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And so the final blog for South America.
Cusco - The Inca capital.
Will and I had a couple of days in town before heading off to the Sacred Valley, the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. Cusco is a great place to chill out - the food was the best we had since Argentina!! We went to one cafe (Jacks) 5 times for the great bacon & eggs!! We wandered around the town for a couple of days - its very touristy and then spent a day walking around four of the nearest Inca Ruins including one called Saqsayhuman (or Sexy Woman in English!).
Then it was off to conquer the Inca Trail!! First stop Sacred Valley - where we went to the towns and nearby ruins of Pisaq and Ollyantaytambo. This was a taster of the ruins that were to come and also provided practice walking at Altitude.
We had a great group of people on the trip! Lots of Canadians - which meant a funny story about maple syrup!! At breakfast we were given concentrated liquid coffee which you add hot water to to mke a normal cup. We were also given pancakes. All the Canadians
thought that the concentrated coffee was maple syrup and poured it all over their pancakes!! They even ate them thinking the maple syrup in South America tasted like coffee!! It was only hours later they discovered it wasn’t!
Next day it was Inca for real - Day 1 - the easiest day. This was the flattest day and we probably walked for about 6 hours.
Day 2 - Dead Woman’s Pass - the hardest day!! We walked for 5 hours straight up for 1,400m to a point of over 4,200m. This was hard hard hard. I had not prepared myself for it - I thought we have done a bit of hiking in Sth Am (The W in Chile, Fitzroy in Argentina) but this was the hardest day of my life (physically). Luckily I was helped by some great Canadian Girls who we had on our trip (thanks Vanessa for you pole!).
Anyway - we made it camp after about 8 hours of walking.
Day 3 - The longest day of walking - again another hard day - not as many ups but the longest we would have to walk.
Day 4 - Getting up
at 3.30am to hike for 2 more hours to be able o watch the sunrise over Machu Picchu - the most amazing site. Truly one of the highlights of South America. We literally all ran the last couple of hours to get to the Sun Gate first!!
We spent the rest of the day exploring the site (and having a nap under some ruins)! The photos will say the rest.
So back to Cusco, via some well deserved hot springs, (by train not walking) and onwards to Nazca.
Nasca
This place is the site of the Nazca lines - we did a 35minute flight over the lines in a tiny tiny aeroplane that only fits 6 people (including 2 pilots)! The lines are amazing but so was flying in such a small plane.
And then off to our last stop before flying to the UK...
Lima
Well what can we say - dull dull dull - capital of one of the most interesting countries in Sth America and nothing to do!! We are in purgatory!!!
Anyway - off to London tomorrow for 6 days! Look out for the next blog when we arrive in
Nairobi KENYA for our 9 week truck safari!!
Trace & Will xx
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