Thursday 7 January 2010
Highlights: The Inca Trail landscape,Piskaccuchu, Llactapata, Wayllabamba

Inca Trail Day 1
I had a bad night with diarrhoea – not a great start to the hike but Karen set me up with pills to shutdown my system, Gareth got me some antibiotics and I also took some herbal pills – in the end I was a walking chemist set and it turned out to totally shutdown this illness and my need to go to the toilet at all.

The bus ride to the start of the hike wasn’t great – I was glad I didn’t eat breakfast and even up to getting of the transport I was almost about to give up on the Inca Trail but this was the major highlight and focus of this trip, I just had to give it a go.  I had gone a little fitter and done a lot of high altitude hiking to prepare so it couldn’t go to waste.

We started at Chillca and I was rugged up as I felt cold, this didn’t last long however once we set out. We met our assistant guide Miguel along with the porters and the cooks for the hike.

Our first stop after 1 hour was the Piskaccuchu site which can’t really be seen from the train nearby. We cursed those who catch the train for unless they are old, too young or sick they are slack. We learnt about how the different levels were to set up for farming most of the time and faced east.

At this point Kelly’s feet started blistering and the thongs (flip flops) had to come out – somehow Kelly managed to not throw her hiking boots over the mountain. Luckily I had broken in my hiking boats during the trip already – you need to prepare.

From here we moved onto the Llactapata site in order to get there we had our first hard climb of the hike, it was at this point I learned to love the walking sticks – THANK YOU KELLY FOR SAYING WE NEED TWO WALKING STICKS.

Lunch was our first meal prepared by the cooks, unfortunately I couldn’t eat anything. I did however realise At this point that with my system shutdown I might not have to use the Bano (toilet) a big bonus.

We got to the Wayllabamba campsite early around 3 pm and I sat down with Emma and watched Gareth and Andrew messing around – way too much energy.

Again I can’t eat dinner but I did manage a snack for tea (we get 4 meals in one day to maintain our energy).  Lack of food might impact me at some point in this multiple day hike.  We were very luckily with the weather today no rain at all despite threatening.