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The best of Peru was yet to come...
We didn't want to miss a trip to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines-pictures of animals and shapes in the desert which are best seen from the air, so we took a flight over the lines in a tiny propellor airplane, just 4 passengers and the pilot. It was brilliant but was a bit rough since the cabin was unpressurised and the pilot was swinging the plane sharply to the left and right so that we got a good view of the different shapes, you could feel the blood draining out of your head! It was a cool experience, but unfortunately my camera completely died and I only had a cheap disposable yoke to take pictures :0(
After Nazca, we took a very roundabout route to get to Cuzco, since we wanted to visit a place called Ayacucho, which was a really nice town but not totally worth the detour! After 20 hours on a bus to Cuzco, we reached a major mudslide and couldn't go any further so had to wait till they cleared the mud from the road before the traffic could move anywhere. It was the first
of many landslides and mudslides that we saw around Cusco. The city of Cusco was absolutely beautiful, with gorgeous churches and plazas but the only negative thing was the women running after us in the streets selling hats and paintings that we tried to dodge all the time..it was the first time in so long that we had been in such a touristic place and was a bit weird at first! The sacred valley of the incas is next to Cusco and we visited a couple of the archaeological sites there which were really beautiful.
The real reason we were in Cusco was of course to see the famous Machu Picchu, and since the usual Inca Trail was fairly overpriced and booked up, we took a different trip which turned out to be brilliant and really great value. The first day we started off in a bus up to the highest pass in the road at Abra malaga, about 4400m and we biked down to the town of Santa Maria at 1500m. The scenery was amazing and the climate changed completely as we eventually finished up in the hot 'Jungle' town of Santa Maria. The second day was trekking
along an Inca Trail through a beautiful river valley to Santa Teresa and finishing up at some really beautiful thermal baths. We ended up having a decent sessiun that night in Santa Teresa and there were a few sore heads starting off on the last day's trekking to Aguas Calientes. the second half of the day was along the railroad and was really tiring so we were delighted to finally get to our hotel in the small town below Machu Picchu. The next morning myself and Terry started off at 4.30 am to climb up the long, steep path to the ruins, and we arrived before dawn at the gates with the 20 or so others who decided to do the same. We were in before any of the crowds but we were surprised that it never really filled up, but since the site is so huge there never actually seemed to be that many people around. Without a doubt Machu Picchu certainly lived up to all the hype, it was one of the most incredible places we have seen on our trip, we were blown away by how beautiful the place was. The mist and clouds moving in and
out in the morning made if feel even more mysterious and by 11 o'clock the sun finally came out. In the afternoon we took a train back to Ollantaytanbo and then a bus back to Cusco. We met up with Kirsty and Ali, Siobhan and Anthony and celebrated Kirsty and Ali's engagement (on Machu Picchu!) and we even managed to see Ireland winning the six nations. Great times!
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