Inca Trail day 1

---

This morning we got up relatively early and were driven out to the starting point of our trek (km 82). With our trusted walking sticks that we´d purchased last night and with our passports stamped we started our trip.
It was easy going at first and we stopped for a short while to have snacks and to watch our guide Caeser make an Andean prayer with Coca leaves (for a safe journey).
Caeser and his assistant Alboro (I keep calling Alberto) then showed us how to chew Coca Leaves (I think I prefer it in tea format).

We then started a hard uphill section which was made all the more satisfing whn we reached the Lactapata and below the Qénte ruins. We sat and admired the view only to be disturbed by loud squaking. We turned to to see what had interupted our admiration of these ruins only to find a flock of approx 7 bright green parrotts flying out of the valley below.

At approx 1 we made it to our lunch site, which had already been set up by the porters. The heavens opened just as we arrived. But despite this the meal we had was fantastic.

After lunch we started again, but this time it would be all the way up to our camp site. It was incredibly hard work. Our suffering in the wet was made all the more embarrasing by the fact that we had to continuously stop to let the porters who were carrying 25kg each and only wearing sandles past.

At one point our guide told us it was only 20min to the camp site. I think he lied our thought we were better then we actually were, but it took us much longer. It just kept going on and on, up and up. At this point I had already worn through the alpaca sleave of my walking stick and the bottom was starting to split into a mushroom shape.

We finally made it at 5pm to find everything already setup by the porters. The view from our tent was fantastic, we could just about make out where we had been. We were treated to popcorn to munch on as we admired the view.

As soon as the sun set it started to get incredibly cold and everyone started throwing on layer after layer. In fact Dennise (Australian/French shiela) had resorted to wearing her dads crappy woolen jumper, which was hilariously so large it hung almost down to her knees.

We played bull dog for a while to warm up which was made all the more challenging due to the fact that the surrounding area was boggy. The game stopped when Rachel rugby tackled john to the ground and Lindsay got stranded on some earth turf island surrounded by bog.

Finaly we had Dinner in our nice warm food tent. Another great meal with Queneo soup for starters (rather like lental soup.)

We then had an early night, I was sharing with John who unfortunatlly by this time was having "wind" problems. Quite frankly the tent had to be recalled the gas chamber - it was that bad! After an hour I finally fell asleep (or unconcious).

---