Today we headed off for the Sacred Valley and our ultimate destination - Machu Picchu. We left pretty early as we had a busy day to get to our hotel for the night. On the road by 7:30am and drove around and up and over hills and mountains, stopping once to enjoy the view of the Sacred Valley. About 9am, we stopped at a real touristy place with alpaca's and llama's to feed, a baby puma to cuddle (:P) and also show how traditional handicrafts are made. All the woo...

A nice late start this morning...9:30am. We did have a meeting at 8:30am for an Inca Trail briefing and then another meeting at 9am to discuss what we needed to know for the coming days but we could eat breakfast at the same time so really a nice late start. This morning was taken up with a 4 hour walking tour of historical Cusco. It was amazing to see old, original Incan walls in amongst more modern (as in late 1800 and early 1900's!) buildings. Our tour inclu...

So, a 'travel' day now means a day where we explore so much of the country as we travel. Up early as it was a long trek from Puno to Cusco, with the sun barely rising across the square as we went to catch our bus. After a few hours of travel, our first stop was in Pukara, a small pre Incan town. We were lucky today as the markets are only open on Thursday's....and we were travelling through on a Thursday! After a stop in a shop for some history of the area and t...

So, not too bad this morning with a 6am wake up for our 7am start. We exited our hotel to be collected by our Puno limousines...tricocolos, which are bicycles with almost an equivalent of kids seats (just larger) on the front for 2 people. It took about 15 minutes to get to the port on Lake Titicaca. There was a lot of jostling between each pair of travellers for whose 'limousine' could go the fastest. A pair of the guys got left behind so in the end, we all laug...

So, up this morning at 5am and struggled to breakfast. Breakfast wasn't as nice as the soup at dinner last night but at least a few options and the juice was good :) Emma and I had spent some time last night lying in the hammocks, overlooking the lights of a small town down the hill and the stars in the clear sky. It was gorgeous but a bit chilly so we didn't stay long. We were on the bus by 6am and started our drive through the Colca Valley. We had a number of...