So here is my Inca trail blog! Unfortunately even though I only finished it two days ago it feels like a lifetime away already, especially the first few days. In fact, on the second day, we all had trouble remembering what had happened on the first day. But I will do my best.

Day one: I got up at the lovely time of 4.30am (this was going to prove a common theme for the next few days) and tried to make it out of my hotel without disturbing my room-mates too excessively. I needed to walk down to a square about a 10 minute walk away, and as I descended the steps I felt a bit apprehensive as it was the middle of the night and I was on my own, especially when I spotted an inebriated drunk at the bottom of the steps. Luckily it was late enough that he was unconscious so I made it to the bus without making any friends. On my arrival at the bus, I was greeted by applause from the assembled porters and a cup of coca leaf tea. The porters were amazing, I will write more about them later. Coca tea is the drink of choice in the Peruvian highlands. It´s a mild narcotic (from the cocaine family), and has many uses, such as staving off sleep, altitude sickness (very important), it´s a painkiller, and when I had suspected food poisoning the day after my trek (surprisingly), I was advised to drink it. When we were all assembled, there were 16 of us. Three American teachers, a Kiwi couple, a Canadian couple, a Swedish couple, (spotting a trend here), two Aussies, two Brazilians, the indefatigable Glen, fellow Brit Adrian (who stole all my lipblam) and moi. I was the youngest for once. We all boarded the bus, and promptly fell asleep until we arrived in Sacred Valley for breakfast at 7.30am. After a very overpriced breakfast, it was back on the bus, until we got to "Kilometer 82", the beginning of the four day trek. The trek isn´t 82 kilometres long by the way, in miles it´s 26, so about 43 ks. We then had to queue to be let in, and then wait to pose for the customary "Kilometer 82" group photo. After all this, it was around 10 when we actually started to walk. The first part was deceptively easy, and when we stopped for lunch most of us were saying "is that it?" We didn´t start on the actual Inca trail, I think it´s eroded or something, so it´s not until halfway through the second day you get on the original trail. Still, it was a nice walk and a chance to get to know some of the members of the group while we could walk and talk at the same time. Also, our tour guides, Freddie and Edwin (the most Incan/Spanish names you can think of). Both were characters, and we all left the trek with token phrases "ooh la la", "supercool" and "wowwow" added to our immediate vocabulary. I was worried I´d be a bit of a pansy, but I always seemed to end up at the front of the group with the experienced hikers and chatting to Freddie . Apart from on the downward legs (to follow).

So, the first day we arrive at lunch, and our 22 porters, who had raced past us half an hour into the walk each carrying 25 kilos, greeted us with applause, individual bowls of hot water and soap, and a lunch tent complete with tables, chairs, and a three course meal. The porters are descended from the natives who lived in the mountains, maybe even the Incans themselves. They are teeny tiny, most are shorter than me, and they can literally run up a mountain, past the struggling Westerners, carrying a pack of tents/potatoes/silverware bigger than they are, without breaking a sweat, and have time to arrange everything, pitch tents, cook, and run around seeing to our every need once we arrive. I have no idea where they get their energy, or how they can be so strong. I booked through Llama Path, which advocates "sustainable tourism" and porter welfare. Up until recently, the porters were unsurprisingly taken advantage of by a number of tour companies. It was only recently a law was passed which prevents a porter carrying more than 25 kilos, they used to carry 40. To put it into perspective, my backpack usually weighs 13k when I check it in, and I can walk slowly for about half an hour on a flat surface before I´m ready to collapse. Llama Path give their porters matching red outfits, North Face jackets and proper walking boots. The other groups mainly make do with old tattered T-shirts and sandals. I was really glad I was with this group once I got there and saw the porters. There are more porters than tourists on the trail, they only let on 500 people a day, and over 300 of these are porters. The chef was especially amazing. Not only did he carry his share, he had time to cook a selection of the best food I´d eaten in a while, including separate dishes for vegetarians and lactose intolerants (I wasn´t the only one for once), all the while wearing his pristine chef´s whites and hat (he changed out of this when he was walking!) An average meal was: starter, soup, selection of some six to eight regional dishes presented buffet style, and dessert. The last day we even had sculptures of birds made out of vegetables. And this was all from ingredients carried up and down hills for four days.

So that was lunch, after which we set off again. I can´t quite remember the scenery from the first day, I think it was pretty but not as spectacular as on the subsequent days. The last stretch was uphill and we´d been walking for seven hours, so I began to feel it a bit by this point and was glad to finally see a row of red tents. Oh, one more thing about the porters, is that there are no designated campsites on the trail, it´s whoever gets there first gets the site for the night. So the fastest porters from each group are strapped up early (still carrying 25k) and essentially race to get to the best campsite. Our porter must have won the race, because we were in a very nice camp site, with the most perfect view of a snow-capped mountain and the full moon. I was very lucky to go at the time I did, as the moon was beautiful every night and meant you could walk around without a torch. It´s the brightest I´ve ever seen it, I guess because it´s unhampered by artifical lights. I had a little bowl of hot water, some soap and a towel outside my tent, which was more than I was expecting, and I had time to put on all my layers (eight on top, four on bottom and three pairs of socks) I felt would be necessary for night-time before it was time for tea. Hot drinks, popcorn and biscuits, shortly followed by dinner. We even got hot water bottles and I spent the first hour or so uncomfortably hot in my sleeping bag, but the next thing I knew it was freezing cold. Still, I got some sleep, and was woken at 6am with a cup of coca tea and a summons to breakfast. Edwin expressed surprise that I was fast asleep at this time.

Day two: I was well aware that the second day was going to be the hardest day, and we started with a steep ascent through a forest, followed by the less steep but just as tough climb up the mountain to Dead Woman´s Pass, 4200 metres high. It was tough, but not as bad as I´d imagined, and the views were stunning. I made it up seventh out of my group, and the second girl, and got to sit at the top and cheer on the others. As always, I´m awkward, so although I made it up the hill no problem I had slight problems going down. I have a phobia of going downwards at the best of times, and after a three hour hard climb my legs were like jelly and I was exhausted. I also lost half my granola bar whilst trying to escape from some Andean giant green bee so my energy levels were depleted. We had a two hour descent on steep, uneven stones (we were getting to the original trail now), and I had to go very slowly and concentrate where I was putting each foot, lest I go tumbling down. I ended up near the back, with the conflicting paranoias of not being able to walk with someone behind me and not wanting to be last for fear of holding everyone up. Edwin tried to jolly me along but after asking politely three times if he would leave me to go at my own pace and explaining I couldn´t walk and talk at the same time becaue I was so tired I had to be a bit rude, and I think he carried a less than favourable opinion of me during the rest of the trek. It didn´t help he asked me if I was "serious" or "sulking", that did not go down well. Anyway, I finally made it to the bottom, and lunch, where we had an hour´s rest before going back uphill. I think most people were feeling as bad as me, apart from Glen, who had already thrown on his own 15kilo pack and charged off up the mountain. We stopped halfway to look at an old Incan fortress perched on a hill, which unfortunately I can´t remember much about. The view from the top of this hill was the best so far. It is very picturesque. You´re surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountains, lakes, trees, we even saw some deer, and even though the Inca trail is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, most of the time you can´t see anyone other than your group. It is really really quiet, and there is no electricity. We had to go downhill again, so I set off early which worked out quite well. We made it to the campsite around 6pm, after walking for nine hours straight. As the next day was set to be comparatively easy, we indulged in a bottle of rum and drinking games until the wee hour of 9pm when we were so exhausted we had to go to sleep. No hot water bottle this time. Note to self: a hot water bottle is more effective than rum at helping to keep one warm at night.

Day three: We had an easy day ahead of us today - only five hours walking - so we had a lie in and I was woken with my tea at 7am. My tent was covered in frost, no wonder I was so cold. We took today fairly slowly, with lots of stopping and looking at the view and learning about the wildlife. We were starting to get into the jungle by now. Before lunch we had to go down again, it was easier than the previous day, but we were still knackered by the time we reached camp. We had a treat after lunch, a hot shower, which has never felt so good. After a nap we went to some nearby ruins which were pretty cool, especially as the moon came out and we were the only group there, so we could wander around in the moonlight as we pleased. Tonight it was actually warm, I only needed four or five layers.

Day four: Unfortunately I only got to enjoy this until 3.30am when we were woken (no tea), kicked out of our tents (nicely) by the porters, who had to pack up quickly to make their train, and by 4.30am were queuing for the path to open at 5.30. It felt a bit like we were camping out for a concert. We had a two hour, pretty intense, walk. There seemed to be some kind of race going on and one group kept pushing rudely past us in order to get to the Sun Gate first. When we finally made it to the Sun Gate, we looked down on Machu Picchu itself for the first time. Oddly, the landscape immediately around Machu Picchu reminded me a lot of the mountains in Laos, which at the time I thought were one of a kind. It was every bit as beautiful as it´s rumoured to be and we chilled out at the top of the hill for a while before descending down to the lost city. It is really high up, perched at the top of this hill, even though we were even higher up. We could even see little clouds drifting below us which was kind of cool. Once we got down to the town, the chaos of tourism kicked back in, with busloads of elderly Americans, and overpriced water. I´m really glad I did the actual trek as the actual ruins, though I enjoyed them and found it very interesting, were overrun by tourism in a way the trek wasn´t. After a rest and a mid-morning snack (at 8am!) we started the tour. Freddie was very enthusiastic and excited to share with us the history and meaning of the ruins. Unfortunately after four days of trekking we used every available opportunity to sit down and grumbled about having to move, especially if that moving involved stairs. I expect he´s used to it though. I was already interested in the Incas, as I said that´s one of reasons I wanted to go travelling, and they didn´t let me down. They were well ahead of their time, designing hydro-something somethings (obviously they had a better grasp of this in the 13th century than I do), something involving water flow and fountains anyway, which impressed me at the time. They were really good at agriculture and irrigation. I now know the potato comes from Peru and they have over 40,000 varieties, which is always something to be proud of. They built these experimental agricultural laboratories and used platforms and clay to manipulate temperature. They were brilliant at stonework and building. They used meteorite rocks to cut stones, and their temples are all perfectly aligned. They have more straight lines and perfectly cut walls. They learned to build anti-earthquake structures. There were several earthquakes after the Spanish invasion and whilst the Spanish buildings collapsed, the older Inca ones stayed standing. The Incas were adept astronomers, and there were two structures still standing that were obviously aligned with the sky. The Standard Cross constellation was important to the Incas because if it was visible it meant they needed to do something with potatoes or llamas (I have a very accurate memory). The Standard Cross is diamond shaped, and there is a diamond shaped rock (with accurately carved angles) pointing at the sky, which corresponds to this potato/llama time. The winter solstice was the beginning of the year, and there is a sundial at the top of the tallest buildings which throws the shadow directly into the eye of a puma carving on the floor on the 21st June each year. I love stuff like that.

After spending a few hours there we repaired to Aquas Caliente for lunch, and we stayed there for ages, when I would have preferred to go back to Cusco and sleep. I finally got to my hostel at 11pm, went straight to bed, and promptly woke at 5.30am apparently ready to go trekking again. This was yesterday, and I had a flight to Lima and then one to Iquitos. I chose Star Peru, the Peruvian Easyjet, over the more expensive Lan airlines, and realised why there was a price difference when each flight was an hour late. I had an extra bit of excitement on my Lima-Iquitos flight. We landed, and I trotted off the plane, went to baggage claim, and started to panic when my bag didn´t turn up. I thought maybe it had got lost in transit, and maybe things are different here, perhaps I was meant to pick my bag up in Lima and recheck it in, so I asked the baggage man and he pointed to the Star Peru office. When I couldn´t find it I went back to him, waving my ticket stub, which he saw and said "Iquitos?" "Ci ci, Iquitos." Through a Spinglish interaction it transpired that I had got off the plane, not at Iquitos, but at some random jungle town, and the plane was going onto Iquitos, so I had to run to get back on it before it took off. Doh. But I´ve never heard of planes doing that before, though I guess they must do.

So I am now in Iquitos. It is in the middle of the Amazon. It being a rainforest and all, I was much surprised when it rained most of the day. There´s not a lot to do here, it´s mainly a stop off for people doing jungle tours. There is a restaurant run by a Texan ex-pat which is pretty cool and covered in souveniors of his hunting trips (aka dead things hanging all over the place). They also do good Western food. Unfortunately after going there for breakfast and lunch I got asked on a date by one of the waiters (it took four attempts for him to get the message across, so I didn´t think it would be a very successful date), so I think I´ll have to find somewhere else for dinner. Tomorrow I am getting up early again to get the speedboat to Tabatinga in Brazil, from where I hope to get a slow boat to Manaus. I already have my hammock and am ready to go!