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Hello once again. You are in for a blog updating bonanza today, with both Jordan and myself providing you with an entry. However, before I dive into the update, I just want to quickly mention that the L button on this keyboard is less reliable than the London Underground, so some words may be missing an L.
Our next destination after Puno was the hugely historic city of Cusco. This city is probably has more cultural importance than anywhere else in South America, as it featured heavily during the Inca empire and the following Spanish invasion. Despite being the second largest city after the capital Lima, it is a lot less populated and has a completely different feel to the places we have been before. The buildings are beautiful, the streets are cobbled and people selling massages are aplenty.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon, with the coach journey taking about six hours. The hostel we are staying in exists for people who like to party, and so we decided the best thing to do with our day was to enjoy its bar. On Friday we woke up feeling a bit worse for wear but set about going into town to book a trek to the lost Inca city, Machu Picchu. As we had previously been warned, if you want to do the real Inca Trail then you need to book it months in advance - something we were not able to do - so instead we booked to do an alternative trek, called the Lares Trek. This is a 4 day, 46km trek which takes you through green valleys and over snow capped mountains, passing through tiny indigenous villages along the way. It cost a lot more than we were expecting - 450 US dollars - so has taken a large chunk of our money. The trek was set to start on the Sunday, giving us a couple of days to get our stuff together.
By the time we had got the trek booked, it was late afternoon our hangovers had well and truly taken hold, so we decided the best option was to have a sleep. After a couple of hours, I heard a live band playing in the bar and forced myself out of bed to give them a listen. This led to me getting very drunk, making friends with some random lads (one of which goes to Lancaster uni) and once again going into town until silly o'clock. The next morning I think was the first time on our travels where Jordan felt great and I was the ill one (what a difference not drinking makes!). We used the day to explore cusco some more and buy things in preparation for the trek. In the evening we had a briefing with our trave guide and got to meet the 13 other travellers who were joining us on the trek. We arrived back at our hostel at around 9pm, packed our things and went to bed. However, this was when things turned very bad for myself...
As mentioned, I did have a hangover during the day but I've had much worse and it was wearing off throughout the day. But when I was packing I started getting really bad stomach pains and started to feel sick, and since we were having to wake-up at 3.45am the next day, I wasn't going to get the healing sleep I needed. But once I got into bed, things turned from bad to worse... It's been a while since I've thrown-up and even longer since I did it while sober, meaning I had forgotten how horrible it is. I now won't for a long time as for the next five hours I proceeded to have about six or seven violent vomiting fits. As our wake-up alarm was fast approaching, I started to try and think of contingency plans as I really didn't think I woud be able to go on the trek. Fortunately the vomiting fits stopped about an hour before our alarm, giving me a slimmer of hope. At 4am I was standing in our dorm and had to decided what I was going to do; the thought of wasting 450 dollars was too strong and I decided to give it a go. Answers on a postcard if you have any thoughts on what I had. I'm going for food poisoning as I had a coupe of dodgy meals in the days before.
Day 1 - On the coach to our trek starting point, my body again tried to vomit and I was in no state to trek. In seeing my condition, our tour guide offered my the chance to stay in the coach and get a lift to our first camping spot. As 50% of the walking was going to be on the second day, I jumped at the chance to sleep all day and give my body a chance to recover. Therefore, I can't really tell you about the trek on the first day, but I gather they saw a glacier and some other things.
Day 2 - after sleeping most of the day and night, bar aching stomach muscles (the vomiting was the most exercise they've had in a long time) I felt back to normal and could manage to eat some food. But like day turns into night, as I got better, Jordan got ill - not ideal timing as the day ahead involved a 23km trek, with us climbing to an altitude of 4600 metres.
As I assume we are actually going to get round to uploading the pictures sometime, I am going to let them do most of the talking. But the first few hours of the walk consisted of walking along the valley floor, passing through tiny villages, until we reached where we were having lunch Once that was out of the way, we had the mammoth mountain passage to trek up. As I mentioned this would result in us being 4600m above sea level (to give you a sense of perspective, the tallest mountain in Europe - Mount Blanc - is 4800 metres high). Luckily the final day of our Colca Canyon trek had given us a good bit of training and we eventually made it to the top. I got there in second place, being beaten by a girl (!). My excuse is that I was still recovering from my mysterious illness...
The rest of our trek that day involved walking down the other side for a couple of hours (past a coupe of beautiful lakes), to our final camping spot. By this point though, Jordan was feeling really ill and so we made extremely slow progress. Nonetheless, we made it. Just a bit late. That night everyone was fearing the worse for Jordan and I really thought another trip to the doctors was on the cards. But as our guide seems to be telling the truth when he says the mountains heal, as the next morning Jordan was feeling a tad better, and has continued to get better ever since. While Jordan slept that evening, the rest of us had a camp fire. The sky at night here was unbelievable, which is actually being possible to see the clouds of stars in the Milky Way. It makes what we view in the UK seem rubbish.
What I will quickly mention now is that on this trek we were camping for two nights in tents, no where near any electricity and running water. This means no showers, which is ok since everyone is in the same boat. But the real shock I had this day was experiencing going to the toilet - having a s*** literally consisted of finding a hidden spot and then squatting. Such a weird experience.
Day 3 - the hard walking was now out of the way and the day involved walking through some towns were the locals live, during which I tried some home brew corn beer, After lunch we caught an awesome train to the town Aguas Calientes, where we spent the night in a hostel and got drunk with our tour guide. Why was the train awesome I hear you ask? Well it has windows in its roof meaning we had spectacular views of the mountains around us. The joy of being able to use a shower and toilet - unbelievable.
Day 4 - Machu Picchu! If you don't know about it, wikipedia it. But essentially we got a bus to it, received a history lesson from our guide while walking around it and then some peope got a bus back down, while the rest of us decided to walk for 90 mins down the mountain. We then had lunch before being taken back to Cusco. That evening some of us met up for some farewell drinks.
So that is that. The trek was amazing and I will be surprised if anything on the rest of this trip will beat it. Our tour guide was a legend, our group was perfect and seeing the sunrise on Machu Picchu was unforgettable. Tonight we are getting an 11 hour coach ride to La Paz, meaning we are off to visit our second country - Bolivia! There mountain biking down 'the most dangerous road in the world' awaits us.
Until next time,
Michael
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