Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Arrived in cuzco at 5am, so headed to a hotel with the costa rica boys, which ended up being a real nice one. After showers etc had a look round the town and sorted out a machupicchu trek.
No chance of getting on the inca trail, but there are so many alternative trails to machupicchu for half the cost. Ended up doing the Inca Jungle Trek, and had an awesome group to do it with. The group was: us, the costa rica boys, Hannah & Andrew (Oz/kiwi couple) and of course our guide, Pablo.
Trek started off with a 4hr downhill mountain bike ride from the Abra de Malaga pass (4319m) to Santa Maria. We thought we'd been very careful in our selection of which company to go with and had been promised brand new bikes, but the bikes we got we hanging together with duct tape, still the brakes worked so all was sweet.
The next day was a 25km walk via an ancient inca trail and through the amazon jungle to some natural hot springs near Santa Teresa. Little did we know how bad the midges were..... give me a mosquito any day! Poor mark was the worse and his legs and arms were covered in bites. The worst thing bout the midges is you can't feel the little b******s bite but they then swell up and are sooooo itchy. The hot springs were just what we needed that day and so were the beers afterwards. Met some local kids hanging around the hostel we stayed in at Santa Teresa, who all wanted to play with us.
Instead of walking all the way from Santa Teresa to Aguas Calientes, we opted for a bus to take us to the start of the old railway tracks, which we then walked along all the way into Aguas Calientes. This meant we arrived in Aguas Calientes for lunchtime and could spend the afternoon climing Mt Putukusi, which looks down onto Machu Picchu, crazy climb which involved heaps of long vertical ladders.
The next morning we were walking at 4:30am to climb up to the Machu Picchu entrance for sunrise. Had a good tour around the ruins, which are so amazing and definatly a must see for anyone in south america. Then instead of climbing waynpicchu (what most people do), we got the insider tip to climb Mt Machu Picchu, which is bout twice the height of waynpicchu and virtually no one is doing it. Very hard climb, but the views at the top we worth every step.
Feeling very tired it was onto the train and then bus back to cuzco. Had an indianna jones moment on the bus ride... there was a rock slide and we had a big one crash onto the roof, cracking it with lots of dust coming through. One of the other buses though and a rock come through the dirvers window and cut his face, luckily he was ok.
Said goodbye to the costa ricas, then had the best breakfast the next morning with Hannah & Andrew (like having brunch and a trendy cafe back home!). Spent our last day in cuzco sorting out a few things and checked out Saqsaywaman (said "sexy woman"), which is these crazy rock joinery. Then met up with Hannah & Andrew at an Irish pub to say goodbye.
Next day back on the bus to Lima.
- comments