Day 12

Yet another early start on this so called ´holiday´ and a 3 hour journey to Lares was the beginning of the highly anticipated Lares Trek. We were advised to buy toys for the children we´d meet on the way so stopped at a market in Calca. I bought some cars, Sarah bought some pens and paper and I realised immediately that my presents were going to be trumped by Sarahs as hers were useful and were going to benefit the children in later life. Cars however had been given to the children by just about every other tourist to have walked along the Lares trek. Nevertheless we set off and ended up at some hot springs after a horrendous drive over the mountain where we spent 2 hours almost dying everytime we turned a corner although our driver seemingly had it under control. Not for the faint hearted.

The trek was a 33km hike over a mountain pass designed to take in the various cultures of the andean highland dwellers. We were joined by 3 others a Dane, German and a Welshman. It didn´t look good on paper and sounded like the start of a bad joke but they turned out to be alright and we all got along like a house on fire.

We had a ridiculous number of people catering for us, which made us feel very English and spoilt. To the best of my memory we had someone to cook meals and someone to help him cook our meals, about 4 people to put up our tents before we´d arrived at campsites, someone to walk a horse just in case we felt even more English and didn´t want to do the walk after all. A shepherd with donkeys who carried all our bags and lots of children popped up everywhere and helped out where possible.

The first day we walked a mere 2km due to the rain, everything was wet including sleeping bags and groundsheets. It was pretty miserable. However, the fantastic food served up for us cooked solely in one quarter of a small tent more than made up for it. How they managed to cook 3 course meals of such high quality in a wet tent was truly impressive and made the first day a little more bearable.

It rained all night and was bitterly cold and I was too long for the sleeping bag I hired and ended up sleeping with my head tilted right back so I could fit in the sleeping bag and tent.

(Note for Mum and Dad it was a bit like the sheep costume incident in Reception)

Small note: The toilet tent was really funny.

Day 13

Glorious sunshine greeted us the next morning, after a breakfast of bread, omelette etc. (still amazing) we set off on our 18km hike. It would be pointless to try and describe the scenery as I probably couldn´t do it justice so keep an eye out for the photographs. We walked to a nearby community and they demonstrated how they made their knitworks etc. and we gave out our toys to the sea of children that appeared before us when they saw tourists approaching. Naturally all the children were disappointed with the cars as they had about 5000 of them already and were pleased with the pens and paper.

I also got the chance to start my pre-season training with a bit of altitude training. At nearly 4000m the village football pitch is probably the highest I´ll ever play football, the pitch was also probably the worst pitch i´d ever seen in my life but a pitch all the same. If you avoided holes, rocks, children and animals you still had to contend with a flat ball. However, if I am to fulfill my dream of being Steven Gerrard every bit of training counts.

We continued the walk up a very steep pass followed by the man with a horse, (which must have been a magic horse as there´s no possible way it could have walked up the hills we were walking up) and reached a lake where again as if by magic a tent was waiting for us with a three course meal. How this happened I´ll never know. We reached the summit and began our long descent eventually reaching the bottom of the valley and walking our way back to the spas where we camped for the night.

Note: The toilets at the spas were THE worst thing I have ever seen.

Day 14

We woke up early and got a bus back to Ollytaoisjoitatastambo, we played hangman on the way which was an error as hangman combined with horrible corners made me feel incredibly sick. After our horrendous journey back to Ollytajositioasjtambo we got on a train and headed to Machu Pichu town. The closest town to Machu Pichu which was pretty much purpose built to ship tourists up to Machu Pichu. It was disgustingly expensive and they had powercuts seemingly for fun so you couldn´t really do anything worthwhile without a) spending all your money or b) doing it in the dark.

That evening we went out and had really expensive pizza with really expensive cocktails and I challenged a peruvian man to a game of chess. I wouldn´t usually include such a boring anecdote but I absolutely anihilated this guy and feel you should all know about it. He looked genuinely appauled and wanted me to go back the next night. At this point I was getting a little scared of the chess playing peruvian man and said the standard "No Gracias" and headed back to our hotel, where after 20km of walking and 3 games of chess I fell into a coma.