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Amongst the local children
These guys sang for us and were so excited when I produced a couple of notes of my own..paper notes that is? Its Friday 6th June, we have had a tiring 13 hour flight from Paris to Lima and fortunately we are met at the airport by two representatives of Peru Tourism who drove us to our beautiful hotel. We then had a meeting with Marita Nunez with whom I had liaised for the previous twelve months in putting the Peru leg of our trip together. The warm hospitality and personalised service we received was overwhelming.
We were picked up early next morning for our flight to Cusco, an hour trip into the Andes. Cuzco is at an altitude of 3,400 metres and altitude sickness had been a real concern. We had been given plenty of advice on how to cope or minimise its affects but still the feeling as we got off the plane was weird. Just walking at a normal pace was enough to have you soon stopping to catch your breath. We landed at about 11:00 am and spent the rest of the day in slow motion. We relaxed in the hotel for a good part of the afternoon before taking a walk to the main square of Cuzco, the Plaza de Armas, we walked at a snail pace and
Cuzco
The narrow street as we approached our hotel on the right. still paused at regular intervals to take in some air. The hotel had provided Cocoa tea which also assisted in us remaining free of any real sickness. Annie had mentioned that the feeling she had was like a constant hangover, but that was how I felt throughout our entire time in Europe.
Cuzco is an amazing city, the oldest continually inhabited city in South America, as well as the historical centre of the Incan Empire. To stroll around this town is like a walk back in time, every part of the town is steeped in history and seems centuries old, the people are extremely friendly, albeit very poor and humble. Every few steps, there would either be young struggling artist selling one of his original works, we bought several paintings from three such artists, and many of their works did seem very similar. Or there would be young girls, 5 or 6 years old selling little dolls, or wanting their photos taken with their pet Llamas. You couldn’t help but feel for them, they didn’t pester and were ever willing to help out if need be. One artist, Hulio, ran at least 300 mtrs one night to fetch a
The hotel courtyard, Cuzco
Typically Spanish Influence taxi for us, next morning he was waiting for me at the front of the hotel and I got stung for three of his paintings... actually I had already bought three of his lookalike down the road???
The next day was taken up with a tour of the city and nearby Inca ruins including the ruins of Saqsaywaman, I make mention of this as the pronunciation used by our guide amused us as it sounded an awfull lot like Sexywoman. The following day we joined a tour to the Sacred Valley and the ruins of Ollantaytambo. Both days were most enjoyable and gave us a real insight into the ways of the Incan people, their structure of worship, and their way of life. We found this to be instrumental in understanding and appreciating what lay ahead on our trek through the mountain passes and jungle paths created so long ago by the Incan people.
Annie and I had trained hard for this walk and although our fitness had been set back by overindulgence through Europe with the intake of excessive pasta, pizza, snitchel, bread rolls, croissants, and, oh yes, some alcohol... we felt that even with the altitude we were
Cuzco
Plaza de Armas well equipped. When we awoke on the 9th.of June for our 46 km trek along the Inca trail what we weren’t prepared for was the 1hour and 20 min ride in a small van from Cuzco, over the high plains of the Andes to the 84km post which is the designated start to the Inca Trail. This road passes through many small villages and as many of the local inhabitants do not own cars there is heavy pedestrian traffic at this early hour with farm workers heading out to the pastures and children walking to school or waiting for the bus along the side of the road. There were no foot paths, we saw children as young as 5 or 6 holding the hand of their younger siblings walking along the roadside, there were cows, donkeys, and even pigs close to the road.... the answer to this by our driver was a constant double beep of his horn, he continued at his high speed, with his hand pressing on the horn every time he sighted a pedestrian or animal walking along the roads edge. This continued for an hour as Annie kept trying to connect a seat belt that clearly
Cuzco
The Plaza de Armas from the surrounding hills. did not work. The ride got worse from our point of view as we approached the steep descent into the Sacred Valley, we could hear the screech of tyres as he entered the hairpin bends, we could feel the rumbling of the rims hard on the tyres as he bent his van downward through the many tight corners. By the time we reached the 84km post we felt the remainder of the journey would be a breeze, the 14 km stroll on the first day, the 5 km climb from 3200 mtrs to 4,200 mtrs and back down to 3,700 and then the final decent down precipitous steps to Machu Picchu would be a breeze.
So far Peru had been a wonderful experience and our emotions were bubbling with the anticipation of our journey ahead. The Inca Trail into Machu Picchu
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