The main highlight of my trip to Peru was the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu through SAS Travel that I did with my friend Nicole. We picked this trek because it’s a little more difficult than the Inca Trail and less traveled. We had two trek mates from Australia, Peter and Marie who were just lovely to share this experience with as well as our guide, Ruben and 5 porters (cook, ass. cook, waiter, horse wrangler and ass. horse wrangler.) The picture above is the beginning of the trek. You can see the gorgeous glacier in the background which is where we were headed. The first day was completely uphill and got a lot colder as we went. By the time we made it to our campsite it was raining which later in the night turned to snow. It was absolutely amazing waking up to the snow (and rare according to our guide. He had only seen snow about twice before and he’s been doing the trek for 12 years now!) The beginning of the second day we continued upward to reach our highest point at 4600m on Abra Salkantay mountain. During this time I was experiencing some altitude sickness which made the morning 4 hour hike miserable. This didn’t take away from the beauty of hiking through the snow. The third picture below is at the top of the Abra Salkantay. You can see the rock offerings given by all the people that have made this trek. The last picture is Mount Salkantay which is Cusco’s second highest peak at 6,264m.
More pictures to come tomorrow!
