Today was travel a day. We left our homebase hostel in Cuzco (not sure if I mentioned it, but this hotel (structure) must be at least 600 years old) built on a side of a mountain (as most things are in this region, for lack of flat land) Flight to Lima was smooth and uneventful. As expected Lima was covered in its perpetually gray winter sky. The city is a stark change from Cuzco, which in retrospect has done a very good job in preventing media advertising from being pasted allover its buildings and landscape. Lima seems more like a free [View Full Entry]

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With the cargo raft temporarily repaired. We started off onto our last day of rafting. Yet not as eventful as the second day, quite enjoyable non the less. We ran a class 4 and 5 and then jumped into the drink to body surf a class 2. Running a rapid without the safety of a raft was far more challenging than I had imagined. I got sucked under for a at least 10 seconds.. asking around I seemed to be the only one to have encountered this undercurrent. Exhausted, we finally arrived at our disembarkment point, loaded the bus, ate lunch [View Full Entry]

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A wonderful nights rest under the full moon, a little breakfast and onto the water we were. We got off to a great start, running mostly class 3 rapids with one class 4 and 5. The entire boat got emptied out in an attempt to surf a wave. I was the first to get sucked under, and then the rest of the boat got tossed. Alessandra swallowed a few gallons of water during the process, she soon figured out not to try and breath when under the surface. We encountered a class 6 rapid, so the guides forced us to do [View Full Entry]

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As from the previous blog entry, the entire group was seething at my unintentional separation. Anyway.. it will take some time to smooth things over with everyone... it seems that even though I left messages with the most obvious personnel and authorities( the tour guides VM, the destination hotel, and the local police chief in the city I got lost in) no one seemed think that I was capable of dialing a phone, so they didn't´t bother calling in to check. Any way the team eventually got in to Cuzco 3 hours after I did. Today we left on hour way [View Full Entry]

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Ohhh boy... Not a good day! It began with all of the best intentions. We were supposed to take a bus back up to the eastern slope then begin a bike decent westward towards the sacred valey. Well, I´m not sure what happend, perhaps some bad logical in my decision making, but I some how got seperated from my group and ended up in paultambo (sp?) alone. I made the assumption that the group would arrive in the same city as I, but after a two our wait I realized things had gone bad. I suspected the team took an [View Full Entry]

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What an environement, can´t say I´ve every been exposed to the jungle. This quite exciting. It´s almost always raining drizzling precipitating in one way or another. Plant life in all manner is extremely aboundant yet still fragile. The photos don´t do justice as I ran into some technical problems with my camera (since been corrected.. I think) We climbed about 500 meters up a jungle slope, whick basicaly ended with a muddy deriere assisted decent with a tropical waterfall and bath ending. Scenes of Indiana Jones and Roamancing the stone kept popping into my head. [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, We started today with a 5 hour bus ride up to the eastern ridge of the andes mountains. We were delayed by several bouts of motion sickness within our group (as all roads turn to dirt 2 miles out of only the largest cities) After a brief pickick lunch we begain our bike decent into the the jungle cloud forest (always cloudy... always) One of our team members took a nasty tunmble which took her out for the day. Another team member then split his lip in a similar fashon. Alessandra opted for the bus after making it [View Full Entry]

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Today we have a day to rest. I think everybody needs it. We are all happy we all made it all the way on the trail . What an experience it was. The day was spent wandering around the city and enjoying artisian craft shopping. Peruvians make some of the most beautifull handicraft. [View Full Entry]

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We made it! It is kind of surreal to finally be there after this long trek. It feels like we´ve been on the trail for much longer than only 3 days. This morning we woke up at 3:00 am to race into the dark to be one of the first at the Sun gate. Andre was actually the first there with two other´s from our group. What an amazing sight... Machu Picchu´s beauty is inexplicable! [View Full Entry]

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Day 3 Such an easier day! The slopes are nice and not too steep and there was a beautifull white dog that keeped me company on the trail. I made it to the last camp before Machu Picchu at around 11h00 am and the weather was just perfect. Andre´s knees are giving him problems now so he took it a little bit slower. And guess who has the cold now!! [View Full Entry]

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