“Wonderful, fabulous” Inca Trail Deluxe Trek

MM Trekker Bar­bara Ges­saman shares her lat­est trekking expe­ri­ence — our Inca Trail Deluxe.

The Inca Trail Deluxe trip was fab­u­lous, as are all of the treks I have tak­en with Moun­tain Mad­ness (six in all). This trip was my grand­sons’ first trip at alti­tude, and they did well — the trekking bug has bit­ten. Our guide, Julio, was won­der­ful. He knew and relayed to us so much about the his­to­ry of the Incas and Machu Pic­chu. He made our trip espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful; we learned a lot. I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed Julio’s knowl­edge of the flo­ra and fau­na, since I am inter­est­ed in gar­den­ing and native plants.

Our tour of Cuz­co was so fas­ci­nat­ing. The stone build­ings and their con­struc­tion meth­ods were amaz­ing. See­ing the old cathe­drals and Inca tem­ples — WOW. And talk about deluxe, the hotels were cer­tain­ly that! Julio also took us to real­ly great restau­rants where we could get an authen­tic taste of Peru­vian food. We all tried guinea pig and alpaca, not bad — actu­al­ly quite good. 

Inca stonework. MM archive photo

The trek to Machu Pic­chu was fab­u­lous. It rained almost every day, but why not — we were in the cloud for­est. I men­tioned to our group that if the sun was shin­ing while we were trekking, we would be so hot we would wish for cloud cov­er. To our delight, the sun did come out when we got to Machu Pic­chu. As we trekked, the Inca his­to­ry began to unfold. See­ing the irri­ga­tion sys­tem the Inca peo­ple cre­at­ed was unbe­liev­able. When we arrived at Machu Pic­chu, we were all in awe of the stun­ning ruins. Julio gave us a won­der­ful nar­ra­tion of what we were seeing.

Machu Pic­chu from the gate. MM archive photo

Our lunch­es along the trail were deli­cious and gave us a nice respite. All of our trail meals were deli­cious, thanks to our very tal­ent­ed cooks. They even made a birth­day cake for one of our group! The porters were so kind and help­ful. After car­ry­ing all of the gear up and down the trail, they always had a smile and cheered us as we arrived at our camp site each day.

Inca Trail porters. MM archive photo

Final­ly, let me say that our stay at the Machu Pic­chu Pueblo Hotel was exquis­ite. The grounds of the hotel were love­ly and very relax­ing. We took heav­en­ly show­ers, and all made appoint­ments to have a mas­sage. The hot water bot­tles placed in our beds while we were eat­ing our din­ner was a wel­comed sur­prise. The train ride back to Cus­co was so relax­ing; we were able to look out at the scenery, and yes, take lit­tle naps.

Inca Trail Deluxe group with trail switch­backs in the dis­tance. Bar­bara Ges­saman (right) photo

Thank you Moun­tain Mad­ness for putting togeth­er such a won­der­ful, fab­u­lous trek. You nev­er disappoint.