intro

I am heading to trek the Inca Trail on September 1, my first major trip in 7 years and my first ever solo travel experience as an adult. This blog will detail my research - good sources and the challenges of finding online information on activities off the beaten tourist circuit - the training (or lack thereof!), the shopping and finally, the actual trip itself.

Apparently Internet cafes are easier to find than toilet paper in Cusco so I hope to update every day from Cusco and then again when I finish the trek.

I tend to lean heavy on the digging and burrowing side so it may be a bit TMI - feel free to weed out what may be helpful by using the labels tool provided by Blogger. When you find a post on a topic of interest, click on the appropriate label at the bottom (below comments). That will pull up all the scattered posts with the same label.

As I haven't travelled on my own for a very long time, my initial plan had been to book a tour with GAP Adventures that included the Inca Trail. GAP Adventures is a Canadian company which was named the #1 "Do It All Outfitter on Earth" by National Geographic Adventure magazine's survey of Best Adventure Travel Companies in the World! (2007). However, the more I read about altitude sickness, the more I leaned toward spending a few extra days in Cusco to acclimatize. I also had little interest in visiting Lake Titicaca or the Amazon, which most of the tours included. So in the end, I booked the Independent Inca Discovery tour and added 2 extra nights to the front of it. I'll have 4 full days on my own in Cusco and then 4 on the Inca Trail with a group of up to 16 trekkers.

So I will be departing Toronto in the evening of Wednesday, August 27 and returning Saturday, September 6 in the morning. The dates were chosen as July and August are the busiest so I wanted to avoid them but I want to take a course that begins the second week of September. This seemed the best compromise.