The next chapter of suzie-and-harriet's-south-american-adventure will be narrated by me, Harriet. Suzie has handed over the writing reigns- an excellent metaphor to begin my blog-writing career- for this installment, and I apologise for it's delay. Cusco is to blame; it always seems to hurl challenge after challenge at us. The most recent being the threat that I, as a result of the purse-(and student ID therein)-being-stolen incident, might not be able to do el camino de inca AT ALL. We were sat at 6.30pm in the travel agency (less that 12 hours before we were due to begin), eagerly awaiting our briefing, Suzie pen in hand and me with my newly purchased walking stick, when it transpired that without my student ID I wouldn't be allowed through the muy estricto check points at Machu picchu. Needless to say we were unimpressed. Two visits to the polizia turistico, some very charming flirting from Suzie and some distressed looks from me, and we managed to obtain a report verifying that my purse was, in fact, stolen. Another sleepless night (though not as sleepless as the rabies night) and we were on our way to once again try our luck at the hands of the Peruvians. Pachamama must have been smiling upon us though, as I made it through all the checkpoints to begin this blog sitting with a coca cola zero and very tired legs in an internet cafe in Aguas Calientes. Aguas Calientes is the popular name for the town of Machu picchu, named so for the hot springs that are somewhere in its locality but that Suzie and I have decided to avoid in the belief that they will probably be akin to sharing a warm bath with 500 people who haven't showered for four days.

The Inca Trail was, quite simply, phenomenal. Day 1 was a comfortable 5 hours of walking or so, with lunch and dinner squashed around a wobbly table in a big red tent. This pleasant beginning was somewhat tarnished by our briefing re. Day 2, which was essentially "you have to walk uphill for 8 hours before we give you lunch". We were terrified. And by 'we' I refer to not only Suzie and I but our entire group, which consisted of 3 French girls, 4 Dutch girls, 2 English girls (that's us), our friend Aline and her novio Maxime, and one slightly overwhelmed Ductch boy. We all decided that personal porters would be the best way to go, and tried to sleep. Day 2 was in fact fine without our backpacks and Suzie and I reached the top of the climb far quicker than predicted, powered by nature valley cereal bars and Lady Gaga on our ipods. An excellent lunch followed a less than excellent descent, then lots of relaxing on a fairly ugly campsite. Night in the tent was very cold and breakfast on Day 3 was birthday cake. This was strange.

Day 3 we were reunited with our very heavy backpacks and commenced on a 10 hour day of walking. The massive descent at the beginning meant that we spent a lot of the day walking through the humid jungle of the Yungas, oohing and ahhing at Tarzan-esque vines, paths canopied by lush trees clinging to the mountainside, and dark tunnels carved through massive slabs of rock. By the end of the day our faculties for appreciating the scenery were waning, due to a downpour (and subsequent discovery that our ponchos were not waterproof) and knees that were screaming at us to STOP WALKING. Suzie said that she felt like a squashed snail. Luckily however, Machu picchu wasn't far to go and dinner, once again, was excellent.

The final morning began at 3.30am with pancakes and a brisk 2 hour walk to the Sun Gate, which included a near-vertical stair climb. In my complete ignorance and sieve-like memory for Quechuan words, I cannot remember its Incan name. Apologies for my nascent colonialism. The Sun Gate marks the point at which you get your first glance of the city of Machu picchu and, rather poetically, for us this glance was timed perfectly as we watched the sun emerge from behind Machu picchu mountain and shed its light on the spectacular ruins. The descent into the city itself is along a ridge on the side of the mountain and boasts a constant view of the city, a view that was surprisingly entirely uncompromised by having to share it with swarms of fellow tourists.

As we posed for our post-card pictures we couldn't quite believe that we were, finally, at Machu picchu. The four days of hard walking, the cold nights, the aching legs and creaking shoulders, the trips to the police station, the endless planning, the epic return from Bolivia, all culminated there, at that moment. The city is more beautiful than in pictures, I guess beautiful things always are, especially when you have worked so hard to see them. It sort of spills down the hill on both sides, in vertigo-inducing agricultural terraces that at certain points almost touch the river at the bottom of the valley. The city itself in fact isn't as maze-like as a lot of the other ruins we've seen, and is spaced around a number of green plazas, upon which frolick what I can only assume are Peru's finest pedigree llamas.

No one seems to know much about Machu picchu, and much of its history is based on supposition and elaboration upon Hiram Bingham's orginal analysis of the site. It's basically thought to be a very sacred place because of various phenomena that occur when the light from the sun shines on the city. I was somewhat sceptical about these phenomena ("on the 21st of June the light that shines on this [rectangular] rock, for 7 minutes of the day, looks EXACTLY LIKE a puma's head") but you can see that the Incas built the city with an eye to its close proximity to, and relationship with, nature. Even it's height and bare exposure to the sky, according to our guide, were intended for communion with "the milky way". This sounded slightly odd, but I can imagine that the night sky from the highest point of the city would be pretty awe-inspiring when all around you is space flanked by mountains that drop almost vertically from their summit. The city is a triumphant tribute to the worship of nature Gods, and it really is possible to see the draw of such a religion in such a place. I guess this is what Hiram Bingham felt when he concluded that various buildings were the Sun Temple, The Moon Temple, The Temple of the Condors and so forth. Our tired bodies just about carried us around the site, before we collapsed in a shady spot and rested before catching a bus to Aguas Calientes.

Now I will back-track to where Suzie left off, which was our arrival in Bolivia, our glorious walk along the ridge of the Isla del Sol, and our return to La Paz. La Paz is a fantastic city, really busy and bustling with excellent street food, low prices and endearingly grumpy people. We found ourselves slap-bang in the middle of what I now know is referred to as the 'party-hostel-scene', which for Suzie and I equated to more spooning, but this time (unlike in Ayucucho), in a dorm. A men's dorm. And men, obviously, means smelly 18 year old boys. We overheard some hilarious conversations and spent a somewhat precarious night together on a top bunk.

In the subsequent days I rode down THE DEATH ROAD. This is also known as "The World's Most Dangerous Road" due to the number of bikes, buses, lorries etc that have toppled over its edge. Hmm. I think that really the fear factor for me came from the fact that I was utterly sin guia. This was because I erroneously booked with a thrill-seeking friend that I met in America, and his similarly insane friends who prided themselves on 'beasting' the Death Road. I did not beast it, but rather rode slowly down in full expectation of toppling over the vertical drop like the poor Israeli girl the week previous. She has now become something of a urban legend, with each nationality of backpacker claiming that 'a girl died' from their homeland. I can confirm that she was Israeli, I fell off my bike about 10 feet from her Hebrew tomb.

No rest for the wicked- we had to be back for Machu picchu- so a yummy dinner of Arab food was followed by a nice long sleep and an 18 hour bus ride to the Pampas. The Pampas is sort of like the jungle; the Lonely Planet describes it as 'wetland area' north of La Paz. We spent 3 days cruising the canal-esque water network on a motorised canoe, spotting monkeys, crocodiles and capybara (essentially giant guinea pigs). We also ´swam´ with 'pink' river dolphins: the seemingly gratuitous use of inverted commas indicating that in fact we floated about 10 metres away from some disappointingly grey ones. We also failed at piranha fishing, drank beers at sunset and smoked shisha with our new Israeli best friends. It was all very lovely bar the HUGE NUMBER OF BUGS that ate us alive. Especially at night, when our torches acted effectively as insect magnets. Strapped to our heads. We went to bed screaming.

We flew back to La Paz in a teeny tiny plane, missed the warmth of the Pampas, and prepared ourselves for the 3 day 'Choro Trek'. This is "one of Bolivia's premier treks" (again, I quote the wisdom of our trusty LP) and descends from the top of a mountain like a billion trillion metres into the jungle. This means once again spectacular scenery, but VERY painful knees. However it was excellent preparation for Machu picchu, both in terms of trekking and camping (we purified water and everything). The only downside was that Suzie's sleeping bag smelt bad. The trek ended in a gorgeous mountainside town called Coroico, where we sunned ourselves by a pool and drank beers overlooking the Yungas.

Back in La Paz we decided to watch ANY flim at the cinema, which turned out to be La Furia de los Titans. It was obviously a terrible film, but we loved it, and it steeled us for our very dull, bureaucratic trip back over the border to Cusco.

Back in Cusco now, and I have been hit by a unforgiving dose of food poisoning courtesy of a suspicious empañada de pollo. However, Suzie has proven to be an excellent nurse and we are hoping to head to Chile on Sunday (a 20 hours bus journey merely to the border!) We, sadly, are missing the Dutch-event-of-the-year tonight due to my illness, so Happy Queen´s Day to the hundreds of Dutchies in South America, and everyone else (assuming the Dutch people will be too drunk to do so) keep their fingers crossed for us for our onward travels...