Pitching your tent at the base of a giant, snow-covered, 6000 m peak with nothing but flat, grassy clearings and rocky streams in your immediate surrounds is surely the stuff that travellers’ dreams are made of.
When we started our mission to Machu Picchu, Peru, considered by many to be one of the most impressive historical sites in the world, we had absolutely no inkling that what we were to experience on our three-day ‘passage’ to the sight would rival the magnificence of the ancient city itself. But now that we’ve been there and got the T-shirt, it’s safe to say that the Salkantay Trail, a much lesser-known alternative to the ever-popular and steeply-priced Inca Trail, deserves to be written home about.
What’s so wonderfully enticing about it is that you have the freedom to do it yourself. No permits, tour guides or single file. You can pitch your tent where you want, when you want, and vary your pace to avoid large tour groups. And the scenery is unrivaled.
Having made the decision to do the trail in three days we ended up averaging about 20kms a day and, being hikers of minimal and haphazard experience, we found this quite challenging. Although we did come equipped with a few lessons learnt on a pervious multi-day hike that we had done in Bolivia (The El Choro Trail was our first hike in South America and we clearly did something wrong as it left us limping and hip-wobbling around the streets of La Paz for days like a wounded cowboy and a 90-year-old Bolivian woman for days). Notes to self:
1) don’t bring a weighty toiletry bag (the chance of a shower is a wishful thought),
2) Snickers – the chocolate bars – are God’s gift to hikers,
3) listen to the guy in the camping shop when he says it’s going to be cold; rent down sleeping bags,
4) don’t take short (long) cuts.
The trail begins about two hours from Cusco, in a little town called Mollepata. This meant that we had to get out of our cosy Cusco beds at the crack of dawn in order to catch a ‘colectivo’ (shuttle bus) to the start and begin the day’s walking at a reasonable hour. Good thing too, as we ended up doing 24km that day.
The first few hours were a steep, hot climb up the base of a valley to a hilltop village called Cruz Pata. True to our hiking record, we managed to get lost and backtrack a number of times before hitting the right path. But when we finally did hit the Yellow Brick Road, we gained an amusing addition to our hiking team. Two little boys from the local village, who told us importantly that school had been cancelled for the day, said that they would accompany us up the hill and amidst my huffing, puffing and gasping for air (they were skipping up blissfully) we fumbled through a few conversations in broken Spanish, while they tried to hide their concern at the scarlet-faced and soon-to-expire ‘gringo’.
The hike up the valley was long, allowing us to view snowy Nevado Salkantay for hours from a distance. Its white, craggy face contrasted bizarrely with the lush green valley that stretched ahead of us, but gave us an exciting feeling of what was to come.
We reached the village of Soraypampa in the early afternoon and plonked ourselves down for a while to absorb the view in the rich afternoon light (a Snickers break had nothing to do with it). Then, in order to avoid the masses (most tour groups camp at Soraypampa for their first night), we pressed on for a few kilometres, Salkantay looming above us.
When we reached the plateau at the base of the peak, there was an icy breeze tunneling throught the valley and our legs were starting to feel the day’s work. We collected and purified some water from a nearby stream and it wasn’t long before we had set up our tent and were snuggly wormed into our sleeping bags with some hot soup on the boil. An hour or so later, we poked our heads to see the massive icing sugar peak above us glowing golden-orange. What a privilege. I must admit that at this point I felt like the main character in Joe Simpson’s ‘Touching the Void’ or another of those mountaineering biographies. There was a lot of huffing and puffing and rubbing of hands in the icy wind, but we didn’t retreat to the tent until it was dark. And even then the icy white peak seemed to carry on glowing.
The next day began with an early-morning slog over the pass ‘Abra Salkantay’. As we snaked our way up the rocky path, we got closer and closer to the snowy peaks and could actually hear the cracking and rumbling of avalanches above and around us.
After a breathtaking (literally, the altitude takes it out of you) view from the top of the pass, we started down the hill, and the rest of the day was as a bit of a knee-jerker down the rocky path all the way to the village of Chaullay. The village was quiet, the air was humid and we were surrounded by lush rainforest and ominous rain clouds. Recipe for a good night’s sleep.
Our last day was a tricky mix of hiking and navigating public transport through areas not considered great for walking. After three days of trapsing, our energy levels and bargaining fervour were running dangerously low and this, coupled with our broken Spanish, resulted in some fantastically bad deals from our side. Negotiations went something like this:
Us: ‘Excuse me, how much to hidroelectrio?
Taxi driver: ’15 pesos’
Us: ‘Perfecto! 20 it is’.
No wonder they love gringos.
For the last two hours of the trail, we meandered through a humid, forested valley along a railway track. Although we felt distinctly refugee-like, we were by no means the only ones doing it. Many local Peruvians and budget-bound travellers make the mission along this stretch as the tourist train to Aguas Calientes comes at a hefty price.
By the time we reached Aguas Calientes we were thoroughly exhausted and the sight of a bath-robed guest strolling out onto the balcony of her luxury hotel sent my companion into a vicious bout of turrets. At this point we thought better of camping and went in search of the cheapest hostel we could find.
Machu Picchu the following day was a spectacular experience: a meticulously-designed legoland of smoothly-carved stone and lush green lawn. We made sure we got the gates early and were able to explore the labyrinth in a fine morning mist with few other tourists, the experience made a hundred times more worthwhile after our mission through the mountains to get there.
