Hello boys and girls, So much to say and so little time, but with my literary verve and flair for the last minute.com, I shall endeavour to cram all that has happened into the half hour I have left in this internet café... So, last time I left you I was off on the Inca Trail...we were looked after by a group of three mountain guides and a whole hoard of porters and cooks and tent putter-uppers (!) but before we met them at the first campsite there was culture vulturing to be done. First we went up to the Inca ruins at a site called Sacsayhuaman (that'll be 'Sexywoman', guffaw guffaw, to all the gringos then) on a hill on the edge of Cusco. Great views of the city, which looked almost Italian from above, with all its red clay-tiled roofs and higgledy piggledy cobbled streets...the place has a reputation for violent crime against foreigners, but (apart from my silly camera incident) I really enjoyed my first 2 days there - the place had life and vigour in comparison to the many soulless places through which we've already passed. The ruins were basically a symbol of the sacred nature of the mountains to the Incas - huge great stones had been quarried miles away and brought there with amazingly effective transport systems, considering the inhospitable terrain. There were also some tunnels and what has since become an 'Inca slide' to play around in... Next lot of ruins we visited were at Pisac - much more the sort of thing you expect Peruvian sites to look like - lots of terraces built into the side of mountains (used for farming, irrigation or decoration) and burial grounds...those pesky Spanish colonialists were pretty brutal when it came to robbing graves and the like. Stunning scenery - and our guides pointed out to us where we would be walking soon... Up to the first campsite which was in a small Andean community called Quisharani. We camped on the grass outside the Primary school and had Quecha (the local language) lessons from the village teacher so we could chat to the kids that we'd be handing clothes out to in the morning (my tourgroup operates a small 'Community Project' scheme) but it was pretty damn chilly (though nothing compared to our earlier random wildcamp) so an early night before several hour trekking the next day. Awoken at 6am with a cup of coca tea (oh yes - possibly the cushiest camping possible - our crew were fantastic and so friendly) - that's tea made from cocaine leaves. People like to say it helps with the altitude but apparently this is a fallacy. Met the kids from the school who were beautiful little ruffians: every single one, with ruddy cheeks, huge bright eyes and dirty faces. They sang us some songs and we played for a while but they had to start walking...baby steps at first - you run out of breath so fast that high in the mountains, but the pace was comfortable. Walked up for a few hours and reached our first pass at Huillquicasa at 3850m. Simply breathtaking views of turquoise lakes and craggy steeps around, and such a sense of having actually done something instead of being a lazy ole traveller, even though we had a whole fleet of llamas and horses carrying our stuff. And the porters were racing ahead of us - they do this day in day out, and in their little traditional sandals, while we stomped about in hiking boots. Downhill for the rest of that day to our next camp (so lovely to descend and catch site of our red tents, lined up like space pods all ready for us at the end of the day) at another village called Cucani. This place only got electricity a few months ago, but apparently the locals don't use it because of the expense...bizarrely, some NGO had installed them with a solar-powered shower...We also passed schoolkids in their eye-catching red ponchos who walked for hours a day to get to and from school - how is it that Peruvians aren't Olympic athletes? Thay night we were invited to a local man's house for tea - this fellow was 110 and was still working in the mountains. Incredible. Had a poke round the house next door, crawling with guinea pigs (Peruvian delicacy - more on this later) then back to the campsite for another lush meal: felt most awkward being waited on hand and foot! Our guides (Smith - my favourite - Rolphy and William) briefed us on the next, and hardest, day...The next morning (up at 5am) four people were told not to attempt the trek because of altitude sickness and general fitness - we were about to climb 1000m. The group fragmented into four main bits and I settled into the second quite happily. Am not the fittest bunny in the park right now but seemed to be managing, accompanied by a bit of Fall Out Boy for encouragement...was tough to keep on trudging as the sights around us just got better and better - glaciers, lakes, fields of llamas and alpacas with their aristocratic poise and huge blue eyes...if you looked around you for more than a second you were bound to fall over and fall a very long way: twas quite tough terrain. As we neared the highest pass, Smith let us go off on our own as he waited for the next group. A couple of the boys who're really in shape shot off even faster than we'de been all day, but Darren led the rest of us up...have great pride in managing to be the first girl to the top of the Pumahuanca Pass at 4800m (the highest I have ever been), even beating Lindsey, who's a qualified fitness instructor in Canada! She got dizzy with the altitude, but I reckon I deserve some kind of Brownie pointage for that one...maybe even an edible prize? Anyway - a few photos at the top and we all got out our 'sin stones' that we'd collected at the bottom of the mountain. This is an Andean tradition: out of respect for the mountains as deities, walkers took a stone from the foot of the hill to represent their sins according to size. Mine was flat bit biggish: little sins across a range of subjects I thought? Then at the top, you place them in a cairn and cleanse your soul. Hope that sorts out that nutty night in Cusco then. Fairly treacherous descent to the lunch site and only an hour further to our beautiful campsite in a sheltered valley - a little warmer than our previous nights, but as it happened, the best stars I have ever seen in my life. We sat around a campfire sipping vin chaud craning our necks at sprays of stars...Keith's quite hot on astrology so twas a bit of an education, but I can only ever remember the Southern Cross. Went down with a cold that night - all that very hard breathing in freezing cold air - but glad that our final day was only a few hours downhill all the way. Should point out that we were not doing the 'Classic' Inca Trail, the one that ends in Machu Picchu, because the company makes a deliberate attempt to avoide other tourists. We didn't see a single other white person the whole way - would just soak up the scenery and enjoy the novelty of my heart pumping faster than usual. Gah! Gotta go! Going to Bolivia but will update this soon! Promise! Love R xxx