Haha, wow, that fucking blows.
Yeah, Skrala had it about right. Near as we could tell in hindsight, when a few people joined the group only a month or two before the trip (everyone else had booked on around 6 months before the trip), instead of saying "no they can't come because I only have 6 permits" or whatever, he turned around and sold the permits he did have and planned an alternate route that didn't require them. On top of that, he also thought that we had one more day of hiking time than we actually did, so the route he picked was longer than our group was capable of reasonably doing. He pushed us like hell, and I would think that we were doing upwards of 20km a day, but we also lost an entire day of hiking time because we had to drive 8-10 hours from Cuzco to get to the trail head. We had no chance of making the hike, but we didn't know that until we were halfway through the hike and called him on his bullshit.
The whole thing was a clusterfuck, and at least part of the blame should fall on my friend who organized the trip. He made a fortune in the 90's and now basically travels around the world on adventures and skis 100+ days a year, and he has no fucking concept of a set itinerary or real life obligations. So when a few people joined last minute, he probably pressured the guide to let them join without thinking "gee, I wonder if this will screw things up?" and the guide just went ahead and changed the entire trip without giving him the details. Or maybe even did give him the details, and my bud just didn't realize that the dates and timeline were fucked. Every time I've gone on a trip with him somewhere he's like "hey man, how about after we're done skiing in Chile you hop on a flight to Buenos Aires with me? I've got a booty call, and I'm sure she's got friends!" and I'm like "dude, I've already taken 10 days off, I've got shit waiting on me when I get home".
This was roughly the conversation we had with our guide in the hotel in Cuzco the night before we were supposed to start hiking:
Guide: Okay everyone, so tomorrow we must meet the van at 5 am to drive to the trailhead and meet the pack-horses.
Me: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Pack horses were banned on the Inca Trail years ago, what the fuck is up?
Guide: Yes, yes. But we go on
especialInca Trail!
Group: What the fuck? We signed up for the "Classic" Inca Trail, not some other herder's trail. This is bullshit.
Guide: Yes, yes, but people sign on late. So we change plan. Is no problem! So we leave on X day and get back on Y day, yes?
Me: No. I fly out on Y. I need to be back the day before that. So do the majority of the people here.
Guide: *eyes go wide*
At that point I knew we were fucked. But at the same time, he had our money, had purchased supplies and hired horses and cooks etc, so we weren't going to get anything back most likely. So after talking amongst ourselves, we decided to give it a go anyways. In the end if I had just seen Machu Picchu for even 20 minutes, the trip would have been a success. I actually really did enjoy the hike and saw some beautiful terrain, even though it wasn't the "real" Inca Trail. I've learned to never let that friend plan a trip ever again.
In the end he left us the last night on the trail with the other guides and the horses to travel ahead to the next town and pre-book a van that we could meet first thing in the morning and get a ride up to Machu Picchu to at least see it if only briefly before driving back to Cuzco. When we got to the teeny little town we were supposed to meet him at, he was nowhere to be found, and the guides who were still with us weren't too interested in helping find him. The Brazilian couple that joined us late (doctor and a laywer) and were the only ones who could speak passable Spanish managed to find the hostel he was staying at, got in to his room, and stole all his shit (which was like a rain jacket and a small backpack). They told the other guides if he wanted his shit back, to meet us in Cuzco the next night. He never showed up, naturally. We reported him to the tourist police, as they have a special branch dedicated to making sure tourists don't get ripped off as it used to be a big problem in Peru, but nothing much ever came of it.
So next time I'll be taking a train or bus or whatever!