Spending four days hiking the Inka* trail was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The first day was full of breathtaking views, and we were surprised with almost gourmet meals set up for us by our team of porters along the way. When we sat down for lunch, we were served a cup of juice and a bowl of soup, and we gobbled it all down, thinking that was our only food for lunch. When we finished, we were promptly served 5 large trays of food to choose from, from veggies to ceviche to french fries.

We sleepily sat up, unzipped the tent, and were handed hot mugs of coca tea to wake us up for the day. Many of our porters only spoke Quechua, an indigenous language of Peru, so we learned the word for thank you in Quechua: Sulpayki.

We were warned ahead of time that Day 2 would be the most

difficult, but how were we to know just how difficult it would be? I think it’s fair to say that Day 2 tested all of our resilience as we climbed, quite literally, into the clouds. Even as there were moments when I wasn’t sure how long my body could keep carrying me, I found a sense of calm and of a weight being lifted off of my shoulders (metaphorically of course… I was still carrying a backpack) because after so many weeks spent trying to navigate a new culture in a noisy city, my mind full of “How do I say that in Spanish?,” “Am I offending someone?” “Is this a safe street?,” etc., all I had to do was put one foot in front of the other, make sure there was air going in and out of my lungs, and allow myself to sink into the incredible beauty all around me. In one day, we trekked through climates that felt like deserts, prairies, jungles, and finally, into the clouds, and each time I stopped to catch my breath (which was admittedly quite a few) when I turned around, the beauty gave me strength to keep going.

Day 3 was the longest but most beautiful day. We spent most of the day in the clouds, passing through the occasional natural stone tunnel, a beautiful pond, a couple of original Inka sites, and we stopped many times to ask ourselves whether we were dreaming. After lunch, we had to dance to some High School Musical and Backstreet Boys to get our energy back for the rest of the day. We were becoming a bit hysterical, giggling as we hobbled along down the last few stone staircases when we found ourselves at one of the most beautiful lookouts that we’d seen so far. We took some pictures, collapsed into the grass, and promptly found out that one of our guides was a massage therapist when she offered to crack our backs for us.

The morning of our last day, we were woken up at 3 am and emerged from our tents to a view of magnificent fog-covered mountains. Our reward for the morning’s hike was arriving at the famous viewpoint of Machu Picchu from above… only to see a blanket of white fog. We decided to walk down to meet the rest of our group, and finally, we were able to see the magnificent Machu Picchu up close and personal. After our tour and once the clouds had receded, we decided to do one last hike back up to the top to see the view that we missed that morning. The feeling of standing up there looking down at the wonder that is Machu Picchu is something I can’t describe. I felt both deep awe at the beauty and life that the Inkan people created and deep sadness to know that such a beautiful culture was wiped out by the Spanish conquistadors.

After we hiked down, we said goodbye to Machu Picchu mountain and our amazing team of guides and porters with hugs and tupananchiskama, a word in Quechua that roughly translates to “Until another day.”

-Hannah Beck

*Peru has been gradually implementing new spellings for indigenous names, particularly Quechua ones, instead of traditional Spanish spellings, since a standardized alphabet for Quechua was adopted by the Peruvian government in 1975. So Inka goes with other unfamiliar spellings like Qusqu for Cuzco/Cusco.  -Editor