Sep 2007

Hola amigos. We are back to civilization and survived the Inca Trail with no broken bones. The trail is wonderful, with lots of lovely scenery, passing through different micro climates over the 4 days, and seeing a few ruins along the way. Ofcourse, the cherry on the cake was seeing Machu Pichu on the last day - although only after the fog lifted. Someone commented that the fog was probably the reason it took so long for Machu Pichu to be re-discovered.

When we booked our tour, there were only 2 of us going on the trek that day with Llama Path (www.llamapath.com) - our tour company. That was way back in June, and we hoped that by September the group will have got bigger. But when we had our meeting with them 2 days before the trek, they said that no one else had booked the trek for that day, so it would be only 2 of us in the group. We had to pay a sursharge for the privilege, but on the upside - it became a private trek. We would have 6 porters including a chef plus a guide. Just for the 2 of us. Talk about royal treatment.

We started off on Sunday morning - the tour company picked us up at 4.45 and we made our way to Olantaytambo for breakfast. After breakfast its a half an hour drive to ´Kilometre 82´where the present day Inca Trail starts. We cleared the checkpoint, got our passports stamped, took the photos and got started on our trail at about 8.00.

The first few hours were pretty easy with gentle slopes and we slowly got settled into a pace. We got to our Lunch camp at about 1. By the time we got there, the porters - using the same route and carrying 25 kilos each had passed us by, set up the dining and kitchen tents and had prepared the food. Our respect for the porters grew by the day. They were simply amazing. Lunch on the first day was soup, spaghetti with a choice of a tomato based sauce and a cream based sauce. The food was really good and got better everyday. Infact I would have probably paid to eat the food at a good restaurant in London.

The trek after lunch was where the hard work really began. The trail starts its climb and its pretty much uphill for the rest of the day. Although we were slightly behind schedule (Llama Path likes to cover most of the hard trek on the first 2 days so the 3´rd day is pretty relaxing), we covered 14 Km on the first day. And it was a good thing we camped before our scheduled one, as it started to rain promptly as we reached camp. We had afternoon tea with popcorn and crackers and dinner was a 3 course affair with Soup, rice, vegetables for Aarti, chicken and beef for me and chocolate pudding. Obviously everything was setup by the time we got to camp. It was early to bed for us as we had catching up to do on Day 2.

Day 2 started early for us at 5.30. The uphill continued for 3 hours to the highest point of the trek - Dead woman´s pass. This is the most difficult part of the trek. The trek peaks at 4,215 metres and then it was downhill for us to lunch camp. How the porters carried 25 kilos up to Dead woman´s pass is beyond me. Now, although downhill is supposed to be the easy bit, it started to rain on our way down to make it harder. It rained pretty much everyday and all night just to make it that bit more interesting for us. We booked the trek for September as the wet season is supposed to start in November.....Lunch was soup, a kind of couscous with beef, chicken and vegetables. After lunch was another uphill to the 2´nd highest peak of the trek and back down to campsite. I sped ahead on the downhill (where it started to rain right on cue but this time the rain was accompanied by hail) and got to camp at 5.30. Aarti and the guide followed behing and had to walk the last half hour in the dark, and got to camp at 6.30. However, that was the most difficult part of the trek over. Again we had popcorn for tea with wantons and dinner was soup, chicken, beef and vegetables wrapped in mash and a desert of apple with sweet hot milk.

Day 3 started off with omlette, fried cassava and banana chips and hot chocolate. Then it was downhill all the way to the last campsite before Machu Pichu. Obviously, it started to rain again. However, there was no rush as this was a half day trek due to the long hours put in the first 2 days. We got to campsite at 2 in time for lunch. The campsite also has a restaurant and hot showers which Aarti took advantage of. I had my first beer in days - a well deserved one too!! For tea we had a surprise waiting - the chef had baked a cake (on a gas cooker) - yeah a cake!!! Incredible. And of course we also had popcorn and tea. Dinner was soup, chicken , beef and vegetables with some kind of rice with mulled wine!! And for desert we had jelly with pineapple - how the hell did the chef make jelly at camp?? As it would be an early start the next day we were in bed by 10.

Day 4 started off early at 4.00 as we had to cue up at the last checkpoint which opened at 5.30 for a mad dash to Sungate to catch the sunrise over machu pichu. Breakfast was porridge with chocolate pancakes. We got to sungate, but it was way too cloudy and foggy to see either the sun or machu picchu. So it was a walk down to machu picchu and the ruins do take your breath away. I just wonder how it would have been in all its splendour. We had a 2 hour tour of the ruins, and then spent some more time exploring it by ourselves, before taking the bus back to Agua Calientes for lunch, and catch a train to Ollantaytambo and get back to Cuzco.

It was worth it... and I would do it again just for the culinary experience!!

Hola..
La primera semana...oops wrong language...

Phew. We are glad to have finally finished the working part of the holiday - ie 2 weeks of intense one-on-one spanish lessons (http://www.machupicchuschool.org/). Don´t think we realised how hard the learning would be - but it got easier in the second week as we started to have a basic grasp of the languange. We were also getting homework everyday, although admittedly, I got less than Aarti. Probably because the teachers knew I would be less likely to do it then Aarti. We had an exam on the last day where we both passed with flying colours - I got 17 and Aarti got 18.5 out of 20.

Other than school, there are lots of lovely little Inca ruins around Cuzco and thats where we have spent our weekend. You have to buy a tourist ticket that covers most of the ruins and a few museums, churches and a folk dance. The ticket is valid for 10 days so there is plenty of time to see all the sights. On Saturday we saw 2 ruins - Pisac & Olantaytambo. Pisac is quite huge and it involved abit of walking - at altitude and we were soon out of breath on the uphills. I guess that was abit of practice for the Inca Trail. They were both pretty impressive ruins, built on steep hills, and really does make you wonder how they built it without any machinery. We had a really nice fire baked pizza for lunch at Olantaytambo. On Sunday we took a collectivo (matatu) to Tambomachay (another small ruin) and walked back down to Cuzco (8km!) also seeing Pukapukara and Saqsaywaman (more ruins). Unfortunately there was no sign of a sexy woman at the latter, however there was some kind of a celebration there and hundreds of school kids were puting up a show. It was very colourful and grand. Other than that we visited a few museums and saw a folk show (which I found really boring).

The homesatay we have been at has not been anything like what we thought it would be. Its more of a students house. We have hardly eaten with the family, as they seem to like to eat their food in their room. But its not been bad and we have met quite a few students who have come and gone over the last 2 weeks. Not to mention the fact that our facebook friends are growing..... We have been out to a couple of local bars and a local ´discoteca´ Its also been much colder in the second week, and I have found drinking gettind me really tired the next day - probably because of the altitude. In a way we are glad to be finished with Cuzco as homestay is now getting aboit boring - the cold weather is not helping as well. Inca Trail ( Camino Inka ) starts tomorrow and we can´t wait for it.

Hasta Luego.

Thanks for all the messages before we left...we´ll we arrived in Lima .. via a 6 hour stop over in Miami...
The flight from Heathrow to Miami all went fine - good seats with lots of leg room in normal cattle class - my veggie meals didn´t get messed up for a change either.... too good to be true....until we got to Miami... if you can help it never travel with a shah born in mombasa - he was stopped and we had to wait for 3 hours until they finally got round to asking him the security questions I guess they have to go through - you know the usual ones i.e. have you ever travelled to the Middle East?, have you ever had any military training?, are you part of a terrorist organisation?....So then they wanted to search our bags - they had fun doing drug tests on our items like our masala chai. Our Lan Peru flight to Lima from Miami was at 1.30am... No problems there... mighty glad to be out to America!

We had two days-nights in Lima, we were staying a bit out of the centre in an area called Miraflores. Our first hostel (http://www.lokihostel.com/lima/hostel) was quite a good one as its hopefully going to ease us in to the travelling before we have less luxury... We spent our first two days doing very little, relaxing and checking out the local area...

Then Sat morning we had a very early morning flight to Cusco at 6am - check in time is two hours earlier but in Peru I think we need more like three as everything was happening so slowly.. We were picked up from the airport by a representative of the Spanish school (http://www.machupicchuschool.org/) where we were going to spend the next two weeks..

We were dropped off at our family homestay..very nice home about 20 mins walk from the main square. Its pretty good here. We have 3 maids who are fantastic - we don´t need to do any work and are given 3 meals a day. The family we are staying with is the manager of our Spanish school and her 2 kids. And they have other students in the house - 8 in total. Its a very cosmopolitan mix as well - there is a Russian, French, Asian guy from Brixton, a German who doesn't drink (go figure), a Brit, an American and us. It was the German´s birthday last night and since he doesn't drink we had a fiesta infantile - lots of sweets, chocolates, and softdrinks - I absolutely loved it. It was like our welcome party too as we got to meet a lot of other students and teachers at the party, and as we had all these different nationalities there was Happy Birthday sung in 8 different langauges.

Its 11,000 feet up here and Hemal has been struggling with the altitude since we arrived and I think its just about hitting me now.

School starts tomorrow at 9am sharp.