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�Hola! This is our second stint in Cuzco as part of the Southern Cross. We"ve just done the Inca Trail, which was pretty amazing, which culminated, of course, with the stunning ruins of Machu P�hu, and are now back for a well-deserved couple of days rest. I don"t mind admitting it felt a bit strange returning to the "real world" on Wednesday, after the four day trek, not only because we didn"t get to wash or shower for a while, owing to the lack of electricity at that altitude, but also because of the sense of group achievement and teamwork felt by the group while away.
We were led by a guy called Javier...or "Javs"...or "The Javster"...or "Shirley" and "Gato", cat in Spanish, so called because of his piercing blue eyes and his tendency to chase mice, through the twenty six mile course which featured consistatly knackering uphills, and just as temperamental downhills, with the ocassional "Peruvian Flats", and assisted by around seventeen porters and two chefs, who would speed past the group, our bags, cooking equipment and amenities on their backs, at full throttle, with a swiftness that didn"t seem, to me, to take into consideration the 3-4000 metre steep drops into the river below. The porters, having hurtled ahead - probably attempting to beat the course record of 3 hours 50 minutes set not so long ago - would, by the time we had arrived at camp for lunch or dinner, have set up everything under the marquee where we would eat our three courses a day. It doesn"t sound like proper camping does it? And I became aware of the drawbacks, once again, of having paid to go on a tour where almost all your needs are catered for. Having said this, it cannot be denied that we achieved something most people don"t get the chance to achieve - it was tough even with May"s Marathon behind me - and for that we returned jubilant people. The photos and a couple of videos show the last few scenes of the trek.
Now it"s back to reality. Unusually for us, at ths point of the tour, there"s nothing we have to do and nowhere we have to go, so everyone"s doing their own thing. In fact, Ben and Katie and Jenny and Jen are probably horseriding as I speak! I didn"t fancy that. Yesterday, there was a National Holiday here with the Corpus Christi celebrations in and around the Plaza de Armas, which was pretty enthralling, and today, I"ve already been to three museums: the Monasterio de Santa Catolina; the Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporaneo; and the Museo de Arte Popular, all of them being free with our tourist passes. We move on to Puno, I think, on Sunday morning, where we will have our Peruvian homestay, which is where a couple of us spent a night with a family each. After that, we cross our first border on route to La Paz, which is where the first secton of the tour begins, and where we will lose some chums, and gain others.
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