After a 14 hour bus journey from Lima with very little sleep I arrived slightly disorientated in Cusco at lunchtime on Thursday 30th October. I found an English pub showing the Spurs v Arsenal match, ate an unusual take on a full Englisah breakfast and felt a bit surreal.
I felt human again by Friday and over the next few days I did some serious sightseeing.

I visited the Catedral in the main square - Plaza de Armas, and saw a painting of the last supper with roast guinea pig (cuy) and chicha (a fermented corn drink) on the table and Francisco Pizarro's face (the leader of the Spanish conquistadors) as Judas. Cusco is in a valley so from the Plaza de Armas you can see all the beautiful surrounding hills.

I wandered through all the little streets and passageways and saw lots of original Inca brickwork with colonial buildings on top of them. I saw the 'Inca Stone', the famous stone with 12 sides in the Hathun Rumyoc passageway. The Incas cut their stones so they fitted exactly against each other. I don't think they used any kind of mortor either but their structures have lasted for hundreds of years and through numerous earthquakes which the later colonial buildings weren't able to withstand.

I visited the Inca Museum and saw mummies, trepanned skulls and textiles. I also saw some pre-Inca skulls which had been purposely deformed. They pushed the skulls of babies and children into an elongated shape when they were still soft. This gave them increased social prestige when they were older apparently.

I watched yet another military parade in the Plaza de Armas with a number of different military bands and marching regiments. I like the fact that the soldiers often sing along to the music while they are marching.

I explored the Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, the Chapel of San Blas and the Museum of Religeous Art which was a lot more interesting than I'd been expecting.

The Inca empire lasted from around 1200 to the 1500's when the Spanish arrived in Latin America. They wanted to convert the Incas to Catholicism and brought with them lots of religious art works from Europe. They asked the locals to make copies for the new Catholic churches and allowed them to incorporate their own cultural icons into the paintings, hence llamas instead of camels, cuy and chicha instead of bread and wine and the Virgin painted in a triangular shape to represent the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth in the form of a mountain).

I had checked my email when I arrived in Cusco and discovered that my Inca Trail hike, due to start on the 4th November had now been moved forward to the 3rd due to a farmers strike on the 4th which would probably involve road blockades and delay our journey to the trail head a few hours drive away. Apparently the Cusco area is quite politically active so this is not an unusual occurence. While I was here I saw university lecturers demonstrating in the Plaza de Armas also.

So, on the 3rd November I met the rest of the group in the tour offices of United Mice (or Ratones Unidos in Spanish) at 3pm and we were driven to the trailhead - Km 82 (82 kms from Cusco). There were 10 hikers, all in their 30's and early 40's so roughly the same age which was nice.

We had 2 guides, Sol and Karina and 13 porters including a chef and his assistant. The porters set up the tents at each campsite along the trail and ensure we all get fed and watered. We carried our own gear. They then pack up the next day and carry all the gear along the trail to the next campsite. That's enough equipment to feed and house 25 people.
The porters used to carry up to 50kg of equipment each but since new regulations were introduced in 2000 they carry around 25-30kg which is still a huge amount to carry for 45kms of mostly uphill and downhill trail. As we walked along the trail, every so often the cry would go up of 'porteros' or 'porters coming through' which meant we had to get out of the way in order to let a stream of porters all carrying huge packs and often jogging, come through. They must be incredibly fit and we never ceased to marvel at their strength.

As the region is at a fairly high altitude, it is advised to chew coca leaves or coca sweets and drink coca tea. It is the same plant as cocaine but you would need around 200kg of coca leaves to get 1kg of cocaine. Coca leaves are an important part of the Qechua culture and aren't used as a drug, nor are they illegal. I'm told though that taking coca may cause a drugs test to show up as positive so lets hope my next job doesn't involve drugs testing. The coca leaves stop the headaches, nausea and breathlessness that comes with altitude sickness. I tried chewing the leaves but I had to spit them out as they just made me feel sick. You're supposed to chew them and then stick them down next to your gum for a while and then chew them again every so often. I obviously don't have the hang of it though as the bits of leaves kept escaping and making me want to retch. I tried the tea as well but as I'm not keen on teas of any kind, that didn't go down well either. I stuck to the sweets which are a lot more palatable, although having been in Cusco for a few days and also having visited various other cities at high altitudes - Quito, Tambillo, etc, I didn't have too much of a problem with the altitude, just a couple of headaches.

The fastest time anyone ever did the 45 km classic Inca Trail in was a local Qechua man who completed it in 3 hours and 50 minutes. We were a bit gobsmacked by that news, I can't even imagine doing it on a horse in that time, never mind on foot. The Qechua's are the indigenous people of much of Peru, Ecuador,Bolivia, Chile and Argentina and they carry on the Inca bloodline. Much of the population of Latin America is Mestizo - ie, of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage but the Qechuas continue to live alongside them, often in the more rural areas.

After camping on Monday night we were ready to start the hike early on Tuesday morning. We had to go through the official checkpoint where our passports were checked (and stamped - are you allowed to stamp a passport when you're not going accross any country borders?). Only 500 people a day are allowed to enter the trail, including porters and guides so that's about 200 hikers a day.
Throughout the first day we would occasionally see small settlements and farm houses in the valleys. The only people allowed to live within the area are those for whom it is their ancestral home. There are no roads or vehicles, only horses and mules.
Each day we would stop somewhere for lunch, set up by the porters. We ate exteremely well, we couldn't believe the standard of the food considering it had all been carried there and cooked on small gas stoves (also carried by the porters). Over the duration of the trail some of the meals we ate included various pastas and pasta salads, stuffed chicken, trout with herbs, stir fried chicken with vegetables, lots of different kinds of vegetables, lots of different kinds of rice, potatoes done in various ways, stuffed peppers, apple wontons with caramel sauce, salads and a different soup with every dinner. We definitely couldn't have wanted for more.
The trail in the afternoon of the first day was very difficult as it was all uphill, many sections had stone steps built by the Incas and every time you got to a bend in the trail and thought it wasn't possible that there could be any more steps or any further to go uphill, of course, there was...a lot more. We probably walked around 15 kms that first day and I think we were all a bit shell-shocked when we arrived at camp that afternoon.

The second day we had to carry on uphill again to the highest point of the trail, the 4,200 metres above sea level Warmiwañuscca pass where we had a celebratory shot of rum and marvelled at the stunning mountain scenery. We then set off for the second pass above the Runkraqay Inca ruins and then, blessedly, downhill to the ruins of Sayaqmarka and across a valley to our campsite.

By day 3 my thigh and calf muscles were beginning to complain, especially when going downhill, which the majority of day 3 was. The only uphill part was at the beginning of the day, up to the Puyupatamarca pass where we were just taking a rest when we found out that Obama had won the election. It was a pretty amazing location to find out such good news.
We ended the day at a campsite near the Wiñaywayna Inca ruins. This was a big campsite with hot showers and a bar as it's the closest one to Machu Picchu and therefore all the groups use it, as well as the other shorter Inca Trail groups. There are many Inca Trails throughout the area and you can hike many of them with a guide. The trail we hiked was the classic Inca Trail which was probably a royal route in Inca times. We got clean for the first time in days and had a drink, although, being that we had to be up at 3:45 the following morning, we couldn't let our hair down too much.

Day 4 - 3:45 is an obscene time to get up at, especially when you then have to walk 6km. Every tour group wanted to get to the Sun Gate ruins, high in the mountain above Machu Picchu, to get a good position to watch the sun rise. We managed it in good time although as it was very cloudy it was a bit pointless. We hung around for a bit getting our breath back and then carried on downhill to the valley where Machu Picchu is situated.
By the time we got there it was still fairly early, 8am or so, and the clouds were beginning to lift. Sol taked us through the history of Machu Picchu and showed us around. I think the reason it is just so spectacular is that not only do you have a huge ruined site which is very well preserved, but you also have the stunning green mountains as a backdrop.
The American archaologist and explorer Hiram Bingham 'discovered' the citadel of Machu Picchu in 1911 with a local man and a boy acting as a Qechua interpreter. It was never lost to the local Qechuas. He was searching for the 'lost city of the Incas' where it is fabled that the Incas removed all of their gold and treasures to when the Spanish invaded. No one has ever found that treasure hoard and it is unlikely that they ever will as the tribes in the Urubamba valley keep tight lipped about the whereabouts of any further Inca ruins. It was built in the mid 1400's and contains houses, temples and agricultural terraces, used by the Incas for growing various crops from different climates and for adapting them to new climates.
After exploring Machu Picchu we caught a bus down to the bottom of the valley to the town of Aguas Calientes where we ate lunch in a restaurant with Sol and Karina and then carried on to a bar afterwards for a few more drinks which we had no problem convincing ourselves we deserved.
We then returned by train and bus to Cusco where we arrived shattered at around 9:30 in the evening.

I've now had a day to recover and am trying to work out where to go next - Arequipa or Puno and Lake Titicaca. Wherever it is I'll be off tomorrow - Monday.