Albums | Admin Console

Ancascocha Trek 2018

The Ancascocha Trek is a 5 day trek to Machu Picchu. I did it through Action Peru Treks. Highly recommended.

The rest of my Peru pictures can be found here.

The trek started in a little village called Soqma. The Perolniyoc waterfall and ruins The Perolniyoc ruins Our first camp site The view from my tent We had a dining tent. In addition to serving us three meals/day, they also served us snacks. The cook was somehow able to make a birthday cake! We generally started the day around 5:30 AM If you look closely, you can see two hikers near the top of the mountain making their lives significantly more difficult. After the first day, we were the only trekkers on the trail. It was great. Our guide said that would be true in the high season too. Veronica. It's over 19,000 feet tall. We spent the second night camping near an abandoned school They woke us up every morning with coca tea. It was supposed to help with the altitude. Lake Ancascocha Our guide had intended to make a coca leaf offering here at Huayanay Pass (14,924 feet), but we skipped that due to weather/schedule. Also, I climbed a nearby hill so I'm sure I got above 15,000 feet. We camped near the Paucarcancha ruins on the third night. The weather cooperated and I did a little bit of astrophotography A fairly typical breakfast. Pretty good for camping. Day 4 was pretty much all downhill Veronica again I believe these are the Wayllabamba ruins The climate became even drier, and we started to see cacti at this point. You can see the Inca trail in this picture They don't take horses on the Inca trail, so there are lots of porters carrying 30kg backpacks... Back to civilization! We took a van to Ollantaytambo, then a train to Aguas Calientes. Our van had to briefly pull over on account of this funeral. We spent night 4 at Hotel La Cabana Machu Picchu! We heard a bunch of shrieks, then realized someone up there fell. We later saw that person on a stretcher in the back of a pickup truck. It's hard to see in this picture, but there are multiple different types of wall construction at Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is located in a rainforest, and I visited in the shoulder season, so the weather was pretty inconsistent. I walked down to the "Inca Bridge", which was significantly less crowded It was also really unsafe. Narrow paths of wet rocks, huge dropoffs, no guardrails. I'd be surprised if this is still open 10 years from now. I climbed up Wayna Picchu Mountain. Our guide said he could climb the mountain in 23 minutes. I tried to beat him. I failed, but I'm still convinced in good conditions I could beat him. It wasn't a traditional hike. It was mostly stair climbing. These Inca stairs were not designed for my gringo feet!
riGallery v0.1.0