Inti Winaywayna Aguas Calientes

... and it was a pretty primitive site. No showers and only one squat toilet. We had "happy hour" which was a great daily tradition (my favorite part of every day!) which was popcorn, hot chocolate and a snack such as cookies or cheese and apple fritters. We had a couple of hours to relax and clean up before our dinner. Our dinner was really good (soup, chicken/fish/rice/veggies) and this time we had our guinea pigs to try also (Dave watched them kill and ...

... the streets were barely a car width wide with no room for both cars and pedestrians. Shops, restaurants and accommodation seemed to lean over into the street to make it feel almost claustrophobic. There was an ascent from one end of town to the other, the higher end leading to some thermal pools. <br><br>After collecting our tickets we went looking for suitable accommodation and were rewarded with two suitable adjacent rooms for a total of 54 soles above a restaurant. It ...

... the streams hopping over stones, descending the dodgy paths along fatal cliffsides until the sparse, temperate vegetation of the cloud forest had mutated into impenetrable groves of bamboo, hillsides flowing with the tops of eucalyptis, orchids and brilliantly colored insects hiding along the path's edge. The amount of life quivering around you in places such as this manifests itself in a truly ...

... Our first day was pretty relaxed on the hiking (it's supposed to be a sort of warm-up for the second and third days). We hiked for less than 4 hours, taking a fair amount of stops along the way. The weather was a bit overcast, although it never rained too hard; enough to necessitate throwing on the ol' poncho, but nothing uncomfortable. Along the way, we saw our first of many pre-Machu Picchu Inca ruins, Huillca Raccay, a pretty large Inca town with extensive terracing. The ruins were ...

... for Xmas and reading all the menus shown to us, we went for a dip in the hot baths. They were murky looking things that you would have normally given wide berth to, but when someone tells you that murk is minerals and that they are good for then we were happy to wallow around in in the murk for a few hours taking in the views.<br> I wont give you a history lesson on MP as strangely no one really knows what it was or exactly when it was built - thankfully though the ...

... br><br>This was the last time we would see all of the porters that had been transferring our tents from one site to another, therefore we presented them all with tips to say thank you for their hard work. They were a great group of people, full of smiles and appreciation.<br><br>The walk today is fairly flat taking us through a mixture of terrain, we started by walking through a small village, there appeared to be some preparation for a festival or a party, Max, our ...

... our first climb in a dizzy haze, and the only light relief comes from Phil who has sweated so much he looks like he showered fully clothed, and he trips over the finish line as the other morning trekkers watch not even out of breath. We thankfully don our spare T-shirts and jealously watch the bus loads skip up to the entrance, and realise we chose wrongly.<br><br>No bother, as we are shown around the most spectacular ruins of Macchu ...

... become hotter and hotter and despite it being only 730 am we know that it will be a scorcher. Oh well, flat walk wont be too bad.<br><br>After a gentle walk through the village we stayed in we make our way over a load of rubble, the reminants of an earthquake that destroyed the old village 15 years ago. It is still being rebuilt and we see some guys building the school. Big landslides are noticeable and Jimmy tells us the nearby river also caused major floods due to the El ...

... into the cloud forests which were beautiful before descending to a lusher area with fancy flowers apparently- it all looked quite nice.<br><br>Our daily teaching for the day from Jimmy was on Andean Religion and life. Again it was great to hear someone speak so articulately and passionately. The main message was the importance of PacchaMama (mother earth) and the importance of food and agriculture over material goods of the ...

... br>We also stopped at the town of Urubamba for lunch, where we saw a Ginea Pig (Cuy) farm, the little creatures were very shy for obvious reasons, they didn´t want to become lunch!!!<br><br>The next day was our first day on the trail so we started nice and early from base camp in Ollantaytambo and headed for what we were told was a nice gentle days walk to our overnight camp... We both had a really good day´s walking we were really proud of ...