Warning!!! This is a long blog, you might want to grab a cuppa?

So our adventures in Peru continue, a country that I am fast growing to love.

Ok so Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire and for many the gateway to the 'lost' Inca city of Machu Picchu. But more on the lost city later.

So first stop off the bus is of course another hotel, but thankfully the service at a Peruvian hotel has once again shown itself to be outstanding. So after a few hours kip and armed with advice from the hotel, we head to the bohemian district of San Blas, with the help of the courtesy car provided by our hotel. San Blas is a maze of small cobbled streets, lovely old buildings with beautiful balconies to watch the world go by and, as is the way in South America, a lovely Plaza or two at the centre of it all. Also add plenty of old Inka masonry on display despite the best efforts of the Spanish to smash most of it up. Throw in numerous street hawkers selling all manner of 'artisanal' wares (alpaca hat, coat, scarf anyone) made in china, sorry Peru. All that pretty much sums up the centre of Cusco. Anyhow, I'm sure to many Cusco would be a little too touristy, but it has it's charms if you can forget about some of the more commercial parts. Not having anything organised, we spent the afternoon mooching about taking in the odd cathedral and museum. All very nice and relaxing.

More of a plan for the following day, however. We decided to hire a driver for the day and hit a few of the major ruins in the Sacred Valley. Now I'm not going to give a blow by blow account of everything that we saw, but the ruins at Pisac were a highlight and probably just as much of a highlight was the scenery. Frankly, I have to say that I have never experienced scenery on the scale, majesty and solitude that Peru can serve up at times. The soaring mountains, the green valleys, deep canyons, the colours, deary me.... Just wonderous.

Anyhow, so although we were due to head back to Cusco to continue our Peru adventures, the following day we headed off to the town of Ollantaytambo to board the train that would take us to the legendary Machu Picchu. Now I'm sure some of you are asking why we are taking the train and not doing the world famous Inca Trail at this point and the answer is, because there is a train. Now before the lazy accusations start being thrown about, I think we have both proved on at least a couple of occasions that we are capable of doing the hard yards when
required. However, in the world of exercise and sport, walking/hiking isn't filed in the fun category for me generally. For me walking is a function not a joy and so when one is offered a train, one smiles, says muchas gracias senior and lets the train take the strain.

Saying all of that, the following episode ensured that more than just the train was taking the bloody strain and was certainly not in the cheery Peru rail promo videos that I have seen. You see what happened next people, was a 2 hr train journey turning into a 10 hr journey and at the end of it all we ended back where we started with no where to sleep and various other admin nightmares. The reason? A act of God or in this part of the world, a landslide or make that two. Now to say this wasn't how we'd planned to spend the day would be an understatement, however, for various reasons, it could have been a lot worse and the 10 hrs on the train included some most amusing moments. In particular the local dance performance put on by one of the conductors in full costume, with the exception of the moccasins he had been wearing only a minute earlier with his official uniform. This was swiftly followed by a fashion show down the centre of the carriage showing off various knitted Alpaca garments which were expertly modelled by other members of staff. Marvellous entertainment!! An honorable mention should also be given to mad Michael from Oregon and his 83 year old mother. Most amusing character. Anyhow, thankfully we managed to sort out all of our admin issues concerning bookings and the like and thankfully we had an extra day to play with in our schedule.

Attempt two. I can't say that I ever felt relaxed on our second attempt to get to Machu, but thankfully it all went well and we pulled into Aguas Calientas station bang on time, with the only issue being that the rain also appeared bang on schedule. At least we were where we were meant to be however. Before I move on, a few words on the actual train journey, as it's a lovely little train journey. Again taking you through more of the stunning scenery that Peru seems to have in endless supply, from farm land to snow and glacier capped mountains to jungle and the beginnings of rain forest. Fantastic!

So onto the legendary 'Lost City' and our expectations, could it live up to them? The short answer, sure bloody señor, sure bloody!! As already stated, we'd seen a few different ruins in the Sacred valley, with Pisac probably being the pick, however, none of these prepare you for Machu. The others are ruins but Machu is a city. I'm not really sure what struck me first because there were just so many things to take in be it the majestic location, the completeness of the ruins, the scale, the craftsmanship, the lack of air in your lungs after climbing a few steps. Just too much on first sight. Thankfully we had decided to visit the site twice and so had two opportunities to take it all in. The first with a guide and the second without.

It cost a little extra to hire our guide Veronica, but I'm a scholarly type of guy and I like to get a little history behind what I'm seeing. Don't get me wrong, we were both wowed by what we were looking at, but it was great to get a bit of an understanding of what we were looking at and also to have a few things pointed out to us that we would have otherwise missed. The second visit involved a 5.30 am start with the hope of getting to see the sun rise over the ruins. This didn't happen due to the clouds unfortunately, however, there was still something very magical about watching the clouds roll in and about over the ruins. The rest of the morning was spent exploring, taking pictures and chilling absorbing our surroundings. Fantastic!!

Next stop was back to Ollantaytambo for a couple more nights, the fabulous concentric circle ruins of Moray and the strange but cool salt flats at Salinas. Ollantaytambo itself also has magnificent ruins of a fortress, aquaducts and a market. It was also one place the Spaniards did not conquer on their first visit, the Incas redirected the waterflow and flooded the village centre. I've not really done these places justice here, but my fingers are beginning to hurt and there are some pics that will hopefully paint a thousand words. It was then back to Cusco for another night in preparation to catch what the Guardian labelled one of the great train journeys of the world, the Cusco to Puno Andean Express.

Right enough from me now, got a few more exciting things to do than continue to tap away at my iPhone. As much as I of course love doing that.

Adios!!
G