Had our group meeting at 10 and then the rest of the day was free. Small group of 8, 2 Germans, 2 Americans, 2 English, 1 Canadian and myself. A relatively young group and some of them have already been travelling together for the last 4 weeks. 3 of them are only doing the Machu Picchu section so for the remainder of the trip through to Lima there will only be 5 of us, plus our leader and driver. I headed out for a walk around town. It was a Saturday and therefore fairly busy. A big craft market was in full swing. Generally just wandered the streets taking in the sounds and sights. The people are very friendly and the town is full of tourists as it is the kick off point for those going to Machu Picchu. The next day the trip really gets underway. First stop is Saksaywaman, an Inca site which overlooks Cuzco. The engineering and building capabilities of the Incas is a real marvel. Granite rocks cut and polished by hand and then built into walls without the use of any cement or similar materials. Some of the stones are over 100 tonnes. From here we went to Chinchero, an Inca town where they still live in the traditional way. Final stop was Zurite where we spent the night in a guest house. Very comfortable and quite some charm about it. We went for a familiarisation walk, just to make sure everyone was going to be capable of getting through the next 3 days. Monday morning up early and started walking about 8. For the first 5-6 hours we just climbed and went from our starting point of 3500m to 4500m at Pass Kente. Pretty relentless and lots of huffing and puffing was going on. It was our highest point for the day and we celebrated with some shots of rum which our guide had brought along. We had spectacular 360 degree views. We then started descending to our lunch spot at the floor of the valley. The kitchen crew were fantastic and turned out great meals through the whole walk. The rest of the afternoon was pretty much down hill to our camp site. Situated in a valley overlooking the river it was quite idyllic. The cold sets in very quickly as the sun drops and thermals were the order of the night.