Final blog of S. America. Continent cries for cosmics

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Hello dear readers,

Georgi here

Apologies about the huge blog gap, but we shall try and remember what we did in those last few days of our latino haze...

Following our mountain adventures, we decided to chill out in cusco before our grand finale - the inca trail to macchu picchu.

Cusco is tourist town 4000! Socks and sandals, mcdonalds wrappers (in andys pockets) lamas on everything saleable, and a flotsom of languages sailing through the clean mountain air.

It was nice, but after experiencing the true beauties and hidden treasures of this continent, it was slightly overwhelming to be stampeded by a 20 strong group of skandanavian tourists, being lead by a rather stressed looking guide waving a 'we love cusco' flag franticly, and hoping to God the more senile members didnt get lost and claimed as Incan ruins!

Webby here, yeah cusco was definately not conductive to the chakra cleansing highs from which we'd returned. We stayed in a pleasant wee hostel a top of a hill, a small climb, but also good for clearing the lungs for our forth coming incra trail hike. The name of the abode now escapes me, as im sat in bangkok 4 weeks later typing this, however theres one memory which has scared my cerebral like a soldering iron to the thumb in year nine high school. A man, well of a sort, who was residing at the residence took a dislike to myself and G, he awoke at 6am prompt every day and proceeded to unpack his bag of tricks. He looked about 50 ish and definatley Was not of sound mind. Maybe the sun had frazzled his brain cells. He spent the day gardening, cutting his toenails, which he kept in a bottle with all his fag butts and spit. He had a small dog, nice beast so it was. We were forbidden by him to pet it. Or talk to him. Or even sit on the grass. He didn't like us and made this clear by chanting at the top of his voice, "no mi gusta hippie" every time we passed. Was alright mind, we didn't much like him, all in all, besides, looking at his lifestyle, he was clearly the biggest hippie of all, spending his days smelling flowers bear foot and practising some kind of ramshackle yoga. Noga!

Yes, so as much love as we had for Cusco and our hostel. Leaving was in no way difficult, as we could escape the foul garden beast, and his rolled up shorts (which revealed his tan line free genitals...) :/.

Thankgod for inca trail! We made it out, barely clinging onto our vision and sanity.

Our guides names was Jerson (which none of us quite learnt till the final day of the trail) so the poor guy was being called a number of 'nearlys' Yen,Sam,Jason,Joseph, Jemima, you name it!

He was amazing though, he wanted to be your friend rather than an outsider, and his English, and knowledge of the ruins was inpecible. With a signature laugh similar to that of an over excited hyena, and a sarcasm that any englishman would bow down to, he really did make our tour... Well, him and the vision of andy in a pair of tights running up a mountain with a pair if sticks, only milimetres thinner than his spindly little legs. Shouting back to me, "run Georgi, lets overtake group number 8!" Like a frantic 7 year old desperately clambering to the front of the que at a chocolate factory. Oh the memories....

Webby here. Yep the trail was under way, and in no way under whelming! What a place. I can honestly say it was one of the most enjoyable hikes iv ever done, the landscape just mind blowing. You can see why the inca's settled there and named it the sacred valley. Id hike it every day and not get bored. However the one thing which we found not to be true were the storys of how hard it was. The pace of our group was slow, so gerson gave us the go ahead to lead the pack. Myself, G and a new pal from leeds Adam. We lead all four days, with ease. the second day which was meant to be the hardest and take 9 hours took us 2.5 hours, infact it got to the point were we started to run, trying to beat groups and porters! This signalled the Americans to pipe up. We were running down a hill, a good technique, classic fell running and much better for the legs. As we obliterated groups of Americans we could just about hear them shouting, "slow down", "your missing the view point"..."hey she has no sticks" etc etc....alas we ran on.

Georgi again, yes the Americans who trailed behind us truly were idiots, and didnt take to our bossness in the slightest, oh well, undoubtedly their loss! Go team GB!

The 3rd day we entred a number of different climates.. Did you know that Peru has more than 50 different climates!! Ridiculous considering we english have one --> rain. Its unbelievable. One minute your amongst terminator esque mosquitos fighting off giant jungle leaves, the next minute your in the cloud forest, with an array of moss so beautiful in colour, then your above the clouds at peak level, Then suddenly, you sweating your face off at sea level in blistering sun. This everchanging terrain and weather we encountered on the 3rd day, as the trail leads you up, then down, then up again. A day of constant surprise and such a mixture of life in our surroundings..

The fourth and final day, was the last big slog to the final sight.. Macchu picchu. We had been fed an array of truly delicous healthy food, now all i truly longed for were saturated fats and ale.. These naughty but nice food sorts clouding my thoughts and bringing me to the conclusion; soz wonder of the world, belly comes first.. and right we were to be unamused. The sight itself is beautiful, but as we entered the sun gate it looked like the entire content of disneyland florida had been tipped onto the poor ruins. Tourist overload number two! After three days of untouched views and our small group of eight having a glorious time floating about the path, now we had reached the ants nest. OAPs in high viz jackets, and families frantically diving infront of you, unaware of the tranquility you have just lost..And to top it off, snickers were more exspensive than human organs!! Oh the noise, and the ques and the tension, i had to escape, and so we did. A small bus journey to the town of aguas calientes, and i was saved.. Hot springs, and reasonably priced necessities, one beer, three chocolate bars, and a stoop 😊 thankyou incas and goodbye!! X

Webby here. So that sums up the South American dream. What a place. Personally it was a real eye opener, i didn't research anything. For 2 reasons. One i wanted to be shocked and suprised by everything i saw, and i was, many times in the three months, both good suprises, and in a few places bad suprises. And two, because im lazy,and G was doing everything, so i hung to her coat tails and Rode the bus. Theres too many experiances to put them in a list, but im also pig headed, so here goes. In order of favourites, as prior mentioned, im lazy, so il probably only write about 8...



1 Mount Copa

2 Inca trail

3 Rurreanbeqe Jungle tour

4 San pedro de attacama

And some other things...

Bye for now, soon we will return with some asian delights. Love and glittery trumps.

G and Webby...xxx

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