I'm not much of a hiker.

So when my dad suggested that we do a four-day trek in the middle of Peru for our combined 100th birthday, I hesitated just slightly before saying "yes." I'd never gone on an overnight hike. Or even done one full day of hiking. Or achieved anything that could reasonably be called a "trek" unless preceeded by "Star" and followed by "marathon."

But Machu Picchu!

I can't say no to that, despite the challenge of approaching it "the traditional way" instead of taking the train/bus up. And I've learned, begrudgingly, that challenges like these, slightly beyond what I think I can do, just over the hill of my comfort zone, are where I find the best rewards. So "yes" it is!

It was to be a family trip. However, although my dad and brother have backpacked Rocky Mountain National Park before, my mom and I are more likely to sit on the couch, cool glass of hard cider in hand, and settle in for some Downton Abbey. But being almost forty and my folks almost sixty, it was now or never, right?

Right!

We can do this.

Now comes the logisitics.

You can't just show up in Peru and hike the Inca Trail. You need a permit. And you can only get the government-issued permits from an approved company. Since they give permits out January 1st for the whole year (except February when it is closed), you want to be signed up with one of these outfits several months ahead of time. The permits allow for only 500 people to start up the trail per day - and that includes guides and porters, which outnumber the tourists!, so the high season (the drier summer months) sells out fast. Luckily, we already knew that we needed to be prepared ahead of time.

(Side note: the real step 1 is making sure your passport is up to date and expires well after the trek completes. You have to submit your passport number to be issued the permit and CANNOT change it later.)

The challenging part is that the tour operators are predominantly (if not totally) local and their websites tend to be in confusing English. Some US-based companies (like REI) have relationships with these operators, but tend to be a great deal more expensive.

So we searched.

I found a few sites with lists of recommended tour companies and combed through TripAdvisor as well, hoping that the combination of this, combined with purusing the individual sites themselves, would lead to good results. Guide books are also a good source of ideas, but I mostly used the internet.

Our favorite, and maybe because of the clear English on the website, was Llama Path. This is who we went with. But others that made my list for consideration included: Engima, SAS Travel (this had a lot of recommendations but got about 15% bad reviews), Wayki Trek, Alpaca Expeditions (a strange one because of it's awesome tripadvisor.com reviews but not a single recommendation anywhere else), Peru Treks, Xtreme Tourbulencia, and G Adventures. Those last two are ones I actually saw on the trail (at least, I saw the logos on the porter bags.)

This list looked legit. It was one of the many sites I used when deciding:
http://www.incatrailperu.com/inca_trail_tour_operators.html

Our trek cost $650 per person.

You'll need to have the porter decision made before you sign up since the porters need permits as well.

According to my research, hiring a porter seemed the usual thing to do. After calculating the weight, we decided to hire three porters for the four of us. It cost $150 per porter, so with four people sharing three, it came to about $115/person.

I was surprised how many folks in our group were carrying all their own gear, but then again, it isn't cheap. You must balance your ability and willingness to carry everything (not counting a tent, food, or water; they supply that) up and down stairs for three days vs. spending $150 to have almost 30 pounds of that taken care of for you (or in our case, around 20lbs since we split them).

You will also want to decide whether to apply for a permit to climb Huayna Picchu (400 permits/day.) It is the famous mountain you see in the background of most every Machu Picchu photo. Apparently, there are amazing views, but climbing that after doing the trek, I can say now, would have been an impossible feat. Three people in our group (and not the fastest ones) did it and loved it, but personally, I could barely walk on Machu Picchu day, let alone climb another mountain.

It also helps to know when you sign up (or soon after) what you want to rent from the company. We rented nothing, though our company offered sleeping bags, walking sticks, and inflatable mattresses.

Sometimes you just have to let go and place your trust in a random website. Most don't accept credit cards. You may have to use Western Union. We sent a percentage up front with Paypal and crossed our fingers.

Lucky for us, our correspondent was very responsive to receiving our payment and answering our questions.

We booked in early October for a May trip. Shoulder season. We may have been first on the list for those dates (for our tour company anyway), but reserving so many months in advance didn't hurt!

Once your trek dates are confirmed (ours were confirmed in late January), it's time to buy plane tickets.

A travel agent might be worth it here, especially when (like in our case) flights change between booking and travel.

Going to South America (from North America) is further than you think. Seven hours plus and it's usually a red-eye. And you'll almost certainly have to fly through Lima to get to Cusco. Prepare for hops. We went Denver-LA-Lima-Cusco to get there and Cusco-Lima-Houston-Denver on the return. Whew.

I recommend trying to carry on your bags for the international portion, especially if your connection in Lima is tight. At Lima, you have to get your bags and go through customs and, once you are done that, you get deposited *outside security* so, if you want to re-check your bags, you'll have to do that before going through security again either way. We walked quickly through customs with our carry-ons and luckily, security was relatively fast. Even though our connection was tight, we made it in time for boarding. The folks we met on the plane who had checked their bags made it, but cut it much closer.

We wanted to know: how hard is the Inca Trail really?

I read everything from "it's no problem if you are in reasonably good shape" to "people were crying on the trail". (And, looking back, I have no idea what that first person was talking about.)

This is what the Llama Path site says:

"Do I need to be fit to do one of your treks?
All of our treks (the Inca Trail, Salkantay, Ausangate etc.) are moderately difficult, long and mountainous. We highly recommend that you are relatively fit and acclimatised to altitude (a minimum of 2 days at altitude) before undertaking them. During the months (or at the very least, one month) before your trip, you should take regular, moderate exercise. We want you to have an amazing experience and the fitter you are, the more enjoyable the treks will be."

That is good advice. One problem is that a lot of trails are rated based on technical difficulty. Most sites agree that this is not a technically difficult trail, but few say how hard it is endurance-wise. Looking back, I agree with the technical appraisal; I rarely felt the need to use my hands to help me go down or up even if there were a few gnarly sections and steep drops that went unmentioned. Endurance though? Very difficult. Even the fittest people on our trek were getting exhasted. I got out of breath if I took more than 10 or 15 stairs at normal speed, especially near the highest peak.

We looked at altitude maps like the above to get an idea of steepness compared to local trails. (Luckily, we live at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, so have some practice terrain.) We started going on weekend hikes, at least before winter settled in. Lessons we learned were to stick together, take it slow, and drink electrolytes. When you think you cannot go any further, use baby goals. "I'm going to get to that rock. I'm going to walk up three stairs." To be clear, we are not the kind of Coloradans that bag fourteeners or sprint up mountains. We're just regular folk, trying to prepare....

... all while knowing that, in the end, we didn't really know what we were going to face until we got there.

And once we started, we couldn't change our mind...

This was one of the hardest trips I'd ever packed for. (Burning Man took longer and also involved "survival gear", but I did not have weight or space constraints. The month-long Trans-Siberian trip was almost as tricky, knowing I'd have to lug my things from hotel and train and back again, but I was never camping, hiking, or carrying anything for very long.)

What made the packing particularly difficult was knowing that everything that went over the porter weight limit had to be carried by yours truly... yet the number of "what-if-I-need-this?" items were overwhelming. I couldn't bring all the layers, snacks, water bottles, first-aid, and emergency things I wanted without weighting myself down a lot (and bringing a larger backpack.)

Each porter was allowed to carry 14kg. I believe the sleeping bag pad was part of that (at about 1kg.) So that left roughly 21 pounds each for us that we could give to the three porters.

I think the best decision I made was to force everything to fit into two carry-ons: a large duffel and a backpack. With the regular clothing I'd need for Cusco and knowing I could leave unneeded luggage behind during the trek, theoretically, I couldn't possibly weigh myself down.

But, wow. That was a challenge. I used every last inch I could squeeze.

What I brung:

I wore hiking boots. Needless to say, these should be comfortable, broken-in boots. The only other shoes I brought were flip flops in case there was a shower opportunity. (There was, but not one I was willing to use.)

Notably, many people on the tour carried all their own gear. If you do this, you'd want a full-on backpackers backpack to properly carry all this stuff. I only carried a day pack for water, snacks, first-aid, cameras, and sunscreen. (You can only get to the bags the porters carry when you reach the campsite at the end of the day.)

However, you can rest easy in the sense that almost anything you may have forgotten can be bought in Cusco.

I saw plenty of outdoor supply stores in the central downtown area mear the main plaza. Although I did not actually browse one, Cusco knows what its tourists are doing. If there is demand, there will be supply.

One of the first things we did (before sleeping even) was walk to the tour operator office to check-in. We'd carefully Google mapped it ahead of time. This is a good idea in Cusco because, although most of the streets are labeled, there are not large signs for anything. When we checked in, we got the time of our orientation, the evening before our trek began, and the time of our departure. Lots of good information.

The only thing left to do was go!

Here is one more great map I found (in Spanish) showing what some of the ruins along the way (and there were way more than I expected) looked like. It also shows the path of the river and railroad (the lowest point) in comparison to the trail.

This one shows the two-day version of the trek and alternate trails, which is interesting for comparison. We started at kilometer 82.