Salkantay Trek - Day 1

Waking up at 4am to catch a 4:45am taxi was no easy feat after 30 hours or so of traveling, but knowing that we were going to finally be on the trail today kept our kept us awake. We arrived at the bus station with the intent to take a bus to Mollepata but ended up taking a taxi instead because he was ready to roll and it was dirt cheap. Back in Alaska, it´s about $7 for me to go from the airport to my apartment (no more than two miles) but it was only $10 for the two of us to go THREE HOURS to Mollepata. Crazy. I´m sure it was considered expensive by Peruvian standards.

After being dropped off in Mollepata, we asked in our best Spanish where the trail began and the taxi driver pointed us up the street in the direction of a hill. So we walked the cobble stone road which soon turned to dirt, asking people along the way if we were still heading in the right direction. We were until about 10am when we took a snack break. Stopping on the side of the road for a rest, a man in a truck pulled over, and from the little Spanish we knew, we could make out that we were going the wrong way. How is that possible? We were very reluctant at first to accept his offer for a ride, because we thought he might be just trying to make a buck, but then it dawned on us - there was a trail that took off from the road about 0.5mi back. So we hopped into his truck and tried to offer him some money but he refused. And then we were off!

It was uphill all the way to camp, about 3,000ft of elevation gain over 12 miles to get us to a little over 12,000ft. Thinking that we were at the camp located on the map, we asked two locals if it was okay to camp and they said, ¨Si, Si!¨so we set up our tents in front of an amazing view of Mt. Salkantay. We didn´t see many people on the first day - mainly locals until we started making dinner, then the hoards (two dozen or so) of people on horses and donkeys passed by our tent, signifying that we were at the wrong camp. We didn´t really care though, the other camp was insight and it would be more peaceful without a ton of people right beside us. It didn´t take long for us to pass out. I stayed awake until about 7pm journaling whereas Graham passed out about 6pm. At about 7:30pm I awoke with a start to stampeding horses outside and the owner of the property chasing them away from our tent. There was a crazy thunderstorm at 10am that woke us up (the lightning was so bright through our tent that it was blinding) and another one at 2am. Ah, I love storms :)