11th - 14th November 2005 The Inca Trail & Machu Picchu We have completed the Inca trail and seen Machu Picchu. We are spending the day back in Cuzco resting and sorting ourselves out. We are staying in a hostel with a veranda overlooking the city which is very nice and I spent this morning sitting there in the sun until it started raining - the weather is very changeable. Shame the hostel is also having building work done so we got woken up at 7 this morning. After 4 nights of virtually no sleep I was not pleased and am still feeling pretty tired. The Inca trail was amazing. I have never seen scenery like it. I have never spent 4 days doing so much hard walking, sweating, eating and so little sleeping either. It's 35 miles up and down at high altitude through mountains and with no way out apart from onwards or back the way you came. On the first day we drove the hour and a half from Cuzco to the start of the trail. We saw snow capped mountains and children walking over the fields from their remote houses in their school uniforms to the main road to be picked up by the school bus. The first day walking was relatively easy with just a few tastes of some up hill bits. The second day is supposed to be the hardest as you go to the highest point on the Inca trail which is 4,200 meters above sea level. It was hard work but I found it OK once I got the right pace and I was actually third out of our group of 9 tourists and 2 guides to the highest point. However, going down hill wasn't so easy for me and my knees started shaking 5 minutes into the hour and a half decent from the highest point to our campsite, so it took me a long time. Glad I had splashed out on two 50p perivian tat geeky trekking sticks. The third day was hard as we covered the most distance, although it wasn't as much up hill. The scenery was the most spectacular on that day as we were walking through trees along mountain sides, saw a few Inca sights and had amazing views of the tree covered Andes. By the end of that day my legs were starting to ache. I probably should have stretched or something, but a hot shower (well, turns out it was a lukewarm trickle, but a shower is a shower) was on offer so I headed straight for that instead. On the last morning we got up even earlier than the usual 5am at 4am in order to be queuing at the gate to the final section of the Inca trail by 5am. Lovely. At 5.25 the gates opened and we were on our way to the sun gate which is where you can first see Machu Picchu. I didn't realise that we were going to be involved in a speed walking race for an hour but somehow got swept along with it. I was not having a good time - being as out of breath as I am at the gym running as fast as I can on a treadmill for an hour starting at 5.30am is not my idea of fun at all. It was all worth it for the spectacular views at the sun gate though - see the first picture in my Machu Picchu album. After the really sunny gate, we had another half hour decent to Machu Picchu, again speed walking. Our tour guide gave us a tour of it and then we had quite a long time to wonder around on our own. At that point I was only interested in sitting down, drinking 15 pints of water and recovering from a horrendous start to the day. Once I was refreshed we went and had another look at the views. I was worried that Machu Picchu would be an anti climax but it wasn't, it is a truly amazing place. My photos of it and of the Inca trail don't do it justice and are probably just very boring for everyone, so sorry about that but they will be good memories for me. The train ride back to Cuzco was not as impressive, taking 4 and a half hours to do a journey that takes less than 2 hours by road. The train had to keep shunting backwards and forwards to get up and down the hills. There was a very good man selling beer though and Simon and I enjoyed a couple that we felt were extremely well deserved. Our Inca trail group consisted of 9 trekkers, 2 guides and 14 porters including a very talented chef. The people were really nice apart from one non team player who didn't quite enjoy the rest of our company as much as we did! The rest of us walked as a team and enjoyed the hours we spent walking together and talking over the many meals and tea breaks that we were provided with. The guides we had were really nice, encouraging and pointed out lots of interesting sights and nature. The chef was unbelievable, producing 2 or 3 course lunches and dinners, all interesting and nice food. The porters were amazing. They got up before us, went to bed after us and carried all of the equipment, food for the meals and means of cooking and serving them, and some of our stuff too. It was impossible not to feel incredibly guilty. We tipped them very well. The porters now have an easier time than they did 10 or more years ago when they would carry up to 50 or 60 kilos. They are limited to 25 kilos now and there are check points to make sure they don't carry any more, but we still felt really bad. Other than that it was an incredible experience and we feel very pleased to have done it. I am relieved that it wasn't as hard as we expected and was more interesting and stunning than I could have imagined. I'd recommend our tour company (Qente) who were reasonably priced for the service we got and apparently treat their porters better than a lot of companies. We're off to Puno on Lake Titicaca tomorrow, then across to Bolivia. Bye for now. Josiexxx