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It has been a little while since we last updated the blog, but we´ve been out of electronic communication for nearly a week now.
We travelled from Puno to Cuzco to get started on the trekking and Machu Pichu section of the trip. Our first night here was interesting. We had a couple of drinks at the highest Irish-owned, Irish pub in the world (apparently there is one in La Paz that is higher, but is locally owned), and then came home and had a good night´s sleep. We woke up in the morning to find out that others who had not been so responsible had managed to get involved in a bar fight at 4am and our tour leader has been sporting a black eye ever since. I suspect that we won´t be welcome back in the Irish pub tonight if we decide we´d like a couple more drinks. I´m sure we´ll find an alternative.
The next day we did a tour of some of the Incan ruins around the city. The ruins were really interesting, but the Spanish had destroyed or built over the top of most of them. It was a favourite pastime to build cathedrals on top of old Incan temples - just to rub in their supremacy, I presume. It must have been quite galling for the Spanish that the Incan sections stood up well through earthquakes, but the Spanish bits didn´t. We also went to visit the apparently famous 12-sided stone that is in one of the Incan walls. We´d actually passed it the day before and hadn´t realised why people were taking pictures of a random section of wall, but now we know. We had dinner at a lovely little Chinesse (sic) restaurant and packed up ready for our trek.
The next morning started at 4am and we had to scrounge breakfast from a very nice night porter, despite being promised that everything would be organised at 4.20. We drove a couple of hours, picked up a few more people, and then drove some more. I made the mistake of sitting in the window seat and spent most of the drive with my eyes shut or not looking down. Let´s just say that the road wasn´t exactly wide in places. We started trekking at about 3,600m and did about 12km the first day over a 4,200m pass. It was really great. It felt like another world. We were surrounded by mountains, well above the tree line, with small rural outposts here and there and kids running around herding stock.
That night, however, things took a bit of a turn for the worse. Damian had been slightly ill before we left, but had seemed to recover okay. But, the first night, it returned with a vengence and the next day he was really very sick, but decided to keep walking anyway. It was really hard work for both of us - him being so ill and me trying to keep him going. But he didn´t complain at all, even through the hail and the snow and the almost complete lack of food that he´d managed to eat. It was quite disappointing, given how much we would have enjoyed it if he´d been better. I´m certain that he wouldn´t have been able to manage it at all without all the walking we did before we left and the week or so that we´d already had to adjust to the altitude. The second day was supposed to be about 17km over two passes, the highest of which was 4,300m and then camping at 4,100m, but, for reasons best known to our guide, he decided that that wasn´t enough and that we should walk an extra 2.5 hours to another campground lower down. I was livid by the time we got there. It was about an extra 7km and instead of being tired but okay, Damian was burning up with a fever and could barely put one foot in front of the other by the time we got there. And, to make matters worse, it turned out that was the end of the trek, so instead of having a decent sleep and feeling reasonable for the last 7km the next morning, we did it all in one go, were miserable the whole time and then stood around doing nothing waiting for our bus to turn up with Damian feeling much better after a sleep. So, overall it was a very mixed experience and something we´ll have to try again when no one is ill.
We spent that day travelling to Aquas Calientes, the town from which you visit Machu Pichu. It turns out that the name is a complete furphy, as neither the showers nor the hot springs actually made it to hot - tepid would be generous, so perhaps they should rename the town to 'Tepid Waters' rather than 'Hot Waters'. Overall, it was a pretty expensive, disappointing town, and there would be no reason to go except for Machu Pichu.
After another 4am start, we got the bus up to Machu Pichu the next morning, and it was amazing. It is an enormous Incan ruin that managed to escape Spanish detection so is quite intact compared to many others. It seems to have been a religious and scientific society, mostly made up of gentry, with houses, granaries, lots of terraces, monuments and temples and the king´s residence. They have these amazing sundials that document the seasons, with everything perfectly aligned for the solstices and equinoxes that it is difficult to see how they would have been able to build. While we were there, we had a tour of the whole site, saw the ´sunrise´ and then did quite a bit of climbing up the peaks around the site. We walked up the mountain in the picture - an hour of steady stairs, including many that were directly on the edge and required quite a head for heights, and another mountain on the other side to the Sun Gate, which is the entrance to the site from the Inca Trail.
Then, last night we got the train and bus back to Cuzco. Our tour leader had told us there would be a fashion show on the train. He has something of a habit of teasing, so we didn´t believe him, but it turns out we were wrong. The attendants on the train, after feeding us, went off, got changed and turned the aisle into a catwalk to display the local alpaca clothing range. The girl, in particular, got right into it and you can see she´s hoping for a talent scout on the train one day. The guy was quite geeky, with thick glasses and a goofy, embarassed look for most of it. It really was quite surreal. Then, despite a kamikazi bus driver, we arrived back at the hotel in Cuzco and were asleep within minutes.
Today we´re having a quiet day after all the walking and excitement of the last week. We´re giving Damian a chance to shake the last of his bug and see a bit more of town, including the artisan´s market and a couple of museums. Tomorrow we fly off to the Amazon for the last stop on our trip before heading back to Lima.
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