Samay Wasi Youth Hostelscusco

Dag iedereen!

Na 14 uur al zigzaggend door de bergen te reizen, zijn we eindelijk aangekomen in Cusco. Cusco ligt 3400 m boven zeeniveau dus het is terug wennen aan de hoogte, we zijn vrij vlug buiten adem
:-).. Daarbovenop ligt ons hostal in de buurt rond San Blas, een buurt met vééél trappen. We zijn pompaf tegen dat we aan ons hostal zijn. En neen, het ligt niet aan ons conditie ;-).

Onze eerste dag in Cusco is rustig verlopen. Op het eerste zicht deed de stad ons een ...

Hola Cusco – The Incas called this place the navel (cusco) of the world and it is fabulous, it stands on a par with any of the European cities for its architecture and beauty – It takes your breath away .. I mean that literally, it is one of the highest cities in the world at over 3300 metres above sea level and the air is soooooo thin, walking up any gradient is painful, well it was yesterday. I'm now chewing and drinking the coca leaves and it makes life a lot easier.

I&#...

Following our brief trip to Lima, where Sue will be pleased to know, we met up with John and Catherine who were extremely nice and showed us around. They also offered us a place to stay when we return to Lima at the end of September, we have just endured 2 long bus trips to get us first to Arequipa (12 hours) and then to Cusco (10 hours) where we need to prepare ourselves for the Inca Trail. We are at about 3500 metres here so, having just arrived, even walking around is an effort. It should ...

We are setting off on the Inca Trail tomorrow and what happens......I (paul) get some horrible bug!! It started yesterday from nowhere and we thought that we might have to cancel the trip which would be a disaster, but things are better today. I guess its better to be ill now than at the bottom of the grand canyon or on a 12 hour bus journey where they don't let you do number 2's in the on-board toilet!!!

Hello everyone! This is just a very quick entry to let evryone know that we are safely back from the Inca Trail and that it was totally amazing in every way. It wasn´t all plain sailing though and as I mentioned the previous entry, I wasn´t very well at all for some of it. We have kind of decided that I had food poisoning and by the middle of day one I really thought that I was going to have to pull out. I will spare you the details, but lets just say that the toilet facilities are basic or n...

So this is it...the big one!!!!

We were up very early this morning as we had to queue believe it or not, at the control gate ready for opening at 5.30am. Everyone at the campsite was also queuing of course, which meant about 200 people all milling around in the dark hoping to be the first through. Once the gate was opened we set off at a fairly brisk pace and the going was pretty easy (inca flat!!) for about 45 minutes when we came upon the notorious Monkey Steps leading up to the fin...

We woke up super early to catch an early flight to Cusco.  The rules about how early you need to be at the airport for a flight are different in Peru, and I'm very glad the Posada del Parque people made sure we knew this.  The line gets very long and sometimes they won't let you check bags if you get to the front too late.  There was a fee to exit the airport, which I thought they should just put in your ticket price, but whatever.  We paid it and flew to Cusco.
Even though I feel like a g...

Altitude sickness is really rubbish. It took a while to hit us properly; either this was a delayed impact or - more likely - we both had colds so blamed the symptoms on that. Such symptoms include: nausea, fizzily sensation in parts of the body (pins & needles-ish), achiness, headache, shortness of breath and an overwhelming lethargy. On only one night since reaching 3000m have we stayed up past 9pm.

After flying from Quito to Cusco (via Lima - looks like we didn't miss much there...