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Published: April 23rd 2009
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31st March 2009 After staying up all night as we had no hostel due to our early morning flight, all we can say about this day is that we arrived in Lima and slept for about 17 hours, only waking up to eat pizza! But it was pizza worth waking up for!!!
1st April 2009 After our mamouth sleep we were fresh and ready to go! Today we were going to meet the group for our Inca Trail tour but that wasn´t until later in the day so we started out by going to central Lima. We asked at reception the best way to get there and after telling us, she pulled out a map of the centre, highlighted one road and two plazas to indicate were we should go, then she crossed off the rest of the map and said "not safe". We took the taxi to plaza mayor to see the presidential building and the cathedral. The traffic on the way was typically South American, busy, chaotic and dangerous, yet some how it still works. Having visited the cathedral we walked down the one road we were allowed to and reached Plaza San Martin. This was
a beautiful little square with pretty architecture, even the KFC was diguised as a nice building. After taking some picutres, we negotiated a suitable price for the taxi home (there are no meters in Peru) in time for our meeting. The meeting was quite short and we got a free Pisco Sour, the drink of Peru. After the meeting we went for a meal with three of the guys on the tour, Corey from Canada, Moritz and Karsten from Denmark. We ordered some cerviche, which is a traditional peruvian dish of raw fish soaked in lemon marinade. It was delicious! Then to bed ready for our early morning start (we had a transfer to the airport at 7am!).
2nd April 2009 We took the transfer bus to the airport to catch our plane to Cusco. Peru has some backward rules and you have to pay the airport tax after checking in, just to make things complicated. Thankfully the GAP woman sorted all that out for us, while we ate Dunkin´Donuts. The flight was really short and by the time we took off we started to land again. Cusco is approximately 3200m above sea level so the air is
quite thin. On arrival at the airport we found a kiosk giving out "free oxygen" , we never knew you had to pay for it before!!! At our hotel in Cusco we had another meeting with the guide, called Jeremy,who was taking us on the trail. He explained our itinary and organised the hiring of sleeping bags (everything else was included). Then we were free to explore the city. We had a delicious lunch on a balcony above the Plaza de Armas. Around the square there were people selling stuff everywhere, some even wanted 1 soles for a photo with them, who are they kidding??? For dinner, the whole group went out for a meal together in the restaurant next door to the hotel. The meal was lovely, and it was great getting to know everyone. People started to leave as we had another early start and we were some of the last to leave. When we got up to leave the couple sitting opposite Elaine noticed that their bag was missing.
3rd April 2009 This morning we left at 6:30am. On the bus we noticed that the couple from last night, Jenna and Mike, were missing. We
later found out that in the purse was her passport, and medication that she needed daily as well as her money and cards. They were going to miss the first day of the tour and hopefully join us when they had got things sorted. The first day of the tour took us around the sacred valley of the Inca´s. Along the way we stopped at an animal sanctury which had rescued condors, pumas and various parrots. We also got our first sighting of llamas and alpacas! Condors are amazing birds but they are butt ugly. Continuing on our journey, we went to a project run by GAP which supported the local community. Here we saw how the women made the world famous alpaca jumpers starting from the spinning of the wool. Across the Sacred Valley were stunning views. Before lunch we went on a practice trail at Pisac, along Incan terraces to an Incan temple. We may have gotten a little burnt, even with our factor 25 suncream on, oops, lesson learnt. Lunch was an eat all you can buffet where we were lucky enough to try some alpaca meat. We both thought that it tasted a lot like beef.
After lunch we went to a traditional peruvian brewery where they brew an alcoholic drink from corn called chicha. It tasted a little like bitter sweetcorn but the strawberry flavoured one was much better and went down a treat! The final stop was Ollantaytambo, a town named after the great Incan general "taytambo". Here we were staying in a hostel before we started the Inca trail the following day. Before settling into the hostel we visited the "fortress temple". The temple was incompleted due to the spanish invasion which forced the Inca´s to move deeper into the Andes. The temple was facing a mountain in which two faces were carved, one of the Inca (the king of the incan people) and another one of a mysterious bearded man, who may have been a traveller from outside south america that taught the Incans about medicine. Back at the hostel Jenna and Mike had managed to join us after sorting things out back in Cusco. Some of us headed out for food and then we headed to bed, very excited about starting the Inca Trail!!!!
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