KB Tambo Hostal Ollantaytambo

Thursday- We are enjoying everyone's comments and probably won't be able to reply. We're too busy. Thurs- Val & Pam walked around the area of the hotel in Lima. There is lovely park and museum next door. There is a nice gift shop in the hotel. We all had lunch in the hotel. A lovely gourmet meal that started with Pisco Sours. Gloria introduced us to this brandy drink thirty-nine years ago. Pam had chicken with asparagus ...

... told me that the big buses and trucks actually cause a lot of damage to the roads and foundations of the houses that were never built to withstand such a heavy traffic. I was also starting to read “The Old Patagonian Express” by Paul Theroux, which I had obtained through exchanging my other book in Cusco. It was a great choice as it is about the author travelling by train from Boston to Patagonia in Argentina – and it is extremely well written. Back at ...

... em nossa mente mas nunca aconteceu. Lembro ate quando eu e Marcelo Torok fizemos uma poesia; Acho que era assim: " No passado era Rei, templo sagrado erguido. Mas meu irmao matei, irmao para irmao sumido". Sempre sentimos uma ligacao forte com Machu Picchu como se uma outra vida havia se passado. Hoje quando cheguei a Machu Picchu senti uma forca que nao ha como explicar. Primeiro foi como cheguei a Machu Picchu. Foram 8 horas de onibus (lotado ate o pescoco ...

... seen Americans in person before.

We finally headed back to Aguas Calientes, which is a tourist town at the bottom of the mountains surrounding Machu Picchu. We were able to shop a little bit and then decided to head to the natural hot springs which is the town's namesake. We thought we'd stay for a few minutes but it turned into a couple of hours because there were tourists from all over the place that made it a big pool party! We met a couple of guys that were from San ...

... inca walkways until we finally arrived at Phuyupatamarka. Here we shared the camp with a German group. We enjoyed tea and popcorn overlooking the Rio Urubamba and Machu Picchu mtn though we spent much of the evening stressing about the tipping process we observed the Germans doing with their porters.

Day#5
We slept in, well sort of. Early risers Todd and Arwen awoke and packed up before any of us were out of our sleeping ...

... so far!

I did buy my stash of fresh coca leaves to chew on the trail. Should be an interesting experience. As of today, we have come down to 2700m from 3400m yesterday. We will be heading back up tomorrow, so let the altitude games begin!!

OK - gotta run. Ill be offline for the next 5 days.

ciao

... a very touristy town where the Inca trail starts from. We walked off our lunch (and more) climibing over 250 steps up another ruin to get great views of the town and learn a bit more about the Inca Civil War, as well as seeing the remains that the Spanish did not destroy... Then it was free time to chill in our hostel, although we all decided to climb part of a mountain to see sunset - sadly it turned out to be us getting gradually colder and colder while ...

... that she had a bad nights sleep but felt good, it was at this time the child in us came out... It was now 4:15, the perfect time for a sleeping bag fight we thought, the aim was to wrestle each other without the use of our hand, it was so funny, rolling about and giggling until we realised that others in the group may still be asleep and ended the game with a childish gleam in our eyes.

It was now 4:30 am and the distant light beyond the mountains was getting ...

... like a jigsaw puzzle was awe-inspiring.

Our final stop was Chinchero which is another typical Andean village. It’s smaller than Ollantaytambo, but just as touristic. Chinchero has a pretty colonial church built on an Inca temple which is situated just above the square where the local handicraft market is held with indigenous people dressed in their traditional clothes selling their wares. After we were given a small talk whispered to us by the ...

... we were tired and needed to lay down. We finally accepted and in about half an hour they had a different room ready for us.

Once we were in our hotel Jim and Carol, being young and energetic, set off to do some shopping. Joyce and I rested some (in both rooms) before we headed out. We later ran into Jim and Carol at an outdoor restaurant where we sat and visited while enjoying refreshments and watching the people go by. It was on a fairly steep hill and had a pedestrian ...