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Hello all, I am finally out of England again and have started my new adventure in South America. Im traveling with Barbs and our first destination was Lima in Peru. After a grand total of 44 hours of traveling from Wotton, we arrived at Lima at around 2 o clock in the morning on the 27th May at our Hotel which was called the Embajardes. After checking in and taking our bags to our rooms the first port of call was a celebratery beer at the hotel bar and its save to say that the beer in Peru tastes just as good as anywhere!
Our first day in Peru was a fairly laid back one, we basically just had a walk around the city taking a few photos and enjoying the new surroundings. That evening we went out for a meal, which we thought was fairly cheap at around four pounds, we were soon to be proved wrong! After a meal we headed down pizza street and had a little look at a few of the bars and had our first experiance of a Peruvian drink called Pisco Soures, which consists of Pisco, egg white, ice, lemon juice and suger,
very nice!!!
The next three days in Lima followed the same sort of theme of just looking around the city and getting things such as mobile phones etc sorted out! However by day two we had discovered that food could be brought alot cheaper and still be extremely nice. We found a local resturant around five minutes from our hotel which did a starter and a main meal for 7 soles, which is around 1 pound 20, awesome! We visited that resturant reguarly with my personal faveroute being the soup of the day followed by steak, chips, rice, an egg and salad! On our final day in Lima i finally decided to get my hair shaved after around 8 months of growth, this was swiftly followed by hitting a bar for happy 2 hours, bye one get one free, so we did the manly thing and drank cocktails! That night we had our first meeting about the Inca trail, and met up with our group, they all seemed ok and consisted of 3 Aussies, 1 Swiss, us two English and 8 Americans.
The next moring we took a bus to Lima airport where we flew to Cusco to
begin the Inca trail. Once ariving in Cusco after around an hours flight we met up with our tour guide, Ali in the hotel we were staying at for one night. After the meeting me and Barbs had a look around Cusco which is a pretty beautiful city, walking up and down the hilly landscape and taking in all of the impressive buildings and culture of the city. The next day we set off with the rest of the group in a mini bus to the Sacred Valley of the incas. On our way to this sight we stoped off at a local community in the Andes where we met some of the locals who showed us some of there techniques of making clothing, the group proceded to buy some of the clothing such as hats, scarfs, wallets and cloths, most of which had been made out of Alpaca fur. The sacred valley was our next stop and was the groups fiirst experince of walking in the Andes. The walk we did took around an hour and a half and allowed us to look around various inca consructions and learn about various farming techniques used by the Incas, many of
which are still used today by the locals. After we stopped of for lunch we headed to a local bar called the Inca bar where we played a local game called frog darts, where basically you have to through coins at a board with holes in it, with different holes representing different amounts of points. I was pretty useless, which is unusual for me, ha!! At this bar we tried a local drink called Chiga (no idea on the spelling), which was made fresh from a lady who worked their, and also choose two life guineapigs to take on the trail with us to eat. The task of looking after the guineapigs the first night was given to barbs, and we proceeded to name them bill and Ted, i.e bill and teds excellent adventure/bogus journey. We then headed to another hotel in a village called Ollantaytambo where we brough walking poles for 5 soles (less than a pound) and coco leaves which are meant to give you energy and help with the altitude during the trek. That night the whole group went for a meal, and me, Barbs and two americans called Olen and John went to a bar after
for a couple more drinks!
The next day the Inca trail started for real, after looking at the inca fortress at Ollantaytambo we headed to 82 km where we began the four day hike. The first part of the walk was fairly gentle and our guide Ali would stop reguarly and talk about the plant life and some of the history surrounding the Inca empire. The walk gradually got more tough and steep, and was a taster of what we had to come. At the first lunch break of the trip the whole group were pleasantly surprised at what the chefs had pepared, we got a home made soup and meat rice and veg for a main meal, the food for the entire trip was excellent. After around another 3 hours of walking we got to our campsite where everything had all been set up by the porters who live in different local communites. These portes also carried all of our equipment up the mountains and would do the walk in half the time we could manage, pretty amazing. Their was a mum and daughter selling refreshments there which was a bit of a surprise, and we set down
for dinner at around 7. After dinner it was time for the guineapigs to be killed, and barbs and Olen had volunteered to do the deed. I was taking pictures and John made a video of it, save to say that they didnt do a good job of it and probably squeled more than the guineapig, was very funny though!
The next morning we were introduced to the porters, their were 21 all in all so it took a while, after this we set off at about 8. This days hiking was alot harder than the previous day, with most of it being very steep. The weather was again hot with very few clouds in the sky, which made a very sweaty walk! After lunch, which included eating the guineapigs we proceeded upwards to the highest peak of the trail, Dead womans pass. This is 4198 meters above sea level and once we made it there the sense of acheivment and the views were just amazing. The next couple of hours was downhill which was not harder than going up but more painful because of the stress on your knees etc and set up camp at Runkuraqay.
On
the third day of hiking we set off early again and came across three Inca sights on our way to our final camp site. The first part of the walk was again quite a tough uphill path, the first Inca sight was a short walk where we stoped and ali proceded to talk more about the history on the Incas and their way of life. After this sight we continued upwards to Runuraqay high pass and headed to the next Inca sight at Sayamarco. After lunch we hit the third Incay sight ater passing through the sun gate where you can see all the mountains surrounding are final destination of Machu Pichu. At this sight we could finally see Machu Pichu, which was a bit of a releif after three days of hiking. The final camp site was at Winaywayna and was really packed as this is the final stop before Mach Pichu, here we said goodbye to the porters and thanked them for all there hard work.
The next morning we woke at 4:45 and left camp by six for Machu Pichu. Six of us steped up the pace a little and got to the sight within an
hour, and it was definately worth all the hard work, you´ll see what i mean from looking at the pictures. We saw the sun settle over the ancient Inca sight and headed on down to look around the ruins and learn more about the place from Ali. We were given an option to climb another mountain called Waynapicchu which me, Barbs and Olen said yes to. This was probably the toughest and steepest mountain but after racing up it the views were definately worth it, at one stage we were crawling up some steps to get to the top. Parts of it were quite scary with big drop offs either side of you which made reaching the top even better. It was good to be able to do a walk without the guide and the rest of the group, however we did manage to go around the mountain the wrong way, and on the way back down we sorta made are own route, great fun. The Inca site itself at Macchu Pichu was amazing and after walking round all the ruins we made our long Route back to Cusco via a bus to the town of Machu Pichu, then a
train and the mini bus. Once back at the hotel called Prima the whole group got showered and washed and headed out. This was the first real heavy night of the trip and things got messy, ha! The bar we first went to was called the Norton Rat Bar which is quite an apporoiate name. Me and barbs decided to hit the shots straight away and a few of the group joined us pretty shortly. When i say shots it was more like triples, with the main paticipànts were Olen, John and the two Aussies Andrew and Julie-anne, we rocked back to the hotle at around 3.30 after first getting up at 5 the previous day.
After making a bit of a cock up booking a bus to Lake Titikaka in Bolivia we found ourselves having an extra day in Cusco. We just walked around most of the day and relaxed in the Plaza de Armas on some benches. That night we met up with Olen and the two Aussies and went for a meal and played some more frog darts in the sports bar, i had improved and won, good to see things were getting back to normal,
ha ha! Olen was kind enough to offer us a bed and a space on the floor in his hotel room so had a night of free accomadation. Now on to today, we went to a bar and watched the football, european championships and am now writing this. Were catching a bus tonight to Bolivia where we plan to do the rainforest with the Aussie couple we met, Andrew and Julie-ann, cant wait. Take care all!!!
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Sheebird
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Lima,Peru, Machu Pichu & the rest
Hi Millsy, Just taken time to look at your blog and photos (haven't found Barbie's blog yet). The scenery looks stunning and by the time u get/read this u will be in Bolivia or on your way. It all looks good for you both (Sam killing a guinea pig - wouldn't go down well here in the UK)!! We are experiencing 3 days of pure sunshine here in the Shire - know - unbelievable - so I have been leaving housework and sunbathing ha!! This maybe all the summer we get who knows Keep in touch and just want to wish u a very Happy Birthday for Wednesday the 11th - try and remember some of it won't you (keep out of the bars for a few hours to remember the date) Love sheelaghxx