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Satin Shoes Go Camping
Sorry for swift leave off on last message - somehow seem to be really busy all the time and barely managing to keep up with diary as well as emails and this blog...
Last day of the Inca Trail was a pleasant downhill stroll for a few hours - because we were descending fairly fast, the landscape changed so so quickly: suddenly so much more flora and fauna and (hurrah!) so much warmer...however, combine this with having picked up a cold, and you have near total loss of hearing in one ear. Tres bizarre and muchly annoying...felt like was half underwater.
Slightly anticlimactic end to it all in that we had done an alternative trail to escape the tourist hoards (didn't see anoher gringo the whole way) so we didn't and at the sun gate at Machu Picchu, but instead got on a bus... Stopped that night at another town famous for its ruins, Ollantaytambo where I sampled Alpaca (just like steak).
Bright and early the next morning we were off to Machu Picchu on the train (the poshest service Perurail have to offer). After a bus ride and a little walk you finally get to THE view of Machu Picchu, the "Lost City", that you see on all the tourist ads....it reallydoes look exactly like it....the place itself isn't huge, but there is something in the air up there. You're so, so high up, with cliffs and crags rising up, seemingly out of nowhere, all around you - just how the heck did they build this place hundreds of years ago? It is, however, easy to see how the Spanish didn't find it for many centuries....twas only rediscovered by a yank, Hiram Bingham, in 1911. Truly breathtaking to survey the ruins from up high, and totally absorbing to potter round them, as I did, all afternoon (complete with rubbish attempts at sketching...Art A Level, moi?).
Back to Cusco the next day for another raucous night out, dancing on the bar....reminded me of my spiritual home on Carnegies in down the Wanch in Honkers.
Spent the next day exploring Cusco's markets and then decided to sample the (in)famous "Cuy", aka guinea pig, for dins. Quite simply the funniest meal have ever had...photos will follow...they turned up, claws out and teeth bared, on our plates, split in half...not much meat on these babies so after a couple of fairly rancid mouthfuls, we resorted to generally disecting them - liver, brains and all. Keith kissed one and Henry scratched his teeth with a little claw: vile.
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