Sorry for the delay in writing this however the internet in Peru left much to be desired and I have made a couple of quick stops along the way leaving little opportunity to delve into my time in Cusco.
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| Plaza De Armas |
We arrived in Cusco on Thursday night due to the fact that we needed to use Friday to buy a few things for our four day trek. As the weather wasn't meant to be too good I invested in some wet weather gear and apart from that, snacks for the journey and a sleeping bag as I didn't bring one with me on the trip. I will also take this opportunity to point out that my Dad decided to hire a walking stick which was rather embarrassing.
We headed off at 5am on Saturday morning to meet our guide, porters and trekking group (not quite the demographic of people I was expecting)
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| The Group |
Being a typical tourist I decided to get my passport stamped at the start of the trek and head off from Km 82 on the 45km trek to Machu Picchu.
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| The First Inca Site |
Overall the first day of trekking was relatively uneventful apart from the fact that a few of the group members were rather unprepared for the trekking that lay ahead (two were unable to carry their daypacks the whole way meaning I had to help them for the last two hours). As exciting as this sounds the fun with the group really started at dinner when the conversation moved onto hygiene and the general health of the 11 others who had been travelling together for a few weeks prior to the trek. It turned out that only one was yet to get sick and the rest were still heavily popping pills, refusing to eat without using hand sanitiser and discussing their daily bowel movements over dinner; not quite what I was expecting!
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| Night One |
Breakfast on day two was merely a continuation of the conversation of dinner from the night before however apparently a couple of the group were feeling better and were well prepared for the toughest day of hiking that lay ahead!
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| Father and Son Leading the Way |
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| Dead Woman's Pass |
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| Walking Stick and Yellow Poncho...HOW EMBARRASSING!! |
Day two was much more uneventful than I was expecting, and whilst there was a lot of waiting around everyone managed to finish the day in the allocated time. Along the way we did manage to pass a few more rather impressive Inca sites however the weather meant that the photos were not as impressive as they could have been.
Day three started with a relatively relaxed wake up time of 6am as there was not as much ground to cover as the first two days. The first point of call was Cloudy Town which definitely lived up to its name; it was hard to see anything further than 10 metres. The weather gradually improved as the morning went on and we managed to see a number of impressive Inca sites along the way
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| On the way to Cloudy Town |
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| Pretty Impressive |
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| Not a bad view from our tent |
Day four on the Inca Trail is a race from start to finish. The aim is to get up first, leave the campsite first, get to the checkpoint first and finally to be first at the sun gate and we failed at all of them! Fortunately we did manage to be the third group at the checkpoint which meant that I was able to get to the Sun Gate fourth. I did consider running the whole distance however due to the lack of sun I decided that it probably wouldn't be worth it
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| My First View of Machu Picchu |
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| It didn't get much better... |
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| Inca Ingenuity |
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| The Postcard Shot |
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| An Even Better Postcard |
All in all the Inca Trail and particularly Machu Picchu was an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone. I booked the trip through Intrepid Travel and everything ran smoothly from start to finish; the guides were insightful and the food was absolutely incredible, almost every meal seemed to defy logic as to how it could be created with the facilities available. Following the Inca Trail we booked into a nice hotel (thanks Dad) which was a welcome change after weeks spent in hostels with shared bathrooms.
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| The Hotel |
After a day of rest we headed back down to the Sacred Valley to gain a greater understanding of the Inca Empire. The day was interesting and further outlined the importance of the Sun along with the the three tiered system of the Snake, Puma and Condor.
We finished the day off with a Llama steak and Pisco Sour as it was our last meal together as my Dad was flying home the next morning. We had a great two weeks together but unfortunately some of us still pay the bills so I'll be seeing you at home in four months time! I hung around in Cusco for the weekend to meet up with Rolance, Callum and Alex.
After Cusco I flew up to Piura so as to avoid the 42 hour bus ride to Mancora. Sadly, I stayed at another Loki which had a nice setting but again the people failed to live up to expectations. I headed up to Montanita in Ecuador after Mancora for a night but again there was nothing to write home about so I won't bother boring you.
I am currently in Banos and have done a couple of activities over the past few days but I'll blog about those at a later date...hopefully it won't take me as long as it took to write this post!!
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