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Church
Catholic church built on top of Incan Walls Hey Everyone,
Well we finally made it to Cusco, we were able to catch a bus after all. The locals had blocked the road to Cusco in protest of the Government wanting to tax the farmers for the use of rain water. After all the stories about the government here I won´t ever complain about ours (ok I will!). Anyways, 16hrs on the bus and we´ve arrived.
Cusco is a pretty cool city, the heritage of this place can be seen from walking around the central area of town. Many of the buildings have foundations built during the Incan era and were later built on top of by the Spaniards. These walls built by the Quechuan people during the Incan period are amazing and have definitely withstood the test of time.
After getting set up at our hostel and starting to tour the city and acclimatizing some more. We ended up meeting up with our friend Paul (fellow Canadian we met in the Galapagos) and hanging out together sharing travel stories since our last encounter. That evening Paul took us to a great Peruvian BBQ resturant and we had an awesome meal.
The next day we ended up
switching hostels in the morning - the night before we were kept awake from some serious base from the discos and our awesome neighbours who liked to party all night long. We ended up moving into a small, very quiet room in an old lady´s house which was even better since it was only $8. Later on we tracked down our trekking company for the Inca trail and got setup for the trek.
Day one of our Inca trail experience started with our ¨Wayki Experience¨which involved us travelling to the village our porters live in and spending the afternoon and evening with them. We were taken to the village by Jose another guide who works for Wayki and since most of the porters were tending to their farming when we arrived he gave us a tour of the village. We were going to help them harvest the potatoes but it was raining! That evening we shared a traditional meal with our porters their families and some of their friends. The meal was very basic consisting of vegtable soup (potato and lima beans) and tea. After dinner we were treated to a ¨Fiesta¨and had some local musicians play some music
while we danced with our hosts and definitely shared a lot of laughs. Tyne was very popular and had a full dance card. The whole experience was awesome. These people live a very simple life, but they want for nothing. Everything they need they produce themselves from the land, they work several times a year as porters to pay for their children´s education.
Ok, so the next day we are off Day 1 of our trek, we took a van to km82 - our starting point. Our group consisted of three couples Joel & Anna (New York) , Richard & Lisa (Boston) and me and T, our guide Guido and 9 porters. Day one consisted of trekking 12km to our campsite, we stopped to see the ruins of Llaqtapata, an Incan controlled town.
Day 2, this is the hardest day! We spent the morning walking 9kms (1,200m) straight up climbing to the top of Dead Womans Pass (4,200m) and then walking down Incan stairs for 3km. It was definitely a work out but it had some great views along the way and Tyne and I were both glad we did the Colca Canyon as our prep trek because
it definitely prepared us, and our walking sticks saved our knees this time around!
Day 3 and we are off and running, well walking anyways. This day was definitely long we ended up walking approx 16km with both up and down sections, our favourite part was the ruins of Sayacmarca which was a small city built atop a Mountain peak to look across several valleys. It was really cool and even had a working Aquaduct system to bring glacier water to the town. That afternoon we made it to the main campsite for all the trekkers before Machu Picchu. We enjoyed some hot showers and even a Beer! That evening our porters prepared our final feast which was lasagna, I don´t know how they managed to make Lasagna on a gas camp stove but damn it was good!
Final Day! Well, we awoke at 4am for breakfast, we needed to get up early so our porters could pack up our camp and make it down to Aquas Calientes for the first train. After breakfast we went down to the Lodge to see if we could wait out the rain which had begun to pour. After an hour in
the lodge we decided to bite the bullet and start our final push to Machu Picchu. After an hour in the rain we arrived at the Sun Gates for our first view of Machu Picchu.....well with the rain still pouring our view would have to wait a little longer. After another 1/2 hour we arrived at Machu Picchu, finally!!! We made our way down to gates to check our packs and start our tour. Guido took us around the City explaining the significance of each sections of the city, it was very informative and without Guido I´m sure we would have missed many important areas.
Overall the whole trek was awesome, we had a really good group, great food and a good guide. We both agreed that we found the trek more memorable than Machu Picchu itself. Although the city is absolutely amazing and definitely worth seeing it gets very packed with tourists and for that reason can be crowded and overwhelming after trekking for 4 days.
We ended up staying in Aquas Calientes for an extra night and day after the trek. We enjoyed the hot springs the next day and spent time with Richard & Lisa
from our group who also stayed there. After returning to Cusco by train we spent that night in Cusco and the next morning we were back on the bus to Puno and Lake Titicaca.
Enjoy the pics
Next blog Lago Titicaca!
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