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The Inca Trail was amazing. In some ways it was easier than I thought - I wasn't dying at the end of each day - and the scenery was far more beautiful than I imagined.
We had an all female group of which we were the youngest so there were no macho show offs racing to camp each day. For the 9 women there were 16 porters, 2 guides and 2 chefs. We felt thoroughly spoiled as the tiny men ran past with all our equipment so that dinner could be ready and waiting when we arrived at camp.
The first day had only one major climb where as the second day was all uphill - 4200 metres uphill at 13000 ft above sea level. At one point we had to stop every two steps to regain breath. None of us suffered badly from altitude sickness luckily but the shortness of breath was definately a struggle.
We felt very underprepared when it came to nightime and the temperature dropped to minus 15 degrees - for some reason I thought just putting on two jumpers would suffice. Unsurprisingly there was not much to do of an evening though so we just crawled into bed at 7pm each night ready for a 5am awakening and another full days hiking.
On the fourth and final day you are woken at 4am to begin the trek to the sun gate and Machu Picchu. This was the hardest day for me as I had got it into my head that the trekking was over but there was a last minute four hour climb I didn't realise about. Finally seeing Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate is a wonderful feeling. The ruins are spectacular and you kind of hope they will be after trekking four days to see them. We were taken on a tour of the ruins but I didn't take in much - I was far too knackered and dreaming about a loo rather than a long drop hole and my first shower in four days!
We gladly took a couple of days to rest in Cuzco which is a beautiful town in the mountains. We found an english pub and thought we were allowed to be naughty and have fish and chips just this once. Whether it was this or just an accumulation from travelling I'm not sure but I proceeded to be sick for the next few days and couldn't get out of bed for two of them - thank god for cable TV.
We had to stop over in Lima before our flight to LA so treated ourselves to a hotel room - again with cable TV - and hid here as despite supposedly staying in the nice part of Lima it was awful. The best choice of restaurant was KFC or MacDonalds! We were so glad to get to LA.............
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