The Lares Trek is some distance from Machu Picchu, and is an alternate trek for those who haven’t booked in (slack Lara!) to the more well known ‘Inca Trail’ which is the last 80 or so km's ending right at MP. The two treks are quite different with the terrain and scenery varying a great deal. Another difference is that Lares goes through some local villages so there’s the opportunity to interact with Indigenous Quechuan people living how they do every day of the week, and how they have for the last few hundred years.
The trek is usually rated as more difficult that the Inca Trail, but I will have to wait and see at Christmas when I complete the traditional 'Inca Trail' with friends from home.
Day one we bussed out of The Navel of the World early in the morning through the Andes to the town of Lares, for a brief shakeout and lunch to prepare us for the first days walk. After chomping down some soup of some type and cold pasta we set out and stomped into the Lares Valley on a four hour hike up a gentle incline to our first camping site in a local village. On the way we picked up a hitchhiker in a local dog who obviously thought a meal may have come from the friendly gringos. Advised by our guide that we shouldn't feed the little fellow, he was going to be a disappointed little mut.
Our first camp camp site was the back yard of the horseman towing the horses along with most of our gear. I much prefer to see horses carrying stuff than a porter as they do on the 'Inca Trail'....it just doesn't seem right for a human to be carrying stuff for another human. Crap really. Not really feeling good about that for the Christmas hike.
On arriving at our first camp site the rain ominously started to drip down on our dining tent and we made an offering to Pachamama (Incan Goddess – Mother Universe) that the clouds would rain themselves out during the night for our second day of walking which was supposed to be the most difficult. Our mascot stayed with us in the shelter of the tent, and we wondered how far he was going to walk for a meal.
Woken at 5.30am by our cook with a steaming cup of coca tea, we slowly unwound ourselves and surfaced to see what Pachamama had in store. It was an amazing morning, mostly clear, with a few clouds sitting on the distant mountains, now covered in a fresh layer of snow.
It was a beautiful sight.
Our second day of trekking took us about four hours uphill deep into the valley where we would reach the peak of our trek and then downhill for another 3 hours to our second camp site. On the way we met many llamas and alpacas, some local girls, and our friendly pooch keep up the pace. He must have been getting hungry.
While difficult, the hardest part of the trek was not as hard as made to be believed by some. The final one hour to the ‘pass’ or peak of the trek between two glaciers was very steep but manageable and the views on the way up kept my attention away from the pain in my legs and back, and the lack of oxygen in my lungs caused by the 4600m altitude, the highest air I had ever breathed.
The views from the top were simply spectacular.
Continuing over the other side of the pass we made our way down to our second camp site via an impossibly steep section with the rocky ground giving way causing our feet to slip site, our mascot still in tow. Set in a small forest by a babbling stream we sat around a campfire to ward off the small mosquito type biting things and drank a cheeky rum to celebrate our achievement. The rum assisted in getting to sleep a weary body with a painful back on a thin matress and no pillow. Painful memories surfaced from life as an Officer Cadet at Duntroon, where sleeping on rocky grounds in a wet sleeping back was standard. I dreamed of a king size bed in The Marriott...
Day three we rose to find another beautiful day awaiting (thank you Pachamama) and our mascot had disappeared: The pooch had a long walk back home on an empty stomach, the poor little fella. The final four hours was all downhill with the knees only just making it to the final stop, a small village in the Sacred Valley where we were picked up and shuttled to Ollantaytambo, and our train ride to Aguas Calliente at the base of Machu Picchu, to recover and prepare for our next days visit to MP.
Having written about MP before I won’t bore you, but just add a photo which speaks for itself…..
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