The day started as downhill, then started back up. The day was challenging, yet seemed easy. I think we all had our hiking legs by this day. Most of the hike was along the side of a mountain and through rainforest that was awesome. We saw many ruins throughout the day. At one point on the trail, there was a fork in the road where we could continue to climb 98 stairs to get to another Incan ruin site. Most of us left our packs at the bottom with one guide and went up with the other guide, who gave us the history behind the site. Afterwards, we were able to explore around.
From there, we hiked to another ruin and just pass that was a spot for a break. This is where most groups ate lunch but our guide knew of a better place, so we snacked as our guide showed us how to get water out of the moss that we saw in the jungle. It was warm this day, but did have occasional drizzling.
It didn't seem to take long to reach another summit where we had a great view of the whole mountain range, the Urubamba River, and Agues Calientes. I was first there and a porter met me with some Chicha Morada, which was amazingly good after a hike. There, we had lunch of ceviche, soup, alpaca, quinoa, pimiento rellano, Jello, and tea. This was to be the last lunch the chef makes for us, so he went all out. I think the fact the we are the last group of the season influenced a big lunch.
We all had the option to either hike from there to camp, or take the long way to a huge series of terraces. The hike through the jungle was awesome and before we knew it, we were at the terraces. Our guide said we were one of the few groups where everyone took the long way, especially since this was to be our longest day, distance wise. We put in 18 km.
Camp was right next to the restrooms which was nice. When I got into camp, I took a short nap before tea time where we had popcorn, cookies, wontons, and tea.
After tea time, we didn't have much time before dinner, our last with the porters. After tea time, we all got together and came up with a big tip for the porters and the chef.
Dinner consisted of a beef dish. After dinner, the chef came in with a farewell cake. Yesterday was one of the porters bday, so we called him in and made it also a birthday cake. The guide found a match that we used as a candle and sang to the porter. We decided to cut the cake in half and gave a half to the porters.
After cake, we rearranged the dinner tent for a final get-together with the porters. One of the guys in our group is fluent in Spanish and gave a speech to the porters, thanking them for everything they did for us on the trail. We presented the tips to the head porter who divided it up and gave our tip to the chef. We also took our remaining coca leaves and gave them to the porters. After that, we were able to say our goodbyes to the porters before going to bed.
