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well hello there everyone lets just say its been a while since the last entry and i have been a busy little bunny getting up to all sorts of tricks and stuff. so here i ma to tell you all about them. when i last entered a blog i was in a place called cusco so lets start there shall we. ( anywho anywho anywho anywho anywho!!! just had to get that out of the system kev and gary i´m sure you understand)
April 22- April 24
arrived in cusco from another over night bus journey from Ica. people said to us that the buses n peru were nothing special but to be honest thier great, nice seats that recline and you get dinner and food and movies. we had two jean claude movies on that journey, that man i tell you he´s so hot right now!!! anywho we settled into our hostel called ´loki´. all the irish go there and a good few english go there too. its a party hostel as we found out on our first night there. some lads had a few guitars and we got a session going till about three in the morning. earlier on that day we had met up with the lads ruth knows from college and went for berekkie to a restaurant. they were all hanging from the ceiling from the night/mornings activities before. cusco is party town, clubs stay open till about 6am and then you can head to some bars if they are still open. we were in cusco to start our inca trail trip in a few days so we were just going to have a few days sleepin lazily and maybe splash out on a few nights. we went to check up on the trail cos we had to pay the balance. we got to the office of SAS travel and we said we wanted to know what was going to happen and to pay the rest of the money owed (about 400 dollars for the 2 of us). so we had some john joe peruvian tell us about waht was going to happen but that there was going to be a meeting a between the group that was going tomorrow evening at their offices at 7pm. so we said fine and wanted to pay the rest of the bill. well they had some cheek to say that we owed them 800 dollars!!!!! we had already paid off 400 dollars last november when we booked it but they couldnt find the reciept for this. but eventually after us saying that we could prove that we had paid money off cos ruth had a confirmation from their offices in an e'mail they eventually found the reciept. so we paid the rest and then pissed off. the day after we were told about a market that sells copied dvd´s and cd´s. so we went there to stock up on films. we bouht 14 movies for about 15 euro which was nice. now you´d think that this markt would be in the back end of no where and a little hush hush since its all pirated material. but no its right beside the bus station and even still there are police there to protect it!!!!! well we went back to the hostel and watched a few dvd´s. weddin crashers was a good one ( chicks are so horny at funerals its like fishing with dynamite man, hey ma wheres that fuckin meat loaf!!!) . well the next day were going to start our inca trail.
April 25 - April 29
we had to et up soooo early the firsy morning 5 am no less to get to the offices of SAS for the bus that would take us to the start of the inca trail, i´ve never been up so early on this trip, very horrible. first off let me tell you a bit about the inca trail. the trail leads to an inca city called macchu picchu. (i´m sure i´ve spelt that wron but i dont care). in 1532 when the spanairds came to peru they started to loot and kill all the incas in the inca capital cusco. so the king at the time, cant remember his name, said let us flee here and head up into the hills so that we can live in freedom. so they did. they already had a trail built to this place called macchu picchu so when they got half way there they burned the trail some of the way so the spanish would not follow them. so they got to MP and lived there. but no one knows for how long. the city was abondoned and left for the jungle to overgrow on it with the incas fleeing deeper into the jungle. know some incas still remained in the area and knew that it was there but never told anyone cos it was considered a sacred place. not until 1911 when a fella called Iran Bingham found the place again and open up the worlds eyes to it again. he walked the trail that the incas used to flee cusco and also came upon more inca ruins along the way.
so the first day of the trail we were drove to a marker called km82. here the trail starts. we had hired a porter to carry our luggage for the three days. these portors carry all the gear for the group, food for 4 days, tents, your luggage for the trip if you hired one, food for them, tents for them, an eating tent, a cooking tent. they carry on their backs a maximum of 25kgs. this is regulated by law. their back packs are weighed at the start and at various points along the route. before the laws came in limiting them to the weight they used to carry about 35-40 kg on thier backs!!!! in our group we had two english, two irish(us), one aussie, two canafians, and six americans. do for our group of 13 we had 21 portors. we also had two guides, one called saul and the other called silverio. saul was the head guide and would be telling us abot all the history and stuff, silverio was just there as a back up. well half way into the first day we had our first casuality of the group. one of the candians had asthma and she had to leave. she found the first hill touh i think and wanted to go. shame really cos those two canadians were mother and daughter and the mother had to leave with silverio back to cusco. anywho the first day was walking along the sacred valley (so called cos it leads to MP). at the end of the first day we came to the start of dead womans pass. now this pass starts at about 2500 mts high and finishes at abour 4600 mts high. this has to be done in a day!!!! but the group decided to push on a bit more cos then we wouldnt have to climb all of it in one day. at the end of day one we had made it about over a third of the way up. it was tough i tells ya. just a taster of what was to come the day after i suppose. now i could tell you about the ruins that we seen on the first day but i cant remember their names so there. the second day we decided to climb the two peaks on the trail in one day. the first is dead womans pass. its called that cos the mountain apparantly looks like a woman but i didnt see it!!! anywho it was tough going. its very steep, even the porters who run most of the thing had it tough too. but then their carrying 25 ks on thier backs and we were only carrying day bags. i felt like we had climbed everest when we got to the top. i even cracked out the irish flag and got a picture of me and ruth standing beside the marker telling us the height, momentus i thought. this was done in the morning so after a bit of a climb down we had lunch at the camp. now the food you might think on this trip would have been sub standard but no. it was delicious. they really pulled the boat out on the food stakes. for brekkie we got eggs, pancakes, porridge, tea coffee. lunch was a four course meal, same as dinner, and for tea at 5pm when we finished we got tea and coffee, popcorn and biscuits. the second peak was a bit tougher than the first, cos it was steeper. it was to here that the incas burned the trail so the spanish couldnt find them. after that peak a nother short walk downhill to camp for the night. one thing i would like to mention i dont like sleeping in tents, i dont think the designers take into account tall people. it was a bit cramped in there. our legs were also hurting after the walk that day. the whole walk is 46km long and we were goin to average about 15 km a day. thats not much when you think about it but its alot whern climbing up and down mountains. third day we were going to head to a town called aguas caliantes. now there was a reason for this. normally you would carry on to a camp just before you get to MP. but there was a landslide on the trail after a place called the sungate. so we couldnt do the whole trail. bummer but its not all that bad. the town we were heading to is famous for its hot baths, hence the name. it means hot water in english. so we got to the town at about 3pm. the porters had our bags there for us so we could get our bathing suits out and togs. so up we headed for a few hours of soaking in hot water and drinking beer in a pool. it was great relief for the legs i have to say. my knees sweeld up on the way down cos its quite steep going down also and tyou trying to stop yourslef from slipping on the rocks (bit of advice for anyone who is going to do it run down its easier on the legs!!!) anywho we even had the chance to buy some beers that evening but since we were all so knackered from walking i only had about 2 then went to bed. fourth day and we headed up to MP on the bus. now you can walk up but its not that interesting a walk ane its all up hill so nuts to that. so we got there early at about 6.15am. the place was covered in mist and fog. then as the sun came up and burned it all off it just revealed this amazing place before our eyes. MP is class, this little town built on the edge of a mountain and in between other mountains. unfortunately i dont have time to explain it all but i will tell you one thing, just go there and see it for yourself. please please do. its actually up for nomination to become one of the 7 wonders of the world. i dont know who makes up this list but apparantly it changes from time to time. so we got the bus back down to aguas calientes where me and ruth were going to stay for the night. we got thai massages and i even got another inca massage to soothe those muscles (my dogs were barking!!) the group had decided to meet up in cusco for a night out on the 29th (ruths b day). on the train back to cusco we had booked the executive train. there was nothing executive about it. althoguh we did get one surprise. there were two hosts in the car that we were in. one female (rather attractive) and one male (fat and ugly by ruths standards!!!). now a funny thing happened on this train journey. first off the man dressed up like a complete gob shite and started dancing up and down the aisles and acting like an idiot. he started to come up to people andhe had this sock puppet on his hand and put it in their faces. i gave him a cold stare when he came my way (blue steel, works all the time according to hansel who is so hot right now!!!!!). the gays that were sitting opposite us really enjoyed him though. oh those gays, their just so happy all the time. then they come over the pa thingy and say they sell alpaca wool products. alpaca is a relative of the llama and also tastes very nice medium well. then they strat to have a fashion show with all the products they sell!!!! music was blaring, annoying pan pipe music at that, and they parade around this stuff for about half an hour!!! could you imagine if iarnrod eireann done this. the sweaty teabot who goed up and down the aisle with the tea trolley trying to get passed the people standing in the aisles who have no seats cos the train is full then havng to put on the latest iarnrod eireann uniform!!!! oh the laughter. so we all met up and got hammered, well i did anyway. even our guide saul came out. so that was the end of the inca trail, i really cant recommend it enough to you people. come and do it, you dont even have to do that one. there are a good few trails that you can do and still get to MP, its just the inca trail is the most famous of them all.
April 30 - May 3
the morning after the night before and i suffered. rang the lads back home and they were playing poker, the kev had two aces alright!!!! to be honest i was mossin home a bit and so was ruth since it was her b day the day before and its supposed to be a time when she is at home surrounded by her family. but in saying that i still wouldnt have swaped where i was there that day for home, well maybe just for a few hours to play that game of poker. monday the first of may, mayday and i decided to get an engine betwen my legs. i went quadbiking and it was great. the guide got lost, i ran out of petrol, learned to how to do donuts on it. the guide said i was a good driver, i had booked the trip for 3 hours but i finished that in 1 hour so he had to bring me to other places. there was just me and him so it was a shame there wasnt more people in the group but it was still fun. the next few days we decided to do some sightseeing as we hadnt done any city sights since we got to cusco. i have to say the city of cusco is great, its all covered in these spanish colonial buildings, even our hostel was one of these. it has a great big plaza in the middle surrounded by some fantastic looking cathedrals and churches. i could tell you about some of the sights that we seen in the city but to be honest i´m getting a bit sick of writing this thing so i have taken an executive decision not to. lets just say that it was nice to learn how those spaniards of the time practivcally destroyed everythiong the that the incas had built!!!!!! on another note i had no i how big the inca empire was but on one of our excursions to one of the mueseums we visited it showed us how big it had gotten. it stretched (and you´ll probably need a map for this part) from quito in ecuador in the north down to santiago in chile along the pacific coast then as far east as cochabamba in bolivia to as far as about mendoza in aregentina. mad altogether ted!!!! well we had enough of cusco and our next stop was going to be a place called arequipa.
May 4 - May 8
we arived in arequipa and as soon as we got into the city we got diddled by a taxi driver. we wanted to stay in a place called hotel camiente (found it in the lonely planet guide) when we said it to him he said yeah sure. so he brought us to this place that was exactly the same name as the plasce we wanted. but we found out later that it was a diferent place just with the same name. diddled and i did not like it. but to be honest it was the first time it had happened in SA so its not all bad. we probably would have noticed if it wasnt 7.30 in the morning alsoand we were not half asleep. any arequipa is perus second biggest city and considers itself something of a country in itself just to piss off lima the capital. we were here to do another trek down the colca canyon. this canyon is twice as deep as the grand canyon in the US. so we booked our trek with a company called colca trek. 78 dollars for about three days. again we had an early start on the first day cos we had to catch a bus at 6.30 am. there was 5 in the group, us, one norwegian woman and a couple from scotland. our guides name was olivia. anywho we arrive about 12pm on the first day at a place called cabanaconde. here we started our descent down into the canyon. there are villages that live down in the canyon. they are descendants from the incas but choose to live sort of solitary lives in the canyon for some strange reason. anywho the trek down was no problem, not that steep and the scenery was nice. the next day we walked along flat ground through some of the villages and then we arrived at an oasis with thermal springs for us to bath in for a few hours. we needed it. it was a hot day the second day. in the afternoon we had to climb back up and our guide showed us the way when we were in the springs cos you could see the trail from there. it looked tough worse than the second day of the inca trail. anywyho in the after noon we set off. and it was hot i would say about high 20´s and sunny. it was also tough. the woman from the other couple, louise, got a donkey to go up on cos she wasnt feeling well. so we all set off. the norwegian, noora, and graham ran off and started to climb faster than us. ruth was struggling with it. so was i to be honest i was going slower than i was on the inca trail. about half way up there was a fella with a donkey so ruth got on that one and continued allt he way up on its back. a rather lively experience she called it. teetering on the edge of a cliff on the back of a donkey!!!! i continued to walk with the guide olivia who i´m sure was cursing me inder her breath for being slow. it took me about 3 hours to get to the top. when i got there i had to ask myself why iwas doing another trek in the space of a week of doing the inca trail. i do not like pain!!! we decided not to do anymore treks in SA ever!!!!!. the third day of the trek wasnt really about walking but getting to see condors fly over the canyon. they leave thier nests at about 8 in the morning to catch the thermals from the mountains so that they just float on them all day looking for food on the ground below. we saw about 10-15 condors all in full flight. they are amazing birds,they have a wing span of about3.5 mts when fully grown. after that it was to a town called called chivay for some more hot spring thermal bath therapy. it was really nice. we met another group there who had done the same trek as us. we all jst lazed in the sun and relaxed. then it wasback to arequipa for ur final night in the town. arequipa itself was a nice town but i didnt want to stay any longer. our next destination was going to be a place called salta in norhtern argentina. but i think i´ll leave that for another day.
again i´m a bit behind in writing this but i think i´ll leave argentina till last cos it practically our last country before we leave SA we only have 4 weeks left here you know before heading to NZ.
well thats all for now please keep the e-mails coming to burger1979@gmail.com for the sanity of me.
burger.
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Alan, Alan, Alan. The blog. what are you doing? Indeed, what are you trying to do? If its answers you want, Al, i'll give them to you. I'll tell you whatever you want to know, just STOP WITH THE BABBLING!!!