Day 4 started at 5:45am with an 1:30 ride to breakfast where we had a bagged breakfast with instant coffee and teas. The breakfast was some fruit and and ham and cheese sandwhiches. This is where I got to meet Bill, Cindy and Brien for real. They are really nice people and all athletic or avid backpackers. Bill and Cindy are married and they basically are just finishing up taking a year off from work to travel the world. They've been all over the place. It is very impressive. Cindy keeps her own blog at The Blonde Wanderer.com and it would be better for you to go there and see what they've done than for me to explain it for you. She's obviously a much more professional blogger than I am so I should probably take some pointers. All the same I guess plain and simple is my own style so I may as well stick with what I know. By the way they are from San Francisco but I believe Cindy is originally from Phoenix and Bill is originally from Chicago. This segues in to Brian who is Cindy's friend from Phoenix. Brian is very athletic (both Bill and Brian have run marathons) and has hiked the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim several times. He was definitely the powerhouse of the group and was well ahead of time on getting to each of the destinations. Even on my best I could never have expected to keep up with him. He works for Intel and was on the end of a sabatical, lucky him. The three of the them are similar age to me though of course Cindy is younger. They were very supportive of my only halfway in shape self. All of us carried all our own gear which was different from the vast majority of the hikers along the trail.
After this stop it was another 1:30 or so ride to the entrance to the park at KM 82. All along the ride there were lots of incredible mountain views and we even got a few glimpses of the various glaciers up in the very high mountains. You will only see snow and ice on the mountains over 15000 feet tall in Peru because of their proximity to the equator. The ride was long but still interesting and fortunately the driver felt very safe even with the winding mountain roads.
We signed into the park with our passports and basically started to hiking right away. The first part of the trail is very much a dirt path with occasional stones and was Peruvian flat as Justino put it, which means that it was a bit of up and a bit of down, wash, rinse, repeat...We hiked for the better part of a couple hours with some minor stops along the way. We hit the ruins of Llactapata where Justino gave us a bit of history about the location and we got a bit of a rest.
After that stop we had longer hike to our lunch location where the porters had to set up a camp. We had asparagus soup as a starter then chicken in a light tomato sauce with spaghetti and a stuffed avocado, which was very impressive, as sides.
After lunch the remainder of the way was mostly climbing. It was tiring but this set us up to start ahead of most of the other tours on day 2 of the hike. The majority of other hikers actually stop for the day where we had lunch. The climb was a couple more hours and even then we made both the lunch and the evening camps ahead of the porters so had to wait a little bit for things to be set up. The rest was very welcome and since we were far ahead of the other groups the camp site was mostly quiet. There were two tour groups that traveled as far as we did. One was an Australian couple and the other was a much larger group, probably the full 16, that was mostly Australian as well oddly enough.
At about 6pm we had happy hour where they served teas and coffee and we played cards for the better part of the time with Justino. It was fun. Then they served dinner which was Lomo Saltado (again but it was much better than the same meal from Paititi) with rice, potatoes vegetables and cauliflower, all in all a very impressive spread. The chef is apparently trained in culinary school though I am not sure how you get trained on a camp stove so well in class.
After dinner we basically got ourselves prepped up and headed to bed for the night. This was only my second time sleeping out of doors (the first being a trip to Sacco, Maine where we were beset by mosquitos for the entire trip). Our tents were on a slight downslope and my sleeping bag would slip down on the mattress pad every so often but all the same I slept well enough. I think it might have been about 40F or so for the night and I did wear my winter cap but I am not sure if it was necessary. During happy hour and dinner I was the one guy not wearing a jacket or extra layers at the least but I really didn't find it to be cold being from up here around Boston I guess.
I am going to apologize for what I've missed because I will be writing these posts from notes I took on my iPhone.
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