Salcantay - Machu Picchu // D1

The last week has been the most physically challenging event I've ever been through.

We woke up at 5:00AM on Thursday, after a terrible night sleep we felt exhausted but extremely excited. Bus picked us up at 5:30am we drove around collecting the other people that would be joining us throughout the trip, and headed towards Moyetapa. We arrived at around 8:00AM and had a light breakfast.

We trekked for 4 hours starting at an altitude of 3800 meters above sea level all the way to 4000 meters above sea level. We got to base camp and were definitely feeling the altitude. We unpacked our sleeping bags, and were assigned tents that were waiting for us. Lunch wasn't ready yet so we had some time to just sit down and get to know each other. We had lunch around 1:00pm, it was insanely good, no one expected the trek's food to be amazing but it was. 

After lunch we trekked to a lake right below the glacier of Salcantay, this was at an elevation of 4200m. Maxwell, Ben and I decided to take a swim, the water was 2°c so we dived in and rushed out faster. The water was freezing but the landscape was beautiful and the andean sun dried us and gave us warmth quite quickly. 

Lake beneath Salcantay Glaciar

We trekked down as the sun started setting. Ben and I were the slowest, mostly because of our altitude sickness, but it would be fair to say we were just whining the most too. We got to camp and it was night already we couldn't see anything. We got our headlamps from the tent and headed to diner. It was just 6:30PM but we were exhausted, we ate and then our guide "Simba" sent us all to bed. 

I was so tired I fell asleep immediately. However I woke up at around 3:30AM with an urgent need to pee, I was so cozy and warm, besides it was so dark that I decided to hold it, which lead to having intermittent sleep from 3:30AM until 5:20AM when we were woken.