Hi Folks!

Wow what a week! Where to start...?! I guess the beginning is as good as any...

We arrived in Cuzco last Saturday, it was quite late so we walked down to the main square, looked at some old Inca buildings and went for something to eat. Tom wasn´t feeling well (again!) so he went back to the room and Kim went to a salsa club with some of the others. On Sunday we got up and went for a walk around the Colonial parts of town, we looked at some markets and went to see the famous 12 sided stone. In the evening we went to a restaurant which was part of a charity that donates all of it´s profits to help the children on the streets. The restaurant was really fun it was full of kids toys and the menu´s were created to look like childrens story books.

Monday we set off to Ollantaytambo (The Secret Valley). On the way we saw Inca ruins and visited a small llama and alpaca wool farm. In the evening we went for pizzaand had an early night as we prepared ourselves to start the Inca Trail.

We were picked up early Tuesday morning and got taken to the departure point for the Inca Trail and we were off...!It was a relitively gentle first day in comparision although at the time it felt pretty hard. That day we hiked for about 5 hours but apparently we made it good timing they expected us to take a bit longer than we did which was good! When we arrived at the campsite all of our tents had alreadty been erected by the porters who were with us. As soon as we got into our tents the sky opened and it absolutley lashed down, unfortunatley for us we had the leaky tent! We wondered to some nearby inca ruins whilst the chef and porters prepared our dinner, we had great food all week and we were well looked after :o) There were 13 of us in our group and we had 20 porters to lok after us and carry our things :o)

Wednesday morning we had a 5:30 wake up call of a hot cup of coca tea and a bowl of hot water to wash in outside our tents. After breakfast we started the infamous 2nd day - the hardest of all... We hiked for the first 5 hours uphill to get to dead womans pass, which is 4200m above sea level it is the highest part of the inca trail and it was REALLY hard work! Once we had reached the peak we then had to hike down hill for about 2 hours to reach the campsite, going down was just as difficult due to the steepness of the mountain, we found it tough on the legs (knees in particular). We finally made it to the campsite about 1:30pm which again was ahead of schedule :o)We spent the afternoon eatting and sleeping - lunch followed by sleep, the tea and popcorn at 4pm (followed by sleep) then dinner at 6pm then bed. It was so nice after such a challenging morning. Thursday we were up again at 5:00 but left without having breakfast we then stoped after 3 hours hiking for our breakfast. We continued for another 4 hours after breakfast to get to camp. When we arrived we were able to pay to have a shower which was so nice after the last 3 days hiking and stinking! That afternoon was again filled with eating and sleeping.

Yesterday was Macchu Picchu day. We got up at 4am and got ready, then set off for the sun gate to see our first glimpse of the "spectacular" Macchu Picchu and it was sooo..... .....not worth it!! It was rainning so hard and the cloud was really thick and low we couldn´t see anything (see the photo) we continued hiking through the rain for about half an hour before reaching the postcard picture place and again our view was just as good! Everyone got really annoyed and irritated as we had hiked for four days and on the final day we were soaked right through and couldn´t even see the ruins. We got down to the bottom and all huddled under a shelter for a couple of hours while we waited for the rain to stop, before starting our tour of Macchu Picchu. Eventually about 9:30am the cloud started to clear, we got a glimpse of Winapicchu mountain and went off to explore the ruins. By the time our tour had finished the sun was out and we managed to get some good photographs. At 2pm we headed back down to Aquas Calliantes (Macchu Picchu town) where we spent the rest of the afternoon. In the evening we got the train back to Ollantaytambo and then a bus back to Cuzco. We really enjoyed the four days and we were pleased that the altitude didn´t effect us as much as we thought it would, however... been there, done that, wouldn´t do it again! haha!

Back in Cuzco today, Tom went to watch the rugby and football with a few people in an Irish bar and Kim went for a walk (and shop) with a couple others. Tonight we are going out to eat then we have to go back and pack to get ready for our flight to Arequipa the tommorow.

Hope all is well at home.

Love us x