Dylan's travels around the world: Machu Picchu

For the last 5 days I've been hiking the inka trail through the Andes to the ancient city of Machu Picchu. We've had heart pounding climbs, knee jerking decents, and everything in between. We were drinking Coca tea to help with the altitude, since we're at around 14,000 feet on some of the mountain passes. You chew these leaves and then stuff them in the side of your mouth like chewing tobacco. We also drink Coca tea, it's quite a popular leaf around here in the Andes. Here's the elevation chart.

We were 23 people, from Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Switzerland, and Germany. And yours truly from the United States, it's always interesting being with all foreigners.

Along the trail we have porters that carry our stuff, tents, food, and just about everything else. It's pretty crazy seeing them pass you by carrying so much more than you haha. Here we are in the tent eating the meal that the porters cooked for us.

Here's our first campsite with all of our tents. Each tent could house 2 people, and they were properly protected from the rain! I say this because I had a bad experience one night camping in Wyoming. They had a semi-waterproof tent and put the tarp inside it. Then they had a waterproof cover on it.

Even though it's the rainy season, we've been quite lucky. The first 3 days it only drizzled on us a little bit, and we had a fair amount of sun, enough for me to get burned a little. On the morning of the 4th day, the day we were supposed to get to Machu Picchu, it poured the entire morning and didn't start clearing up until we got to Machu Picchu, which ended up being perfect timing. It definitely provided with some interesting landscape pictures with all the fog.

More of the group.