South America Days 12-15 Inca Trek

Community Inca Trek 

When people talk about hiking "The Inca Trail", they are referring to the 'classic' trekking route that follows an ancient Inca pathway that leads directly to Machu Picchu. Many people don't realise that there are actually a huge number of Inca Trails, many of which are genuinely remote and rarely used by western tourists.  Unfortunately, the classic Inca trail has become a bit of a victim of it's own popularity, the trail is now very busy, with 500 people (the maximum allowed) starting the trek every day. 

We could have hiked the classic Inca trail but chose, along with the majority of our group, to hike an alternative Inca Trail -  Dragoman's Community Inca Trek in partnership with Andina Travel. It was a unique trekking route where we hiked through stunning unspoilt Andean mountains, walking ancient Inca Trails and passing though local communities. We didn't see another tourist until almost at the end of the trek on the last day. The trek we did was about the same distance as the classic Inca Trail, around 45km and three and a half days of walking. In the morning we visited some Inca ruins on the way to the start of the hike, Saqsayhuaman and Chinchero and then visited a weaving demonstration.  After lunch we started hiking.   The first afternoon of walking was fairly easy, just 6km staying pretty level at around 3500 metres.  We stayed the first night in a lovely but basic hostel in Zurite, a traditional small mountain village with cows, donkeys and sheep roaming the streets. 

Day two we had a full day of hiking, 12km up to a 4500m pass, Pass Kente, which was slow going because of the altitude.  After lunch we did some tree planting, helping a community reforestation project and then continued hiking descending to Cheqcheq, 4100m, to camp for the night in a beautiful setting.  Day three was another full day of hiking, 13km, climbing up to a higher pass, Puka Kassa, at 4700m then descending to Ancascocha, an old school complex which closed in 2010 where we camped for the night.  The plan is to try and raise enough money to recruit a new school teacher to reinstate the school with proceeds donated from the community treks.  The last day hiking was all downhill, 14km to Cami Kancha a small village community at around 2350m.  From there we got a bus to Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley and checked into a hotel for the night.  We were rejoined with four group members who chose not to hike and had another visit around some more Inca ruins in the town before heading out for a group meal, a very large group, thirty of us.

The views and scenery on the hike were absolutely stunning, spectacular views of snow capped mountain peaks appeared at the top of each pass. Our group had a team of three guides, four cooks and six muleteers.  We just carried day packs,  the mules carried all our spare gear, food and camping gear.  We also had two emergency 'ambulance' horses who walked at the rear of the group.   We were a large group, 23 of us, most of the time naturally splitting into a front, middle and back group depending on hiking speed.  Five new members of our group who joined just a day before the trek suffered a few altitude problems as they'd not had the time to acclimatise.

The food we were served each day was fantastic, we had nothing twice. We had cooked food for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus snacks.  Our guides, Jimmy, Smithy and Pierro, were also brilliant and very knowledgeable.  The added bonus for hiking a 'Community Inca Trek' is that not only do we have the trail to ourselves we are helping to give something back to local communities. The trek staff and pack animals are all from the local villages, so they directly benefit from our trekking.  A financial donation is made from the group kitty funds which is matched by Dragoman.  These donations help support a variety of local community projects, e.g. paying teacher wages for local community schools, financing health care visits and reforestation,  planting native plants in the area.

There are loads of photos from our hike so I'll post hike Day 1 photos below then  separate blog posts with days 2-4 photos.