Inca Trail Day 4 ~ Roaming Rocks

We had a 2:45am wake-up call with the expectation that we needed to be down at this gate by 3:05am. It was pouring rain and Elio wanted to make sure that a) we were the first ones down to the gate so we could sit on the benches that were under the covered area and b) that we were out of camp so that the porters could catch their 5am train back to Cusco.

We made it by 3:10am which I thought was pretty impressive to be honest. Of course our group was first! We had our rain ponchos on and head lamps on and we were ready to rock!

The gates opened at 5:30am and we were off. We had a 2 hour hike to get to the Sun gate which would give us our first view of Machu Picchu.

All of the other groups filed behind us. Unlike other days, there would be no stopping for catching my breath. I was not going to lose my group and I was too excited to get to Machu Picchu to stop. At first we walked on rolling hills and aside from the slippery rocks from the rain, the walk wasn’t bad.

Then we got to what is called the Gringo Killers. I didn’t get any pictures of these steps but found this one on Trip Advisor. The stairs were steep and you literallly needed to crawl up them. There were about 100 steep stairs to climb and then we continued on a steep incline to the Sun Gate for about 20 minutes. Then, without much warning we turned the corner and this was our view:

Which quickly turned to this:

But that was totally ok! We did it! We made it! This trip wasn’t about the perfect picture I would take when I got here. The journey to arrive at the Sun Gate was what mattered to me and let me tell you that every step I took, every mountain I summit-ted, every time I couldn’t breath, every rain drop that fell on us, every butterfly that flew near me, every change of landscape ~ every second of every day was better than I could have hoped for and I couldn’t be more proud of myself for getting here. I am thankful for my guides Ed, Elio and Judy who helped me along on those challenging moments, reminding me to not take things too seriously and to BREATHE for Ed B who stuck with me when I was bringing up the rear and reminded me not to forget to take in the views, for Nicole B who was the perfect scribe and brains of the group and for Katie our impromptu Yoga instructor and best roommate for a trip like this, who put up with more poop conversations then any one person should have to hear. The 11 hikers of our group and our 19 porters: the Orange Crushers – we accomplished something to definitely be proud of and I will never forget them.

Soon enough, the clouds opened and we got our view.

We then walked down to the ruins and Ed and Elio gave us a very informative tour. A lot of the info they gave us had been discussed previously at other ruins along the hike but there was something sacred about Machu Picchu that made it special.