The Inca Trail

Inca Trail, Peru 

After the home stay experience, we had around a day to recover before one of the most exciting things planned on our trip. The Inca Trail. With the Inca Trail having to be planned around 6 months in advance in order to get a space, we had basically planned our whole South American trip around this. Getting to our hotel for the night, we met our team and were informed that we had to get everything packed that we wanted to bring down to a weight of just 2.5kg each for the whole trek. So saying goodbye to luxuries (bye shampoo!), having a carb-heavy dinner and early night, before we knew it we were heading to the start of the trail. 

We did our tour with G Adventures. A company we cannot recommend enough if you are planning on doing the same tour. The nice aspect of booking with them is that a part of the money you spend on the tour is put towards community projects in the local area you are visiting. This was made clear to us as we began our tou, with an amazing 5- course gourmet lunch in the newly built G-Adventures restaurant near the Sacred Valley. Built and run by locals, G Adventures backed the project financially and committed to training each employee to exceptionally high standards. It was easily one of the best meals we have had on our whole trip! 

After a couple more stops and an overnight stay in a local town called Ollantaytambo and a good breakfast, we came to the entrance of the Inca Trail. Through passport control and security (they only let 500 people on the trail each day and this is including tour guides and porters), the first day was a fairly straight walk of around 5 hours. The walk began through the valley of the mountains and was a good opportunity to get used to the pace and terrain we had to face for the next few days. The walk ended at lunchtime where we were greeted by our porters and sat down to another amazing lunch. The job the porters do on the Inca Trail is absolutely incredible, they each carry around 25kg through-out the trek, make it to the campsites around 2 hours before us mere walkers and set up our tents, beds, dining tents and cook a 3 course meal all before we make it to the camp! The fact that the porters clapped us every time we made it to a camp was crazy... And did I mention they also made us 3 courses every meal time and a huge cake on a camp stove on our last day?! They did an amazing job, I mean, carrying my small backpack all 4 days felt like hard work! 

The second day was by far the hardest. We walked to the highest point of the trail, 4,215m above sea level, which included around 4 hours of relentless, up-hill climbing and a few hours after walking down. The views were spectacular and definitely made the climb that much easier. The sense of team spirit really became apparent at times like this and we were lucky enough to have a really good group of 6 all spurring each other on and helping to make the gruelling parts that much more bearable. The celebratory rum shot once we made it up to the top was definitely needed. 

We then climbed down and ended the second day camping by a waterfall before the third and longest day on the trail. The third day was a full day of walking in order to get as close to the checkpoint for Machu Picchu as possible ready for the next day. Parts were tough and the terrain was varied, but we were just grateful it was nothing like the climb of the second day. 

The final fourth day was tiring but our favourite day of our trip. The night before we were faced with the option of what time we wanted to wake up in accordance to what position we wanted to be in the queue for the gate into the national park that lead us to Machu Picchu. We were quick to realise that there was fierce competition between the trekking groups who are all keen to be first in line and grab one of only 50 seating spaces available (reminder - 500 people are let on the trail each day). We ended up getting to the gate at 3am and to our utter dismay, discovered we were second in the queue (out of all of the losers, we were the BEST losers) and had to sit and wait until it opened at 5.30am. At that time in the morning, we grateful for somewhere to sit and ultimately were happy with second place. After a couple of hours of sitting up dozing, we began the walk through the park to the sungate. The walk was 45 minutes and it must have been the quickest pace we had through-out the whole trek, with the reality of the end in sight, everyone seemed to want to get there as quick as possible. After climbing the 'monkey steps' - vertical steps which you need to climb on your hands and knees and watching someone snap their walking stick in half stopping themselves from almost falling over the edge, we made it to the sungate. The first glimpse of Machu Picchu below at the bottom of the mountain. We had made it. The sun was rising and we didn't stop for too long as each group wanted to make it to Machu Picchu before it got too busy. The walk down the mountain was exciting, with adrenaline kicking in that after 4 days of walking we had made it and that the end was in sight.

Machu Picchu in reality is even better than the pictures. The site itself is huge and worth trekking for 4 days straight. It's an incredible sight with lots of history that luckily our tour guide informed us all about. Before doing the trail, I was skeptical about how underwhelming the sight could be after having to trek for that long and expecting so much, but I'm happy to say I was absolutely blown away and was one of the best things I have ever done. If you are even thinking about doing it, do it (like right now). If you're not, you should. 

Amantani homestay

Lake Titikaka, Peru

We've got a little behind on these little blog updates but after almost 4 weeks here, here's our first post in Peru (no sightings of Paddington Bear just yet).

Our first taste of Peruvian life led us to the highest lake in the world, Lake Titikaka to visit the island of Amantani and stay with a local family.

Our journey started nice and early as we were picked up from our hostel in Puno and transported down to the lake. After buying some presents (rice, apples and a colouring book) for our host family, we were led on to our boat and serenaded by the soothing tones of the Beatles, as played on panpipes.
We were then introduced to our tour guide, who referred to himself only as 'Bruno from Puno'. As you can imagine he was quite the character.

A short boat trip led us to the floating islands. These are a set of islands made out of reeds, created to evade the attacks of the Incas and still house large communities even to this day.
We were shown how the islands are made from blocks of reed roots which are fastened together and covered in reeds before being anchored down. If these folk fall out with the neighbours, the good news is they can just upsticks and float a little further downstream.

The reeds really are a huge resource for these people, not only do they live on them, they eat them too (if you take the very base of one and unravel it it can also be a particularly effective hangover cure if then placed on your forehead!). After tasting some reeds- which i guess tastes like celery(?!), we were given a ride on a local water taxi to the nearest floating island to see how the locals get about, before heading off to Amantani.

Once there we met our host for the night, a single Mum called Sofia. She had a crazy four year old son who we first thought was called Pedro, but later discovered to be called Juan Sebastian. Yep, our Spanish still needs some work. After letting him pelt a football at me for an hour (this kid didnt understand a game of passing) we regrouped with everyone from our boat and hiked up to the island's highest point to watch  the sunset. This gave us our first bit of training for Machu Piccu as the hike was pretty steep and tough going, but luckily only short in duration and the beauty of the sunset made it totally worth the effort.

Once we had descended we headed back for some dinner before going out for the evening's main event, a dance at the local village hall. Decked out in local attire, a poncho and hat for me and a very tight fitting dress and scarf for Georgie, we headed out. A short, but tricky to navigate in the dark, walk later we made it to the hall.. and we were the first ones there! We sat there quietly hoping others would show up as 3 Peruvians working the bar and the band sat and stared back at us in silence. This was awkward to the extreme.

It seemed like hours passed (in reality it was more like 10-15 minutes) before, luckily for us, other fellow tourists started making their way through the doors and the party started.
Although we were all completely unaccustomed to the music, our hosts soon showed is the appropriate dance moves (no robot or moonwalk necessary here) and Sofia was always the first off her seat which meant I was always the lucky first tourist having a go at each dance! We were also lucky enough to bump in to some of the friends we made on our Slat Flats trip so together with them, we merrily danced the night away!

The next morning was started with pancakes for breakfast (my favourite!) before saying our goodbyes to our host family. Pedro kept things formal, offering us a handshake each.
After a short boat ride we then hiked another island and got to know some of the other tourists a bit better, where we made plans to meet for dinner that evening.

Another boat ride led us back to Puno where we had the best steak, called lomo, we've ever had in our lives and after a few beers our wonderful trip was over.

Sucre & Round Two of La Paz

Sucre & La Paz, Bolivia

From the mines we were happy to move on to Bolivia's former capital city, Sucre. We found that it didn't have too much to offer, but was a welcome rest. We visited the cathedral and adjoining museum, which left us a little freaked out with lots of statues of religious figures that seemed to stare at us anywhere that we went. 

Sucre gave us a chance to catch up on sleep, before heading back to La Paz to begin our journey out of Bolivia and onto Peru. The only thing in La Paz we had left to do was 'The worlds most dangerous road' but hearing of someone we met breaking their collarbone cycling the road just as we arrived to La Paz, we opted to visit Tiwanaku, a pre-Inka site, instead.

Heading straight off an all-night bus and onto another one to visit Tiwanaku, we tried to stay awake to take in all the information our tour guide gave us. Tiwanku was a pre-Inka site that is still being discovered and was a small town that inhabited lots of farmers. Over 60% of the information has been lost about the site, but the visit got is excited about our visit to Macchu Pichu! The Inkas had beliefs similar to the Egyptains regarding the after-life and we saw the process of mummification and beheading. 

After the tour and hearing about 'the highest Indian restaurant in the world', we decided to head to The Star of India for dinner. Ordering a Tandoori and Korma, I'm afraid to say we were disappointed and were not impressed with the quality of the food, especially with the craving of a homemade curry back home! This led to an early night before heading to Puno, Peru in the morning and heading to Lake Titikaka for a home stay with a family on the Armintani Island.