Salkantay Trek - Day 3

At 4am or so we awoke to the sound of roosters but rolled over and tried to sleep another hour because it was still dark outside and had just started to rain. Around 5:30am we awoke to mist/rain but decided to hike anyway. The going was pretty straight forward - we followed a road down river, removing boulders along the way for passing vehicles. There was a huge drop off - we were amazed that vehicles even attempted to drive the road.

The weather improved significantly and by 9am we were both in shorts and t-shirts, drying out our tent and other gear on the outside of our packs. The scenary changed very quickly from mountain tundra to jungle-like vegetation. We spotted an avocado tree and beat the branches with my trekking poles until one fell and snagged a couple oranges as well. Walking past some of the locals in La Playa, we spotted a fruit that we thought was an orange but it turned out to be a very sweet fruit with a hard exterior (kind of like an egg shell), and an interior that looked like seeds housed in larve. It looked so weird that we went back to the person that sold it to us to make sure it was edible. Yep, it sure was and boy was it sweet! Really tasty but definitely wouldn´t be appealing to people in the States.

About three miles from the end of the hike we popped out at some ruins and got our first glimpse of Maccu Picchu. We snapped some photos, and made our long (3,000ft) descent in three miles (with a dog following us the entire way) to the train station at the end of our hike, only to find that the next tourist bus wouldn´t leave until the morning. Boo. So after hiking over 14 miles, we had to hike another 6-7 miles in the dark along the railroad tracks to get into town. We were both extremely sore, tired and hungry. The plus side of walking the tracks vs. taking the train was that we got to see some wild parrots and fireflies! After arriving in Agua Calientes, we found our hostel (thank God they had a room as we arrived a day early) took a cold shower (the hot water ran out after 2min) and spoiled ourselves to a three course meal that was delicious. We walked around town and crashed hard at 11pm. Oh, by the way, the ice cream (gelato) is to die for!