Inka Trail, Nasca, goodbye Peru

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3 March, Saturday... Day one of the Inka trail and having learnt our lesson from Arequipa we hadn't drunk heavily the night before and could actually make a 6am start. Then we drove about an hour and stopped for a breakfast of scrambled eggs then drove for some more time and stopped for last minute shopping for poles and water carrying slings and a torch for me. Then more driving to the first checkpoint and entry point to the national park where the last opportunity to buy straps came and went ("why do I need straps?"). Queueing and yes we're in well all but one of our group whose ticket had been left somewhere else. I quickly regretted my decision to carry my whole pack but no choice now but to persevere. We walked for about 20 minutes then stopped for a quick chat about the rules about dropping litter (don't) and letting porters pass (do). It seemed as though these stops might be quite regular and unnecessary. A bit more walking and we saw our first ruins. Some doors point towards the sun, houses are pretty square and temples are rounder interesting stuff. During this time our guide pointed out there was another trail to Macchu Picchu which goes straight there in one day and asked, "So why have you all signed up for this four day trek which heads off in the wrong direction, up a different valley and up and down hills?". Quite stumped by this I waited to find out the answer. Apparently we'd see lots more ruins and it would be a much more enjoyable experience. We shall see.

Lunchtime and we were all surprised to see that all the porters who had rushed off ahead of us at the start had already erected a tent and cooked lunch for everyone. Massive platters of rice, meat, veg, potatoes - a lunch fit for kings it made me feel we'd picked the right company and also that I would probably gain weight by the end of this trail. Walking, stopping then walking up to the first campsite where the porters had already set everything up for us, there was a young girl selling beer from a bucket full of water and there was a promise of 'happy hour' one hour before dinner. Happy hour turned out to be popcorn and te macho (tea with rum and fruit) and was rather filling before a massive dinner. What with it being a campsite in the middle of nowhere and there not being any arcade machines to play on we all crashed out super early ready for a ridiculously early start tomorrow - the day that promised the most climbing.

4 March, Sunday... Day two of the Inka trail. Hikers are woken early by porters with boiling hot coca tea which is a nice way to start the day - burning your tongue. Then breakfast fruit, eggs and bread. Then walking to the next checkpoint which turned out to be very close and where we had to wait around. I got to weigh my bag here though 14kg, maybe something to do with those two litres of water I've hardly touched and that bottle of rum I foolishly decided to take. Onwards and upwards. Yes it does seem like today is going to be all uphill and feeling like a challenge, and also because it means longer breaks, I decided to walk up front with the guide (Mr Hilbert) for the whole day. We stopped for Hilbert to have a second breakfast then off uphill again. Then another stop for a tea break and pretty much straight uphill again to dead woman's pass. We'd been told to wait until we got there to ask for an explanation of the name and it turns out there's a rock that looks a bit like a tit and the other side there's a couple of rocks that mark out the profile of a face and in the middle there's another lump which I can only describe as the Adam's apple. Interesting. Up we went, stopping at 4000m to take some pictures of a sign telling us the height and meaning that we weren't actually at the top so on we went. The final part of the climb is like steps so it felt like a real Rocky moment reaching the top until I realised that although I'd overtaken the guide I wasn't first as the two English girls had rushed off ahead and had been chilling out at the top for a while now.

A few cheesy photos later and a quick squirt of deodorant to hide the stench it was time to go down the other side. Much easier, the trip pretty much flew past with one brief stop to rest the knees and check out a waterfall. We made it first to the camp and sat around doing nothing until the others arrived. Another happy hour (no rum but lots of popcorn and tea) followed by a massive dinner and everyone crashed out apart from me 'cause I'm great. So I had a conversation with the second guide about the differences between Peru and England (mainly prices) and a former Japanese president of Peru (Fujimori) who the guide seemed to like but I later found out wasn't so popular with everyone. Then I got tired and went to bed at about 9. Woo.

5 March, Monday... Day three of the Inka trail. Hikers are woken early again with coca tea and burn their mouths once again. Breakfast is served and a short talk about the day is given. Today hikers are promised the most ruins and a relatively flat walk but today will also be the longest day. Walking commences and the path heads up a 45 degree incline to the first set of ruins. A talk is given but I completely forget what the ruin was used for, maybe a watchtower. Walking continues to a lake (or so the guide said but looked more like a pond) where the guide informed us that carrying a stone from here to the top of the pass would grant a wish and the bigger the stone the bigger the wish would be. Like a fool I thought up a wish and picked out an appropriately sized stone to carry up the hill. After making a little pile of stones we headed downhill to some more ruins - a whole host of different buildings which came with an extremely long explanation which made most people think about sleeping but the buildings were pretty cool.

Onwards past some ruins which had no explanation to the lunch tent then off again (after lunch) and the walk to the Inka tunnel turned out to be rather slow so I went off ahead only to wait in the tunnel carved out of solid rock but no interesting facts came and there wasn't much to see in the rain. Then onwards for an hour or two, there was no view now that we were in the rain cloud and in the rain. The guide pointed out a point on the path where a Canadian had fallen to their death one year which was nice. Along we went, then down some stairs and the knees started to remember all that downhill from yesterday. Down, down, down it went before we got to more ruins. Maybe if I'd have written this closer to the time I'd be able to remember what they were. The guide made some joke about whether I'd wet myself (the rain had made my trousers wet but I had a waterproof on my top half) I said no and he recommended a poncho instead of a mac for next time. Ponchos are the way forward but only really acceptable on this four day walk. On to the camp, all downhill. Super.

The camp on the third evening was proper with buildings and everything like. I had a shower and some beer (not at the same time). And some rum. Good stuff. We even met up with the German girl from our group who'd rushed off after lunch and had arrived at the camp two hours before anyone else.

6 March, Tuesday... Day four of the Inka trail. There are early starts and there are early starts. Four in the morning seems too early. Not even any coca tea because it's too early for porters and I think most of them had left the day before anyway. Then standing in a queue until 5am because they don't want anyone getting to Macchu Picchu too early. Walking in the semi-dark was fun and even made it past the 'gringo-killer' section just before the Sun Gate with no problems. We'd met people before who had told us that it was awful for them to do all that walking then get to the Sun Gate and not see anything as it should be your first view of the city. Well, it was cloudy when we arrived and we couldn't see anything. We waited it out for a bit but the clouds won... this time. I dropped my camera about 10 feet at this point but still seems to work despite the rather large dent in the top. Off further down the path but none of the things we saw got any explanation as the guide had gone off ahead while we all waited for the clouds to clear. Then at the next stop we could just about make out the outline of the city of Macchu Picchu.

Luckily the clouds cleared this time and as though the curtain rose the city was revealed. It's a lot bigger than I thought I've seen photos but really this is actually a city not just a few ruined buildings and apparently there are even more buildings hidden away in the jungle that they don't want to clear (erosion and stuff). Several photos later and we went to the checkpoint to get inside. Breakfast and a drink later we all went to the city itself to get a guided tour. The Three Windows, Temple of the Sun, Temple of the Condor and others. Explanations of doors and walls were more interesting than I could make them sound and then we had free time to explore. Back in Aguas Calientes (the closest town) we hunted out a place showing the football (we had been promised somewhere to watch Liverpool vs Barcelona before we booked) and got to see right up until Barca scored before leaving on the train. The train took far longer than it should have because a silly tree had decided to fall and block the tracks and we had to wait for a guy with a chainsaw to arrive on his bicycle.

Back in Cusco we met up with the old group for dinner and everyone looked and smelt a fair bit cleaner after a shower. Most people left after eating but Thom and I went for a couple of drinks with the guide. Then, being offered the chance to "meet and speak with local people to experience the real Peru" we got into a taxi and the guide took us to a nice brothel that he knew. Feeling rather sheepish we drank our way through a jug of Cuba libre and made our excuses and left without speaking to any local people. The guide stayed on though, he obviously wanted a nice chat.

7 March, Wednesday... After taking the decision not to rush off and have a day to relax that's what we did. It wasn't really that hard to walk but I am quite lazy. We spent most of the day watching football on the TV. Bayern vs Real Madrid mixed with Milan vs Celtic then a full rerun of both. No free drinks tonight just 1.1 litres of beer. Thom made an investment in a poker game but seemed to come back to our table rather early.

8 March, Thursday... Right, time to leave Cusco after doing nothing for a long time. But someone had mentioned there was a football game on and since we missed the Argentine and Brazilian football seasons by a matter of weeks we'd thought we'd check this one out. Cienciano (the Cusco team) hosted Bolivar (of Bolivia) and after being 0-1 down at half time staged an amazing comeback to win 5-1. I don't know what the coach said at half time but it made the game much more interesting for us neutrals. Too much time without being on a bus... let's take an overnighter to Nazca. See some lines.

9 March, Friday... After some initial confusion we worked out we were in Nazca after stopping at a restaurant for a while. After someone noticed and opened the gates for us we could actually leave and head out to try to see some lines. Our friendly taxi driver knew a good company and took us there and booked our flight and took us to the bus terminal after. I think he might have been on commission. But we got onto a small plane fairly sharpish. Thom sat up front with the pilot and I sat at the back with a view out of both sides. It was quite an interesting if not queasy flight, the pilot would shout out, "Spider! Spider! Left-hand side." then again for the right. The spaceman was my favourite, how did they know? The lines are pretty clear from the air and some are quite complicated it is however almost impossible to tell if you have them in the frame for a photo or not. All of my pictures were taken by guesswork. We saw the viewing platform from the air and were glad we hadn't gone to that. Enough of that, on to another bus after an hour in Nazca, on to Ica then to Huacachina. Our hostel even had a pool. Get in! And an all you can eat/drink bbq... oh yes.

10 March, Saturday... Huacachina is famous for its large sand dunes and we'd been previously informed that sand-boarding is pretty good fun. Signed up for the afternoon session and sun baked by the pool during the day. The sand-boarding trip was combined with a fun drive about in a dune buggy. Lots of sand in the face later it was time to strap in to the board and glide effortlessly down the first dune. Or rather fall and slow down and stop and look like a fool. Luckily most others were just as good as me. The second and third attempts went a bit better then I got scared on the next ones as they were rather steep and long falls so I went down on my belly which was much faster than attempting to stand. The evening was a 'wine tour' there was a wine festival going on in Ica at the time but apparently this trip happened every week anyway. We got to stomp on grapes with our dirty feet then drink something that looked like it had been crushed by dirty feet then mixed with pure alcohol - that's wine, Peruvian style. Lots of free wine and Pisco (mmm) later we headed to a club in town which seemed to play exclusively raggaeton.

11 March, Sunday... Checked out and got on... a bus. To Lima this time. I think we got quite ripped off getting to a hostel but it is the capital and things do seem more expensive here... I think I broke my camera by taking it sand-boarding - that'll be camera number two. We went for a short walk around Miraflores but there wasn't much to see, seems nice enough though. Not much time left so I ate my ceviche (typical Peruvian seafood dish) and came to terms with the fact that I'd leave Peru without trying the guinea pig. Then I watched Mr and Mrs Smith and went to bed.

12 March, Monday... One morning left in Lima so we went to a shopping centre near the beach then went back to the hostel. It wasn't that good and I was feeling quite ill after my traditional seafood dish last night. Then went to the airport and flew to Quito and checked in to a place called Secret Garden which none of the taxi drivers knew (must be a good secret) and we didn't have the address. Somehow we made it there (well after stopping to check the address on the internet) and got a pizza.

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Photos

Our intrepid explorers
Unaware of what awaits...

Luxury accommodation
Unaware of what awaits...

Porter
Much like my pack

Sign
Brilliant!

Dead woman's pass
If you use your imagination there's a face on the left and a boob on the right. And something that looks like an Adam's apple in the middle.

Our group
What a group.

Beer
I love beer too.

Finally..
The cloud just cleared in time

Cryptic
What does it all mean?

Macchu Picchu
Woo

Macchu Picchu II
Woo hoo

Tree on the Tracks
Luckily a crack team arrived to clear the problem

Cienciano win!
0-1 down at half time. 5-1 at full time. The Bolivar coach must be mad

Nazca lines
Spaceman! Spaceman!

Sandboarding
I didn't look so good actually standing on the board.