agricultural site which would provide food to the royalty/high priests at Machu Picchu. Many of the homes and religious temples were still in place; were even greeted by some llamas.

The next stop was lunch and Diego said that we we making pretty good time and was impressed with "our conditioning." Funny because neither of us trained for this, but just were hoping for the best.

Our trusty guide Diego

One of the nice things about hitting the lunch point was that we would not have too much more climbing to do, just. Joule more kilometers to the sun gate. It was surprising that once we hit the mountain of Machu Picchu, meaning old mountain (fun fact: the name ofthecity/ruins is not known, but many people refer to them as Machu Picchu because of their location on the mountain).

It was just a few, very steep steps to the sun gate and from there we the valley and the ruins

(That is young mountain in the background)

The walk took about thirty minutes to get to the ruins and we spent some time walking around and snapping some photos (Todd has them which means that we will see them in about two months). We did not head down into the city because that part we would see tomorrow on our tour.
We headed down the mountain to drop our stuff in the hostel and because we had a couple hours to kill decided to grab some pisco sours and play a whole bunch of Janga. Little known fact: pisco is a big deal here in Peru and a grape brandy.

For dinner we met up with Diego and decided to get adventurous. While on the trail Diego mentioned that alpaca and guinea pig were common proteins so we decided to try some alpaca at dinner; it is a lean meat and not bad. From there we walked back up the hill and were in bed by 7:30 because you guessed it, we have another early day tomorrow.

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