Anyway after a few days of just bumming around on my own, not feeling all that social, I decided to mingle a bit, on the plane I started getting a bit more chatty and spoke to Kelly from the other group (the other group had younger people in it and was doing exactly the same trip) Anyway we got to Cusco and the first night we decided to go out, mamma Africa’s was the bar and boy oh boy did we have a big night. Johnny, Ange and I were up all night dancing and drinking, it was great. We all got home at 6am and I didn’t get to sleep as we had the Cusco city tour. I have no idea how I made it through the day but somehow I made it. And it was off to bed early that night as we were doing the 4 day Machu Picchu trek. The first day was fairly easy, although the altitude meant it was more difficult to breathe, anyway we got to about 3200m and setup camp. We had a pretty quiet evening, however sometime in the middle of the night we were all woken by the sound of 5 people vomiting very noisily from altitude sickness. poor buggers. so after a fairly sleepless night we awoke at 6 to get going early…. 3 from the group turned back. Day 2 is by far the hardest of the days. It certainly didn’t help that I had a stomach bug and i had to stop every 20 minutes or so. i think day 2 was about 30km long with a 1km vertical rise. Once i finally made it to the top of dead woman’s pass I wanted to die. in all seriousness, i felt like death and i had about 2 more hours to reach camp. It was downhill… sounds good right??? WRONG… the incline was very steep and the steps were tiny so the going was a bit tricky. but eventually i made it to the campsite. I slept from 4pm until 6am…. i was roooted. thankfully though the next day I was feeling much better and i bounded up the second ascent and flew to the lunch stop, the next person after me was 45 mins behind me. good old Andy, who had also suffered the day before. Tania and Annie were following from behind, and poor Tania had really really bad altitude sickness and had to be carried up the path on the 2nd day. but she made it…… anyway on the third night we were promised hot showers… if you call a warm trickle a shower then you’ll love this shower… probably on covered 1 square cm of skin at any time. There was a bar though, well sort of a bar and that made it worth it although i didn’t really drink much i did meet a pretty kewl bunch of guys. There were also some spectacular Inca ruins just around the corner that also made it worth the effort. Anyway the big day had finally arrived and we were up at 4am to get to machu picchu, I would really love to say that the effort was worth it, and although the Incas themselves had an easier trail, the trail we took is supposed to be a pilgrimage, but for me, I would definitely catch the train next time, although once we actually reached the sun gate I was very happy to have completed the walk. Machu Picchu wasn’t really what I was expecting and I have to say that it was actually more spectacular than I had imagined. The beautiful valley below with its red/brown river and the massive range surrounding it dwarfing the size of the settlement itself. With the mist rolling all over the mountainside making the settlement and whole mountainside vanish in seconds, it was pretty incredible. After a tour around Machu Picchu I figured I hadn’t come all this way not to climb up the extremely steep cliff adjacent to the settlement. So I did, and I didn’t regret it although the going was pretty tough the view was spectacular. Then it started to pour down so I left for the town in the valley below where we would catch the train back to Cusco . The way down was on a bus that leered precariously over a very steep descent, zig zagging down the hill. There was a pedestrian path going straight down, and as we left the top a young boy dressed in a customary Peruvian poncho shouted to us, and as we descended, where the path intersected the road we could see him running past, at the very bottom just before we reached the bridge he managed to meet us. It was pretty amazing that all day this kid would run down the hill trying to beat the bus so he could get spare change from the passengers. Anyway we stuck around Aquas Calientes for a little while before getting on the 4 hour train back. I was soooooo happy it was all over.
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