We all jump in the minivan and head out in our trip, the first day is spent driving to the start of the official trail, stopping off at various mountain villages, ruins and beauty spots. At a local village we are shown how they make the different colours for the popular local rugs, jumpers, hats, socks and everything else! They spin wool from sheep, for instance, using a type of spindle which they hang from their hand, literally all day, the women are all talking away whilst spinning, they walk around spinning, plus a lot of them are carrying their babies in a big rug tied to thier back!! Multi tasking at it's very finest!

After a half hour ride along some very narrow mud roads with long drops down to the bottom!! Try not to look out the window if you are on the outside is a good idea. We hit the main roads and are surrounded by the biggest mountains I've ever seen, some you cannot comprehend how big they are, it's extremely breathtaking. We are told that towns are built in their locations because of the shape of the mountains they are near. The Inca Spirit is covered by the Condor, Puma and Snake, this one town had a mountain in the background in the shape of a Condor. Inca is all to do with the stars and nature, the milky way and the three animals... Need to read up some more on that, sounds interesting!

Next, we visit an animal sanctuary, the Condor!! Massive bird, the bird that takes your soul to the Inca Gods... I had a photo standing next to it, which was rather brave supposedly! We also looked at Pumas and the Peruvian dog which is an ugly looking thing, nothing on Cassie! See my photos, black dog with a gingery Mohawk!

Continue on the road through the mountains, eventually to the town Otavalo, where we have another hotel for the night. We have another walk around an inca ruin, which is very steep, and how they managed to get these huge rocks up there is amazing. They even carved there god into the rock face, the name is about 10 words long and I don't recall it funnily enough!

The rest of the day we have to ourselves and the lads decide to hit the towns bars, not very many but we all get to know each other and have a great night which turns out to be the first of many!