April Adventures: Trek Day 1

We left for our hike on a Sunday morning, so we spent the night before getting organized, packing our bags, and trying to go to bed early for our 5 am pickup. The hike we booked included mules to carry most of our belongings, along with tents and cooking gear, and we just had to carry a ‘day pack’ with things we wanted access to while we hiked, like sunscreen and layers and snacks and our camera.They had given us canvas duffel bags for our mule bags, and we were able to fit everything in and stay under the 5 kilo (~12 lbs.) limit.

The next morning, the bus came early—a novel idea in Peru, but we pulled our things together and got on the bus half asleep. In the dark we saw a surprisingly large number of people wandering home from their night out as we circled through the streets of Cuzco, stopping at other hostels to pick up other hikers. In the end, there were 32 of us total, between two groups, and we had a three hour ride to Mollepata, the small town to the east of Cuzco that was our official departure point. Like most of our fellow passengers, we tried to sleep as the bus wound its way through the valleys around Cuzco. We did have an unexpected 45 minute stop due to some road construction, but we got to enjoy a beautiful view:

We arrived to Mollepata, ate breakfast, tried to wake up and slowly began to talk with our fellow travelers. After final preparations, we organized ourselves in the main square and set off with our guide, Juan Carlos.  In total, our group included six British guys in their 20s, three of whom were traveling together, a British couple in their 50s, a Peruvian couple from Lima, an Austrian couple and a single Austrian girl, in their twenties, another American couple a few years younger than us, and us. That is a total of 17, which is a big group, but we did have an assistant guide, Nilton, as well.  We set off and began a slow but steady climb upwards, as we had 700 meters in altitude to cover in the day, from 3100 in Mollepata to 3800 at our campsite of Collpapampa.

The day was beautiful and we got to enjoy lovely views like these:

The beginning of the hike was mostly on the dirt road that slowly ascended the mountains, interspersed with steeper shortcuts up the hill that eventually rejoined the road.   Here were some of the sites along the way:

We stopped for lunch at a little ramada where the guides and cook set up camp chairs and we were served soup, beef stir fry with rice, and herbal tea.  The cook and horsemen had arrived to the site ahead of us and started preparing the meal, but we still had a nice break from walking before we ate, and then a little rest before we continued. This is the view from our lunch spot:

As we continued to climb, we got closer and closer to Nevada Veronica, one of the higher, snow-covered mountains, which was a beautiful view:

Our path, however, eventually deviated from this heading and began heading east, towards the mountain we would approach the next day, Nevado Salkantay:

About 8 hours after we set off, including rest breaks and our lunch break, we crossed two final streams and found our campsite for the night.  If you squint or enlarge the photo below, you can see the yellow rectangle to the right, which was shelter area covered with tarps and a roof where our tents were set up, which helped a lot with the wind and the cold that night.

It was starting to get dark as we arrived, but we took advantage of the last light to sit by the stream and eat the peanut butter we had brought from the states with some bread to reward ourselves after the long day.  We got settled in our tents, had a snack and another good meal, and bundled up against the cold (3800 meters is high!), and went to bed early.