salkantay trek to machu picchu, peru

What were we thinking?
While sitting at a vegan cafe, we met a couple of guys from California. They told us that they had just come back from their Salkantay trek to Macchu Pichu of which they had done on their own rather than with a tour. We had been thinking of doing a tour which would cost us around $500 AUD. "Ooooh man, it was beautiful," they said, "Just do it on your own maaan. If you went with a tour you would literally be paying someone to walk with you. It's so easy, it's impossible to get lost. It was so beautiful man. We can send you the maps." "Sounds good," we thought, keen to save a few hundred bucks. "If these guys can do it, so can we."

The guys sent us the maps, we hired a tent, rain jackets, hiking shoes, walking sticks and a backpack. We knew the nights might not be so comfortable so we packed some liquor too. And we were set.


Day 1:
We were confident and excited. The views were beautiful, the sun was shining and when we began to feel tired we took our packs off and snacked on our dried mango and dried peaches. The climbs were big and the altitude was high but we were happy to push through. Then it started to rain. We tried to stay positive, and we did for each other, but it was getting hard with a 14kg backpack and plastic bags over Kassandra's hands.

Night began to fall and we were nowhere near our stop for the night. We couldn't afford the time to take rest breaks any more and we found ourselves trekking through dusk. Neither of us wanted to be negative to one another... which meant we just didn't say anything for those last few kilometres. We eventually found a camp, which even after trekking over 20 km's that day, was still short of where we were meant to be staying.

It wasn't until we had set up camp, our hips aching, our shoulders burning and our feet wet, soggy, muddy and blistered, did we finally admit to one another that we weren't enjoying ourselves. "How the fuck did those guys say they enjoyed this?!" We confessed. On top of that, we didn't have sleeping mats, so we slept on the cold, hard, damp ground.


Day 2:
We got out of our sleeping bags at sunrise, and while slipping our feet into our cold, muddy hiking shoes, we said, "I cannot believe we have to trek even further today."

We put our backpacks on our burning shoulders and got on with it. We were starting to throw questions to one another, "If you could give a donkey your pack for the rest of the trek, would you do it?" "Would you pay a guy to carry your pack right now like they do on the tours?"

We stopped into a place to have lunch. The lady told us that she wasn't serving lunch so were were forced to fuel our hike on Pringles and Oreos. During our "lunch" break, the conversation went to "If you were rich, would you pay for a helicopter to pick you up right now?" "Yes."

After trekking about another 15km's, we were still very veryfar from where we were meant to be camping for the night. We took a rest break and just as we were wondering how on earth we were going to finish the trek, a Colectivo drove past and asked if we wanted to go to Santa Teresa, which is one of the stops. "SI!" we cried and we threw our walking sticks into the van. Never in our lives had we been so relieved.

We were taken much further than our designated stop. We could have stayed at Santa Teresa, but we were so close to Aguas Caliente (the finish line) that we decided to just push through and do it. Night fell and we ended up trekking 25km's in that one day. We got to Aguas Caliente at 8:30pm and limped into the closest hostel we could find.

We collapsed on the bed and complained to one another about our aching joints and feet. But we did it. We had trekked around 45km's in two days.



After thoughts

So it turns out that what we had done was actually pretty badass. We spoke to a few people that knew the trek and they were very surprised that we had attempted it on our own. As much of a challenge as it proved to be, we are very happy that we did it. Our only advise would be to stay positive.