We had booked our Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchú for May 2023, way back in October of 2022, not realising at the time that this would be our final adventure in South America. What a spectacular way to finish! Following the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is without a doubt one of the most special things we’ve done. 

A Pilgrimage Of Sorts

The hiking route we’ll be taking over the next four days is a pilgrimage trail taken by the Incas over 500 years ago. It feels like we’ve been on our own pilgrimage of sorts over these past few months, circling around the ancient Incan Empire. Starting at the far reaches of their empire at the Quilmes settlement in Northern Argentina, on to the sacred Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia where the Incan people believed their society was born and along the North Incan road that runs the length of Ecuador, and now here in Peru.

We’ve finally arrived on Cusco’s storied steps, ready to begin our journey to the royal retreat of Machu Picchu, the most popular tourist destination on the continent and one shrouded in legend and mystery.

The weather has other ideas. When we arrive in Cusco the rain is steady and unrelenting, and the cold bites through our jackets and hats. Our Airbnb is not equipped for the weather either, with the only source of heat the gas stove where we make cup after cup of coca tea in the vain hope of warming up and adjusting to the altitude.

Alpaca Expeditions

“We haven’t seen this kind of weather in 20 years.” This was the reaction of one of the locals to the snowfall the night before our 4-day trek to Machu Picchu. As we gaze out on the snow-covered peaks surrounding Cusco, we wonder what surprises the mountains have in store for us.

Our guides for the trek, Javier and Henry, make us feel right at home at the briefing session the night before our trek. Cups of coca tea are passed around as we meet the other intrepid adventurers taking on the famous Inca Trail. Our curling friends from Toronto, Tash and Tony, have joined us for this leg of the journey, and there are another ten chicos and chicas that make up our group. Roughly half are from the US, allowing the rest of us to constantly make fun of their lack of knowledge of the metric system. In fact the whole group clicks right away, and we can tell this will be a fun week.

We’ve chosen Alpaca Expeditions for our Inca Trail trek, a locally-owned company in Cusco with a commitment to ensuring the health and well-being of their porters and staff, as well as minimizing the impact the tens of thousands of tourists that visit Machu Picchu every year have on the environment.

Gone are the days of porters staggering under the weight of 40 or 50kg loads. The national park staff regularly weigh the porters’ bags to make sure they’re within set limits, meaning each of us is limited to a maximum of 3kg for the porters to carry – the rest goes in our daypacks (or stays home). For our trek we’ll have 22 porters carrying our gear, the dining tents, all of the food, as well as a port-a-potty dedicated to our group (which is a relief given what we’ve heard about the toilets along the trail). While we normally carry all of our own gear, this trek will be reaching altitudes over 4,000 metres, with plenty of up, down, up, and up some more along the way. We will happily accede to the professional porters in this case – carrying our 4kg daypacks will be hard enough.

In fact one of our group couldn’t make the briefing session due to altitude sickness – they’d done a local hike that day, and he was at his hotel extremely green around the gills. He would not be the last of us to succumb. These altitudes are not to be trifled with.

Following The Inca Trail To Machu Picchu: An Incan Primer

So who were these Incas, what is the Inca Trail, and what makes Machu Picchu so special? These are all questions that we had upon our arrival to Cusco. Full disclosure – we’ve seen a lot of amazing things in our five months in South America, and we probably didn’t do the amount of reading that we should have before we arrived here. But better late than never! We quickly dusted off our Google hats and pressed the “Tell me everything” key on our laptop.

The Inca Empire was a vast and highly sophisticated civilization that flourished in the Andean region of South America between the 13th and 16th centuries. Their empire stretched across nearly 4,000 kilometers and included parts of present-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina. The Incas were renowned for their impressive architecture, engineering, and agricultural techniques, as well as their complex social organization and religious beliefs.

The downfall of the Inca Empire came quickly, in the early 16th century, when Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro arrived in the Andean region. The bizarre thing is that Pizarro and his men numbered less than 200, with perhaps a dozen horses, and yet they were able to utterly conquer the Incan army, with its tens of thousands of soldiers, in a matter of days. How could this be?

The first meeting between the Inca and the Spanish likely sealed their fate. Atahuallpa, the 13th (and final) Incan emperor, could not fathom that a tiny, dishevelled group like these Spanish could possibly threaten such a mighty empire as his. Remember, at this point the Incan Empire was at its peak, stretching thousands of kilometres along the western coast of South America. Atahuallpa was expecting this to be nothing more than a diplomatic meeting between the two leaders, an opportunity to demonstrate his might. Instead, the Spanish attacked and killed thousands of his soldiers, and took Atahuallpa hostage. Once the ransom had been agreed and collected (rooms of gold and silver) they killed him anyway, likely because they were afraid of being killed trying to escape. Leaderless, many of the Inca soldiers surrendered without raising a spear. Complete capitulation soon followed. The Incas were forced to abandon their way of life, and much of their culture and knowledge was lost.

With no written language, much of the detail of their day-to-day life remains a mystery. But we do know that Cusco was the administrative, political, and military capital of the Inca Empire. (We cover a bit more about the city in our Cusco post). Just as “All Roads Lead To Rome,” quite literally all of the 40,000km of Incan roads and trails criss-crossing the Andes and surrounding plains eventually lead back to the central square of Cusco. Today you can still walk on the four main roads leading out of Cusco towards each of the four provinces of the Empire. (And in fact, a big chunk of the Pan American Highway is built on an Incan road).

We will be following one of these trails on our trek to Machu Picchu. Located high in the Andes, Machu Picchu is perched on a mountain ridge 2,400m (8,000 feet for the Yanks) above sea level and about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Cusco. The exact purpose of Machu Picchu remains a mystery, but it’s believed to have been a royal retreat for Inca rulers and their entourage. It was built during the mid-15th century, at the height of the Inca Empire’s power. The site was abandoned following the arrival of those pesky Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, and remained hidden high in the mountains known only to a few locals until it was rediscovered by American archaeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911.

Day One: An Early Start

We’re picked up from our Airbnb at 4:30am, with the rain continuing to fall. For the next 2 hours we get to know our trekking group a bit better, sleep, and make offerings to the Incan gods for the rain to stop.

At about 7am we stop at the “Porter’s House” near Ollantaytambo for breakfast. The porters we’ll be using on the trek are all local people, ranging in age from 18 to 50(!!). When Alpaca realized that some of them were having to walk through the night to get to the pickup point, they built this set of buildings so that they can walk here the day before, have a good night’s sleep and breakfast before starting the trek.

After breakfast our guide Javier apologizes for the delay. The snow on the mountain has blocked the road, so some of our porters are stuck on top of the mountain and aren’t going to be able to come with us. Javier’s working on finding some extra porters for us.

Eventually the porters have been organized, all of the gear is packed up and we’re ready to get back on the road. We drive for about another 45 minutes, when suddenly the driver pulls the bus over to the side of the road. After a brief discussion our second guide Henry explains that there’s just been a landslide that’s blocking the road. We all look at each other: Does this mean we’re walking from here?

Luckily it seems there’s another way, as the driver wheels the bus around and we take ‘the high road’ around the landslide. Thankfully it seems no-one has been hurt. Life here in the mountains is hard, and the people are incredibly resilient.

We reach “Kilometre 82”, which marks the start of our Inca Trail trek. We don our wet weather gear and all the warm clothes we have, and several of us buy extra ponchos to augment the ones Javier’s already provided. But miraculously and as if on cue, the weather begins to clear.

As we walk down to the Park entrance sign, we cross a set of railway tracks. A train blows its whistle as it approaches and the stray dogs wandering on the tracks reluctantly move aside. Every day this train brings up to four thousand day trippers along the Urubamba River all the way to the base of Machu Picchu in a little less than 2 hours. We’ll be taking this train back home again four days from now, but for now we take some pictures at the sign and start walking.

The Alpaca team classes today’s hike as ‘Moderately Difficult’. Starting at an elevation of 2,700m, we’ll hike for around 6 hours and gain about 600m of elevation over 14km. This is sort of the “Are you scared yet?” day, because we all know what Day 2 brings. But we’re doing our best to live in the moment, and enjoy the initial “Peruvian flat” (which means lots of up and down, but no real elevation gain).

A view back at our porters walking across the river. Train line on the left side of the picture goes to Machu Picchu

After a few hours we reach our first of many Incan ruins; this is Patallacta.

This structure was used as a checkpoint on the way to Machu Picchu, and would have housed many travellers and soldiers. We know that the Inca Trail we’re following was protected by multiple forts and lookouts: nearby we visit one of these forts called Huillca Raccay. This large Incan ruin is at the meeting point of three valleys. One leads to Machu Picchu, one to Lima and one to Cusco. Further on we have views of the massive Mount Veronica.

Another three hours of hiking follows, and we reach camp as the sun is setting and lighting the snow-capped mountains with a beautiful pink glow.

16 tired hikers gratefully pile into the dining tent and dig in to the first of many delicious meals by “Sexy Walter” our chef and his talented team. Tonight it’s a huge meal of soup, grilled trout, curry chicken and rice, and mixed vegetables (and of course dessert). We all give our first spoonful of soup to Pachamama (Mother Earth) to ask for good weather on the trail.

The sky is full of stars but it’s cold and we’re all weary so it’s not long before we sort out the bedding in our tents and crash for the night. It rains a little as we go to sleep and we hope our gift to Pachamama works for the next day.

Day Two: An Earlier Start

Even the name, “Dead Woman’s Pass”, fills one with feelings of dread. The fact that it doesn’t refer to an actual woman who died there, but rather the profile of the mountain range, does little to quell our fears.

Looking ahead to Dead Woman’s Pass

This morning is an even earlier start, as this will be our toughest and longest day. Today we’ll cover 16km over at least ten hours of hiking, all of it above 3,000m. We’re up before 5 and on the trail by 6am.

At 4,200m, Dead Woman’s Pass is a high, high mountain pass, with an approach of 4-5hrs of non-stop “up” and an elevation gain of almost 1,000m from our camp. We leave camp and immediately the stairs begin. You know how when you watch a show about climbing Everest, everyone seems to be moving super slowly? That’s because everything at this altitude is hard. After a dozen steps up we’re breathing hard, and after a few minutes it’s time for a break to catch our breath. We pretend that we’re stopping to take pictures, but actually it’s so we don’t pass out.

 A porter passes a resting Al. Mount Veronica in the distance.

And why wouldn’t we be taking pictures? The scenery is unbelievable. Behind us we see towering mountains with the snowline etched across the top third of their peaks. We gradually reach the snow, and the stone steps become icy and slippery. By the time we reach the pass, the snow is at least a foot deep, and the porters gleefully build a snowman. It’s 11am and it’s perfectly clear with snow on the surrounding mountains. Luckily the pass is open. If we’d got here and been snowed in we would have had to go back the way we came and catch the train to Machu Picchu.

Same view, but above the snowline this time

Made it!

Dead Woman’s Pass looking towards the next valley where we’re heading 

After five hours of constant up, our bodies don’t quite know what to make of constant down. One direction saves the lungs but kills the knees; the other saves the knees but bursts the lungs. The steps are icy and slick, and more than one of us has a spill in the early going. Luckily no injuries.

The descent begins

We’re constantly passed by porters practically sprinting downhill, getting ahead of us to set up for lunch. Every day the porters set up the kitchen and dining tents for lunch, then pack them back up and haul them to our campsite where they set them back up again. I’ll say it again, these guys are tough. For about half of them this is the first time acting as a porter on the Inca Trail – surely they must be thinking “What did we sign up for here?”

This descent gives up nearly all of the altitude we’ve gained this morning. We stop for lunch at 3,500m; another beautiful spread of food laid out by Walter and co. After lunch we laze in the sun for half an hour, allowing our sore muscles to recover. We have a second pass to cross this afternoon, which means ascending back up to 4,000m. This trail was designed by the Incas to be a pilgrimage. If we wanted the easy way, we’d be walking beside the train line on the original administrative trail.

This second pass is significantly easier than the first, perhaps because it’s only 2hrs up and 2hrs back down. Or perhaps we’re just delirious. As we descend out of this pass we enter the rainforest, and the flat rocks of the Inca road wind along the mountainside, built into the wall of the cliff.

Late in the day as the sun is starting to set, we reach an amazing site built into the hill. The Quechua name Sayacmarca means “difficult to access” and it’s easy to see why.

The sun is central to Incan life and at each site there is evidence of its importance. We’re beginning to understand that these sites were not chosen randomly. Here, the large rock shrine at the centre of the site has been specifically designed so that as the sun rises over the mountain to the east, its rays will exactly hit the top of the rock on the longest day, the summer solstice.

Solstices were incredibly important to the Inca, but why? As an agrarian people, understanding when the summer solstice occurred each year helped them to plant and harvest at the right time. Equally importantly, they believed that at the winter solstice, the sun was at risk of going away altogether. They would make sacrifices and offerings at this time to convince the sun to stick around (Which clearly worked). Their calendar could account for the cycles of both the sun and the moon, but they were not able to predict eclipses which they viewed as an omen. During times of eclipses animal and occasionally human sacrifices would be made to appease the gods. And let’s not even talk about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. These would always require some sort of sacrifice.

The clouds move quickly here; one minute the site is completely clear, and then everything is shrouded in a blanket of fog. As we make our way from the site towards our campsite for the night we look back to the ruins and realise just how remote it is, perched up on the ridge half way up the mountain. It hardly looks real.

Day Three: An “Easy” Day

This morning we sleep in, waking up at 5:30am to a beautiful sunrise over the mountains. Today we find there are more groups on the trail. Usually this would be frustrating as we often like to feel like we have the wilderness to ourselves. But somehow it seems right, Iike we’re all on a pilgrimage in the same way that people walked along here at the height of the Inca empire.

Javier suggests that we take an alternative route across the mountainside, the Bingham path. This is the route Hiram Bingham (the American archaeologist credited with “rediscovering” Machu Picchu in 1911) took when he was led to Machu Picchu by Pablito, the 11-year old son of a local family.

The path gives us sweeping views over a valley to the mountain range beyond and eventually leads to a point where we can see Huayna Picchu Mountain and part of the Machu Picchu ruins. Javier points out where the Sun Gate is, our entry point into Machu Picchu tomorrow morning.

As we descend to camp through the rainforest, there are lots of beautiful flowers and even some orchids in bloom with the end of the rainy season. We pass (another) set of ruins and make our way into camp. This campsite is located just outside the park gates, so most trekking groups end up here on their final night. There are over 200 like-minded hikers here with us, but the site is well-organized and we don’t feel crowded at all.

For lunch Sexy Walter has a special treat for us: Lomo Saltado, which just may be the national dish of Peru. Lomo is basically “meat,” and saltado is sauteed. So, stir-fried beef with some vegetables is the order of the day.

After lunch, we walk just five minutes from camp to one of the most spectacular sites we’ve seen. The Winya Wanyu (“Forever Young”) ruins are a huge area of buildings and terraces built into a narrow mountain valley. This was the last stop for pilgrims on their way to Machu Picchu.

These terraces are another example of the incredible mastery that the Inca had over farming the Andean environment. The terraces are built as retaining walls with four layers within them to ensure effective drainage in the downpours of the rainy season: Larger stones lined the bottom, with layers of smaller stones and river sand providing good drainage in heavy rains. A layer of topsoil completed each terrace. The large terraced walls act as a heat sink, trapping heat from the sun during the day and slowly releasing it through the cooler nights, protecting the crops from frost and changes in temperature.

We’re thankful for an easier day today. After another monstrous dinner we all retire early, the excitement for tomorrow palpable.

Day Four: The Earliest Start

This morning we wake up at 3:15am. The plan is to break camp quickly and get on our way, for two reasons.

The first reason is that our porters have to pack up everything and get it down to the train station at Aguas Calientes to catch the first train of the day. Locals are only allowed on two trains a day, one at 6:30am and the other at 6:30pm. If they don’t make the early train they’ll have to walk 8 hours to the Km 82 point where we started, so they can get the bus back to the Porter’s House and ultimately home. We all want to make sure they make that train, so we’re out of our tents and ready to go quickly.

The second reason is that we want to be one of the first groups at the park checkpoint. The entrance doesn’t open until 5:30am, and there is limited covered seating available. If we don’t grab a bench, we’ll be sitting on the ground (and perhaps in the rain) while we wait for the checkpoint to open.

It takes just a few minutes to reach the park check point (and we get benches). After a subdued hour waiting in the dark, the gates open and we make our way onto this, the final section of the Inca Trail. We truly feel like pilgrims now, walking single file in the predawn on our way to the Sun Gate.

Pre-dawn camera shakes…

We walk along a reasonably flat Incan road cut into the mountainside and then suddenly a vista appears that takes each of us by surprise in turn. A beautiful pink glow emerges from the ridge of the snow-covered mountain range across the valley. Clouds fill the valley below formed by the steep mountainside. We gasp, try to take photos and videos but for the most part we’ll need to rely on our memories.

On the way to Machu Picchu the whole valley is filled with clouds. Javier suggests we stop to make a special offering to Pachamama at a specific site. One of our fellow hikers, Anne, has some coca leaves (miraculously!). Javier wrinkles up his nose in scorn and asks, “Where did you get these?”, like they’re the most inferior things he’s ever seen. But we make do. We each place three carefully selected leaves on to the large rock and hold them in place with a stone, and make a wish.

After about an hour we reach the famous Sun Gate, the ridge of the mountains from which pilgrims have their first clear view of Machu Picchu. But not today. Total cloud cover means there’s no sign of the site, but nothing can dampen our mood. We’ve had an incredible three days of mountain views and we’re all positive today will be the same.

As we come around the corner our wish seems to comes true. The weather is clearing. We walk another 20 minutes and suddenly the clouds move aside and Machu Picchu reveals itself below us.

We take a stack of photos, as the clouds migrate in and out of frame. Carson jokes that there’s a guy with a fog machine down there adding some atmosphere to the photos, and it kind of seems that way. The weather is a mixture of drizzle, clouds, clear and repeat. Ponchos are going on and coming off in a blur.

The Guacamoles giving the alpaca sign

There is definitely a spiritual quality to this place. Perhaps it’s that we’ve made it through a tough physical ordeal just to get here, but we all have a glow in our cheeks and in our hearts. Machu Picchu is perched on the saddle between two mountains and surrounded on all sides by towering mountain ranges, and the view is at times breathtaking and achingly beautiful.

The city is divided into two main sections: the agricultural sector and the urban sector. The agricultural sector consists of terraced fields that were used to grow crops, including corn, potatoes, and quinoa. At one point there’s an area used as a research station of sorts. Within this area of terraces protected from the cold and wind, the Incas tested crops from lower altitudes and encouraged them to grow at this high altitude.

The urban sector is made up of a series of buildings and plazas that were used for administrative, religious, and residential purposes. Perhaps 200 families lived here, of the highest class. All of the houses face east to wake up with the sun.

The buildings at Machu Picchu were constructed using a technique known as ashlar masonry, in which blocks of stone are cut and shaped to fit perfectly together without the use of mortar. The stones were quarried from nearby mountains and transported to the site using a system of ramps and pulleys. Some of the stones used in the construction of Machu Picchu weigh more than 50 tons.

Make no mistake: this complex is massive. We spend four hours wandering the site, but it feels like mere minutes. As we leave we’re treated to a view of the whole of Machu Picchu. We can see large areas still covered in jungle, and some buildings left as they were when Bingham first stumbled on the site in 1911.

Unrestored buildings in the foreground

We take the bus that winds down the serpentine road to Aguas Calientes at the bottom of the valley. We reach the river and look back up at the sheer cliffs and thick jungle. We can see no sign of the city from here; it’s not surprising it lay undiscovered by the Spanish and others for so many centuries.

We have one last lunch with the group, then get on the train back towards Ollantaytambo. It’s a beautiful train ride, but after all the amazing scenery we’ve had over the last few days we’re not taking much in. At the end of the line we board our Alpaca bus which takes us back into Cusco. We arrive at our hotel at 7:30pm exhausted but ecstatic.

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Our pilgrimage to the heart of the Incan empire complete, it seems only fitting that it’s also the end of our time in South America.

In A Nutshell: Following The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

• We booked our trek through Alpaca Expeditions. They were awesome.
• Try to spend at least a couple of days in Cusco before your trek begins, to acclimatize to the altitude. 
• If you continue having issues with the altitude, you can get altitude medication from any local pharmacy over the counter. They will know what to give you. Drink lots of water and coca tea, they help too.
• Listen to your tour guides as far as the amount and type of clothing that you should bring. They have done this before! 
• Bring or rent trekking poles. Your knees will thank you. 
• See our related post on Cusco for advice on where to stay and what to see!