We were picked up at 8:30am for the drive out to Chivay, a small village we will be staying at in the Colca Valley and about 3 hours from Arequipa. On the way we passed through a national park and spent time looking at Vicuña, Lamas and Alpacas which were roaming throughout. I bought an alpaca scarf at a comfort stop we made. As the old lady selling it was at least 130 years old I did not want to haggle with her, most likely I got ripped off :) We also stopped...

Today we had a free morning till our 2:30pm pick up for our flights to Arequipa. The Dragoman tour has officially come to an end and people are either traveling on under their own arrangements, going back to their countries or continuing on, on a new tour (Cusco to Lima) with the bus. Everyone met for breakfast to say their goodbyes and after waving our new friends off on the bus we headed into Cusco for a free walking tour. I have to say I'm totally impressed w...

Gosh, I'm a little behind on my blogging so the next few entries will be a little shorter as I try to catch up. Today we had a free day in Cusco. No plans were made for the group and most were hung over from last night as they had a big night out to celebrate the end of the hiking. It's actually really nice just having time to wander aimlessly around this beautiful city. Betsy and I wandered the streets looking at plaza after plaza and beautiful colonial archit...

It's finally here, the last day of the trek and the final walk to Manchu Picchu to enter at sunrise through the Sun Gate. We had no problem getting up at 3:30am since we were all so excited to complete our trip and we knew all the hard work had been done. We had a quick breakfast and had to leave the campsite by 4am so the porters could pack everything up and literarily run down the mountain to catch the 5:30am train back to Cusco. As the final check point eve...

I woke in the middle of the night to hear heavy rain. On the one hand it's always nice to hear the relaxing sound of rain on the canvas of a tent, but on the other I was thinking "oh god please stop I don't want to have to hike for 7 hours in the rain." I bought a delightful purple poncho just before the trek in case of such I situation but was hoping the purchase alone would stave off any possible rain. I guess I fell back asleep as we were once again woken by V...