Author: James Handlon

Overseas Traveller, Would-be Mountaineer, Skier, Hiker & Occasional Idiotic Adventurer.

The Inca Trail – Ascent to Llulluchapampa

On By James HandlonIn Trekking The Inca Trail to Machu PicchuLeave a comment
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Climbing away from Llaqtapata and starting the trek to Camp 2 at Llulluchapampa 3840m

The next morning we awoke to some truly dazzling mountain scenery as the clear summits revealed themselves to us one by one in the early morning sunshine.

Llactapata was quiet and very still this morning, we could hear birdsong and the soft wind rustling the leaves in the trees along the valley floor. The hordes that trek The Inca Trail rarely stop here in their haste to reach ‘Dead Woman’s Pass’ a day earlier than our little team were prepared to do and that decision by us was already beginning to look like it was paying dividends. Continue reading “The Inca Trail – Ascent to Llulluchapampa” →

The Inca Trail – Km82

On By James HandlonIn Trekking The Inca Trail to Machu PicchuLeave a comment
KM82
The famous start of The Inca Trail with our team all gathered beneath the Km82 sign

Piscaycucho also known as Km82 is the start of the Classic Inca Trail and it is where we met our porters and treking crew for the start of the trail. We’d arrived here earlier via a short, dusty and very bumpy drive along a potholed and lumpy track.

This little expedition however had almost not got off the ground at all as we had waited for almost three hours that morning at our hotel in Ollantayambo waiting to meet our guide and driver who had inexplicably managed to get lost on the way to pick us up! Not a very audacious start to a five day trek in the high mountains being guided one might think. Continue reading “The Inca Trail – Km82” →

The Inca Trail – Along The Sacred Valley

On By James HandlonIn Trekking The Inca Trail to Machu PicchuLeave a comment
The magnificent backdrop and setting of Ollantaytambo
The magnificent backdrop and setting of the inca city of Ollantaytambo

We awoke early in the morning ready to catch the minibus up The Sacred Valley. To get us to the trailhead we had been booked onto a day tour up the valley to the Incan settlement of Ollantaytambo which also enabled us to see some of the ancient sites and structures along the way. Continue reading “The Inca Trail – Along The Sacred Valley” →

The Inca Trail – Arrival in Cusco

On By James HandlonIn Trekking The Inca Trail to Machu PicchuLeave a comment
Cusco
Looking across the rooftops of Cusco as far as the barriadas in the distance

We left London Heathrow on the 22.40 p.m. flight bound for Bogota where we would catch a plane to Lima and from Lima onward to our final destination of Cusco in the Peruvian mountains. Arriving the following morning in the former Inca capital of Southern Peru we had a day to explore this utterly charming city despite suffering from some awful jet-lag. Continue reading “The Inca Trail – Arrival in Cusco” →