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Published: September 30th 2018
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Our last day on the trail - relief mixed with a bit of sadness. Today is ‘all downhill’ but we laugh at Adrian as his descriptions to date have been ‘encouraging’ or ‘optimistic’. Kristy had also said that the last day was hard going so I really don’t know what to expect. However it is a good 4 hour, 6-7 km walk with mostly downhill and none of it a scary as the previous day. We stop at the quarry after which the trail is named. Stone was cut from here and carried down to build the town. Marcia also explains the burial huts we see on the way. As on Day 2 Linda has gone ahead with Adrian (starting to wonder about these two!) and Marcia and I wander along at the end. With the going much easier, I have time and energy to talk and she points out lots of things to photograph. She is always keen to take photos of us at key points along the way and she gets photos of condors and hummingbirds for me.
All the way down we have fantastic views of the very high Mt Veronica and the valley up towards Machu
Picchu. We get to Ollantaytambo at about 11:30, the worst bit of the day being the climb up several flights of stone steps into the town square. However we sit in a restaurant with a little balcony and I can take stalker photos of people in the square while we recover and get ready for our train trip.
The Quarry trail has been a fantastic experience, challenging, spectacular and very rewarding - thank you, Matt, for telling me to get off my arse and do it.
The only downside has been the news on our return to civilisation that one of our group has taken ill and is in hospital in Cusco. She is stable but will not be able to continue the tour with us.
We regroup with the three non trekkers and take the train to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. It takes just under two hours and we go past ‘our’ second pass and camp site. The seats are comfortable, complementary lunch tasty and the scenery spectacular with the grade five rapids on one side and the soaring mountains on the other. A little like going through the Haast
Pass.
We get settled into our hotel, have a shower which is just the best thing every after three days and have a leisurely walk around town. Marcia takes us to a building which has an exhibition of before and after photos of Machu Picchu. Before being those taken by Hiram Bingham in 1912 and after being about 100 years later when the jungle has been cleared and some cleaning and restoration has taken place.
It is a pleasant place, buzzing with tourists of course, but clean and without the hawkers hassling you that you get in places through Asia.
We eat out with our buddies from the trek who have decided to walk up to Machu Picchu in the morning instead of taking the bus!
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