It's an early start for day one of the Inca Trail, the small bus picks me up and I meet the other three fellow trekkers - a girl from Holland and a couple from New Jersey. We pull over in Ollantaytambo to pick up some last minute supplies. A rumour seems to spread among the street vendors that we're on the lookout for walking sticks and pretty soon there's about eight of them extolling the virtues of their particular wooden stick. One vendor tries to sell a large...

It's market day in Pisac, and there's also some sort of festival going on. A couple of brass bands march down the narrow streets on opposite sides of the square. Also there's a rather chaotic procession with schoolgirls dancing around baskets of fruit, whilst a Daihatsu truck with lemon trees on the back follows. A lady standing by the lemon trees proceeds to pluck the lemons and throw them at the crowd, causing a scramble for the yellow fruit on the floor. In ...

Cusco was originally designed to take the shape of a puma, which, along with the condor and the snake is a sacred animal for the Incas. Today I'm walking down its backbone, the Avenue del Sol, to pick up some extra supplies for the trail which starts on Wednesday. I manage to pick up a flashlight and some hybrid glove-mitten things, complete with the obligatory llama design. The key Incan ruin around Cusco is Sacsayhuaman (pronounced something like "sexy w...

The plane takes off through the thick ocean cloud that blankets Lima most of the year round. After around 15 minutes the high Andean mountains begin to poke through and the cloud clears. The floor below looks close, probably because it is; the plateau is at around 3000m above sea level. Cusco airport is small, just a luggage belt, a couple of tour desks, and a stall offering free oxygen. The lack of air is noticeable, and the usual airport rush to the baggage re...

It is midnight as I finally arrive in Lima, it only took 14 hours since Melbourne according to my watch, but it was more like 30 in reality. Edgar, the representative from my travel agency greets me and we're soon on our way to my hotel. About ten minutes into the journey, police in riot gear standing near a tank-like vehicle usher us and a few other cars over. Edgar clearly knows the drill and gets his papers, and wallet, ready. It turns out they're doing crim...