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Published: June 22nd 2006
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Well that hot humid air of Panama is certainly far away!
It is freezing here!
We caught a long 10hour bus from Arequipa and arrived to the sprawling, cobbled stoned city of Cusco.
Our first night we stayed in a really basic hostel ($5 a night each including breaky!) but the room was so small and cold that we only lasted one night there! The bed had three massive blankets on it, the covers so heavy that once you were in bed you were almost pinned down under the weight!
Cusco though is lovely.
Full of windy narrow cobbled stones calles (roads), hilly with lots and lots of stairs. It is really high up here and the air is thin, so with any exertion you are huffing and puffing in no time!
The town is really touristy, with tons of fantastic restaurants, coffee shops and of course, tour operators!
We searched for a nicer hostel and discovered this lovely one owned by a South African lady!
Casa del la Gringa is definitely one up on our 1st hostel. The rooms all have wooden floors and the place is homely, with art on the brightly painted walls and a warm
Freezing Cusco
A fantastic place to spend a few days. Definitely need a beanie at night though! social atmosphere.
Ken´s ankle was healing nicely, but no rest for him I am afraid!
We planned to do a three day hike and cycle ride towards Aqua Caliente, just 3km from Macchu Pichu.
Unfortunately we did not book the Inca Trail, and it is so popular that is now impossible to get on. The trail is pretty hard going anyway, and with Ken´s ankle we would not have coped.
After 3 lazy days in Cusco (drinking lattes and watching cable TV) we set off early with our guide, Americano, on a local bus past Ollantaytambu, right up to the top of the valley.....all wired and excited for our 5 hours downhill cycle!
Unfortunately there was lots of road works (they had had really heavy rains earlier this year that had caused an incredible amount of land slides).
We spend the 1st hour of of cycling waiting behind huge graders and for the green traffic flags to be waved from various parts of the pass to signal that it was safe for us to continue downhill.
Fantastic ride....but OH MY WORD WAS MY BUM SORE after the 5 gruelling hours of gravel road and rocky river crossings.
Cycling into the Scared Valley
5 hour bum numbing experience!!! Great fun though! There was only Ken and I in our group, but we met up with another group (they had their own guide) but were basically doing the exact same trip, staying and eating in the same places as us. There were 2 girls and 5 guys, so it made the trip that much more social and fun. One of the guys was from SA, only our 2nd South African we had met in over 3 months.
After our downhill cycle, we stopped off for our first night in a tiny village, with basic accomodation but clean.
We set off early on Day 2, snaking our way along the Sacred Valley, almost always with the river in our view below us.
Having heard all the stories of the Inca Trail having really cold weather, both of us were really surprised to see how tropical it was.
We continually passed fruit trees, everything from bananas, granidillas, oranges, papayas, lemons. cocoa fruit , avocados and lots and lots of coffee trees. It was great fun, we were constantly munching on fruit that we had either just picked, or that had been offered to us by the kids who waited on the
River Crossing
Not quite the state of the art cable car systems we are all used to !! paths to greet us!
We stopped for lunch at this house in the middle of nowhere. The guides told the lady how many of us there were, then she whipped up a quick meal for us all.
All the cooking is done over an open fire, and agin this family keep a good few guinea pigs on the kitchen floor....fattening them up on scraps of food, preparing them for some special occasion! Really is so funny seeing them scuttling around (Michal, your sister and John would be horrified!).
After lunch we had to cross the river twice.
First time over a very dodgy bridge that had once been a train bridge (but had washed away in the El Niño rains in the late 1990´s)....all it had were long sticks and logs that we very carefully had to walk across.
The next crossing was using this archaic cable car on a pulley system. It even came with a ´driver´ who basically did it for tips. My partner over the river was more Amid who was absolutely petrified of heights. Poor chap! All he did was stare directly ahead, whilst I was wildly hanging over the sides looking at the views.
The end of day 2 was a highlight. The guides took us over near the village of Santa Teresea, to some gorgeous hot, natural springs. It was fantastic, after 4 or 5 hours of walking to dive in and soak off. Some local ladies were budding entrepreneurs and had some ice old beers on sale, soaking in buckets!
Day 3 we set off for Aguas Caliente (again crossing the river in the cable car system), snaking our way along the river towards the railway line that we would then follow into Aguas. Beautiful scenery, with areas where the river was calmer and you could swim (if brave enough to handle the cold water).
It was a great feeling to eventually reach Aguas Caliente, ready for our 1st hot shower in three days. What a treat!
Aguas Caliente (as its name implies) has hot natural baths.....we did of course give them a go, but they were smelly and horrible compared to the wonderful ones in S. Teresea.
Aguas was far bigger that we had expected and FULL of tourists. The towns sole purpose is to accomodate the thousands of tourists that flock to see Machu Picchu.
Of
couse...wanting to push things to the limit, I insisted that we walk up to Machu Picchu the next morning. The idea being that we would get there before sunrise and watch it all, the ruins in their full glory at first light! The walk up was of course hard work (constant stairs uphill) and when we got up it was already light! Sun had risen on the other side of the mountain and although the sun´s rays had not hit the ruins yet...it was not quite the sunrise we had geared ourselves up for.
I had this vision of walking into the ground with the ruins directly below us......but the reality is that you enter the grounds and the ruins are directly in front of you.
We had to quickly take the viewing path upwards, pretending we were not aware that we could turn around at any point and see them behind us! Once at the top, we allowed ourselves to look back and see Machu Picchu for the 1st time!
They are beautiful and yes we were very impressed, but to be honest, a little bit disappointed too.
It didn´t help things much either that the guys shredded
most of what the poor guide was telling us (our 3 day tour included a 2 hour guide around the ruins). It was really amusing listening to all their comments, but it also somehow took something away of the mystical ruins!!
After a great and rather packed three days we caught the train back to Cusco, back to Casa de la Gringa for another day or two before we set off towards Lake Titicaca.
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