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Published: December 14th 2011
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I arrived in Cusco at about 5am having not booked anywhere to stay, and went off with someone shouting "!habitaçion!" at the bus station for the first time.
Early the next morning, I boarded a bus and met two American girls, two Danish girls, a German couple and an Argentinian woman; my group for the next four days. The bus wound through little farming villages to the starting point of the Inca Trail, where we met our guide, the chef and the porters. The morning walk was fairly easy; although the porters and chef ran, ready and waiting for us at the lunch spot. I soon understood why all six porter´s bags weighed 25kgs; as we sat down at a folding table and got served a delicious, restaurant standard four course meal! Before arriving at the camp for the night, we were shown how to chew coca as the Inca´s would have done, and I realised that it actually does reduce the effects of altitude.
In the morning, the porters woke us up at 5.30 with coca tea. The second day is meant to be the hardest, due to the "gringo killer"; a steep pinicle to climb after several
hours of walking up steps in high altitude. However, this is the highest point of the treck, so 30 happy walkers were celebrating at the top. I remembered that I´m a massive geek, and got all fired up by the walking and camping. Forgetting to look behind me, I ended up walking to the campsite on my own on the way down. Going down is actually much harder work, and by the end I had to carefully place my feet to stop my lower legs from shaking and ankles from turning over. We all finished early, and enjoyed a four course lunch and four course dinner within the space of 3 hours!
Day three was the longest, plus it had started to rain, but by the afternoon the landscape turned very tropical and pretty. After a very long downwards path of slippery steps through the trees, we emerged to see huge Inca ruins and an amazing view which included Machu Picchu mountain. We walked through the ruins and grazing llamas, down to the campsite.
That night was an early one, as we had to get up at 3.30 in the morning to line up by the gate to
Machu Picchu mountain. We waited an hour for the gate to open in pouring rain. The weather didn´t lift, and moods respectively dropped. We reached the famed "Sun Gate" after two hours of walking up steps, topped off by crawling up the final "gringo killer". Unfortunately, the anticipated sunrise hitting the gate, and dazzling first view of the The Lost City Of The Incas was nowhere to be found. It was hard to even see the person in front through the fog. By this time, my waterproof jacket had become saturated for the second time this year (yes, I´m getting a new one for next festival season!) I began my shivering-and-lips-turning-blue routine, and while happy to see Machu Picchu, had to run to the bathroom to get changed and neck a hot coffee. Warming up in dry clothes, and with a new poncho from the medical tent, I walked back to Machu Picchu to find my group; happy to see that the fog was starting to lift and the sun was trying to come out.
Simba, our guide, took us around the three primary buildings (the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows).
It´s believed that Machu Picchu was completed around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire, but was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, thanks to the Spanish Conquest. It´s possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox that the Spanish spread, as a present to their new world. The site was only discovered in 1911, so I´d unwittingly walked the trail on the 100th anniversary. As the Spanish never knew about it, it´s remained amazingly intact, and in 2007 was voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Every-day tools (like a place to grind up herbs) are still there, so can really imagine people living there. It´s incredible.
Tired and filthy, we sleepily got the long bus back to Cusco. I strangely love bus journeys, especially through small villages where you can see people going about their every day lives; but realised that I only had one bus journey left, and only five more days on the continent!
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