Peru

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A flying visit to Lima!! consisting of a visit to the shops in Miraflores and a night in the airport!!

Then straight over to Cusco - where you could really feel the altitude (3300m)!! Visited a fantastic cathedral - where the centre piece was a painting of the last supper with cooked cuy (guinea pig) in centre place!!! Cuy was the local delicacy and after sampling half a deep fried guinea pig and jacket potato we felt it was over rated - elastic band like skin and too many bones.....

Spent a day visiting the sacred valley, seeing the beautiful ancient Incan remains of Pisac (which had guinea pig breeding grounds!!!) Ollantaytabo and Chinchero.

Then set off on the Salkantay trek; a 88km trail through the Salkantay pass (4600m) along side a glacier, through beautiful gorges with spectacular waterfalls, hot springs and finally through a rainforest. We stayed in campsites in beautiful locations en route! the trek ended up in Agues Callientes, so on the final day of the trek we woke up at 3am and climbed the 1500 steps to the bottom of machu picchu to get tickets for wayna picchu (there were only 200 or so tickets and they were given out on a first come first served basis) - this was pretty knackering...... but completely worth while, sunrise was stunning!!

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