Our 4 day jungle trek adventure began with an early bus pick up from Cusco and a drive to the top of a mountain. Our tour group included 2 French and 2 Americans, so everything was "TOTALLY AWESOME" or "ZHUPER COOL". From here we free wheeled back down on mountain bikes. The terrain resembled Wales and it rained all the way down, so we got Welsh weather too.

After attempting to dry out our sodden clothes, we went white water rafting. Our raft consisted of myself (Dom), 3 girls and a random Peruvian guy calling himself an instructor. We ended up going down the rapids backwards and at one point we were catapulted out of the raft. Shelly didn't mind as she got rescued by a strapping Peruvian guy called Horhay. Despite not understanding any of our instructors commands and seeing many headstones scattered on the river bank, we had a great time.

Next day we walked to the town of Santa Teresa. This covered about 18 km and a section of the Inca Trail. The trail is simply a path chipped out of the mountain edge and was used to deliver messages between towns and cities 500 years ago. The messages were in the form of knots tied into rope and the messengers would sprint about 10 km and hand the rope to the next messanger, like a relay team. Impressively a message could pass 240 km over steep mountainous terrain in 24 hours. We had to cross the valley in a rickety, seemingly hand made manual cable car and then finished off relaxing in a natural spa.

Day 3 kicked off with ziplining. We did 6 zips, reaching speeds of mach 0.025. Again we were suspended very high up and zipped across the valley. Great fun pretending to be superman for 20 second bursts and doing 100 meter long flying kicks. We then walked along a railway track to spend the night in the town of Aguas Caliantes which is the base camp of Machu Picchu.

Left town at 0430 to begin our ascent up the mountain. Covered about 2000 steps and arrived in time to see the sun rise. This ancient city was like a scaled down Hampi in the sky. It was built as a citadel, a university village and a holiday retreat for the Inca Emperor who resided and ruled in nearby Cusco. It took 100 years to build using granite mined from the summit. The remoteness, the lack of technology and the attention to detail make the construction of this city totally mind boggling. As sun worshippers and keen astronomers, there are many sun dials and strategically placed stones they used to celebrate things like solstice. When the Spanish conquered Peru, the Inca`s destroyed the Inca trail which led to Machu Picchu, so it would be hidden from the invaders. It was only discovered by accident 100 years ago and then restored. Today it receives up to 8000 visitors daily and is suppose to be sinking to eventually collapse under the strain. Despite its volume of visitors, its restoration is taken very seriously, its heavily policed and eating and smoking are banned on the site. After a guided tour we walked to the top of machu Picchu mountain. This massive climb gave us an aeroplanes view of the ancient city.

After walking back to base camp, our legs were destroyed from the days walking. We limped into a local pub and saw it was the Wimbledon final. Watching the Murray Djokovic match over a few well earned beers was the perfect end to the tour.