Inca Trail

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Back to civilisation after what should have been a 3.5 hour journey from Aguas Callientes to Cusco become 7 hours due to the Peruvian transport system !



The past four days myself and Mags have been camping in the mountains of the Sacred Valley on a 26 mile hike at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet at its highest point while also managing to lug around sleeping bags, air matresses and camping rugsacks. Pretty tough going but well worth it as the scenary was unbelievable on the way as we managed to pass through about three different eco-systems before arriving in Machu Picchu. It was my first time camping it rough since myself and TK and some of his EPA mates headed to Duncannon beach a few years back but it went suprisingly well - slept like a baby!



There were eleven in our group; four Brazilian lads, an Argentian girl, two USAers, ourselves and two Peruvian tour guides. Eight of the 11 spoke fluent Spanish while eight also spoke fluent English so conversations often flipped from one to the other. Gio and Henerique, two twenty year old law students, Joseph from Chicago who gives loans to churches to upgrade(seemly very big in the states!), Cari from Washington who has a dream job working in Disneyworld, Luis and Washington from Rio de Janeiro and Gabrielle who I know very little about as she had no English and her Spanish was too fast for me to understand!! We also had a team of nearly the same number of porters who carried tents, food supplies for four days, cooking equipment etc. As the two Irish in the group it was almost inevitable that we would be the victims of sunburn and mosquito attacks (they like Irish it seems) and so it proved. During the day it got up to about 21/22 and dropped to 1/2 degrees at night.



Probably the highlight of the trip was arriving at an old Inca site on day three ´Winyi Winay´(see video) second only in size to Machu Picchu itself and a hidden treasure available only to those who do the four day trek. (Lots get the train straight to MP these days). Afterwards we all went to the local town for one last family dinner and then myself and Mags went up to the local hot springs with Gio and Henrique who we´d become particularly friendly with (their general knowledge and command of about 4 different languages was amazing!). Also ironically I learnt just as much about Brazil, India and the States as I did about Peru, great to hear people giving the inside track on their own countries!



Next stop = La Paz!

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Photos

Cake cooked minus an oven
Still don´t know how the chef managed it

Orchids
One for the nature enthuasists

Unusual plant
#2 for nature enthuaists!