We decided to go to Machu Picchu through 4 day/3 night Inca Trail. This is a famous trail that before Covid would require a reservation before a couple of months but now we arranged it before 4 days. Nevertheless, it’s a popular trail done almost all year round, and little did we know that the day is going to be a surprise even for the experienced guides.
6 in the morning our guide knocked on the hotel door and picked us up. We sat in the van and met other travelers we are going with. Again, before covid cheaper tours would have 10-14 people, now it was just 4 of us, so we got a semi-private tour. We were lucky to meet two interesting guys. One of them was a 30-year-old Canadian who was already retired as he invested in crypto currencies early enough. Another guy was a Peruvian he met in the Amazonian jungle whose family is organizing shamanic ayahuasca rituals and he has a baby alligator as a pet. So we immediately understood that the hike is not going to be dull.
The plan was to take 2.5h van ride to the entrance of the trail. We approached a small town 15km from the trail to pick up our porters, 6 guys who would carry all the food, tents, and kitchen equipment throughout the trail. We were told that some of them are late because of some strikes that are going on. We waited for 1 hour before all the porters arrived. We started moving again and headed towards the exit of the town. The first unusual thing we saw was a granny putting wood on the road and setting it to flames. As we couldn’t pass it our porters jumped from the van, moved the wood and we continued going. After 2 minutes we approached the bridge to exit the town but it was barricaded by local people. They were striking and even being asked nicely didn’t let us pass, even town mayor was there. We were told that all town is barricaded and all trains and buses are not running. The locals were protesting high gasoline prices but to get the attention of the government they chose their target – tourists going to Machu Picchu.
We got the only reasonable choice to leave the van and walk an additional 15km on the Machu Picchu train track to the entrance of the trail, hoping that it won’t be barricaded in any way. In 20 years of going on this trail, our guide has never experienced such a thing. Our van driver told us that he won’t be able to come back to Cusco until it gets dark, as locals told him that they will throw stones if he tries to drive. It was a strange but overall nice walk. Despite the other problems, the weather was unusually good. Every 50m or so we would see entire trees, tires, stones put onto the train track, and roads to block it. It was a bit surreal. After around 3 hours we reached the entrance of the trail. There we met other groups of hikers who told us that the entrance is blocked as well and they cannot enter for a couple of hours already. It looked like we would need to camp there and wait for protests to end. However, in the end, they agreed to let us go which was a big relief.
We started Inca Trail with a lunch. Our porters set up tables and cook made amazing meals just in the middle of nature. It was an incredible luxury to have.
After that, we hiked until dawn. It was a relatively easy hike but we got treated with amazing mountain views as well as occasional abandoned Inca towns. When we arrived at the camp our tents were already made. The cook again made us an amazing dinner with an entry and desserts. We cheered for an eventful day and went to sleep. Tomorrow serious hiking begins.