Dave Etzold's Blog

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Tuesday night, the 19th, at 6:00 pm sharp our personal guide from Llama Path, Julian Perez, met us at the Monasterio Hotel for our pre-trek briefing and final paperwork.  He’s one of their best guides (we recognized his name from many complementary posts on TripAdvisor.com and on the Llama Path website) so this is serendipity!  Julian has been a guide for ten years (Llama Path for five years and with SAS Tours for five years) and has taken over five hundred groups over the Inca Trail!

Pre-Trek Briefing at the hotel with our guide Julian

We leave at 5:00 am: their bus picks us up from the hotel and we travel with our larger expedition team (three of us, Julian our guide, the cook, and seven porters) for about two and a half hours to Ollyantaytambo where we have breakfast, pick up any last minute essentials and drive another half hour to Kilometer 82.  There, the official government checkpoint and bridge over the Urubamba River marks the formal starting point of the most incredible adventure vacation of my life!  45 Kilometers, four days, three nights and several Andes Mountain passes later, we arrive in Machu Picchu!

See you on the other side!  Keep us in your prayers….

Salud, Amor y Pesetas y Tiempo Para Disfrutarlas!

Graphic illustration of the Inca Trail trek by Llama Path

Map of Inca Trail

~ by Dave Etzold on January 20, 2010.

Posted in Inca Trail Trek to Machu Picchu 2010
Tags: Chicago, Cusco, Davison, El Paso, Etzold, Hotel Monasterio, Inca Trail, INHL, Inka Cafe, International Natural History League, Lima, Llama Path, Machu Picchu, Multhauf, Nashville, Peru, Plaza de Armas, Saqsaywaman, South America