June 17th, 2011

June 17^th, 2011

            Day 2. We hiked for 8 hours. The first hour or two was no indication of what lied ahead for us. We started on a dusty road and ended in a small town and taking little fruits with orange dye in them to paint our bodies before scaling mountains sides on parts of the Inca Trail, the stairs carved into the side of the mountain. The sights were breathtaking. My eyes almost couldn’t take in everything I was seeing when I looked out, and I couldn’t believe how high up we had climbed. But then again, yes I could, because I could feel the two hours of constant uphill in my quads.

            This day was amazing. And if you ask anyone of us who went on this trek, we will all maintain that one of our top highlights of the day was the guacamole we got at lunch. Best guacamole I have ever had, right there in the Peruvian jungle, and when eating it we could literally feel it being made only 5 minutes ago. I won’t lie, when the bread was gone, we were all scraping at the plates with our spoons to get the last of this guacamole. We still had considerable hour-age of hiking ahead of us, which would conclude at a hot spring. I only dipped my legs in, but the water sure was hot, and everyone had a great time changing into their bathing suits and hanging out here for a while. We opted to van the last leg to the hostel, which was only about 15 minutes from the hot spring, and I was thankful for this decision because I could feel my feet swelling.

            We got to our hostel, had some dinner, and then most of the crew went out to a discoteca that our guide knew about, which was the only discoteca in the town. I stayed in because I wasn’t feeling too good, and at this point the last thing I would want was to get sick and not be able to go to Machu Picchu. The next day was not going to be as long, or nearly as challenging, and we’d be able to sleep until after 9am, so going out that night wouldn’t do much damage to the next day. And I’m quite surprised there even was a discoteca, since there was essentially nothing in the town. But apparently it was only the gringos who were at the club anyway, and our group ran into the some of the people who had stayed at the same hostel as us the previous night. We would end up seeing these same people at our different stops all the way through Machu Picchu because we were all on similar multiple day excursions.