Inca Trail – the organisation

The Inca Trail is simply not something you just do on a whim with kids, or even by yourself for that matter. For a start it is highly regulated – you must have a guide and you must have campsites booked in advance. There are regular checkpoints to ensure that you are conforming to what was agreed.

We did the trail using Q’ente. Generally they proved to be pretty good although we do have some quibbles about their organisation and the fact that what was advertised on their website didn’t entirely match what we got. Not enough not to recommend them to someone else though.

Our guide was Alex Fuentes Quino who was absolutely brilliant. He kept both kids and adults interested and encouraged throughout and is a real wealth of knowledge about every aspect of the Trail. Jorge was the cook and team leader and did an amazing job of providing us with tasty, three-course meals for lunch and dinner. Alex and Jorge were in turn backed up by eight porters carrying everything we might need from tents to tables and chairs for dinner. It really is a very comfortable way to camp.

We did the trail over 4 nights and 5 days. As it turned out this was unnecessary as the kids handled the walking much better than we feared. However, the way the days were broken up meant that the toughest days were done just like all the other walkers and the easier days got made shorter. As I said, this didn’t turn out to be a problem for us but it could well have been and I’d recommend anyone else doing the trail with kids get a guarantee of the way the days will break up to ensure the day attacking Dead Woman’s Pass is made easier.