Inkaterra Urubamba Villas

... were going to join me, I ended up buying a two day Inca trail trek in mid September. For reasons unbeknown to me there were some problems getting the Peruvian government to issue me with an Inca Trail permit and the actual tour was only confirmed on the night before.

So early on Wednesday morning the Peru Rail train slowly rumbled out of Poroy station on route for Machu Picchu. Instead of the four day trail that starts at ...

... and driven to
Ollantaytambo where we
caught the train to Aguas Calientes .



The train ride takes you along the what
is basicly the Inca trail so this meant we saw the trail without
having to walk it. A really beautiful train ride in "backpacker"
class, the scenery is truly stunning with the river running along the
valley and massive towering gorges. The train also passes through
patches of jungle before ending its journey 1.5 hours later in the
Machu Picchu, Sacred Valley, Peru jonsharland

... accepted). Yure seemed to forget the price he quoted us and wanted to charge us more. Thankfully, I kept the emails and we saved ourselves 10 dollars a piece, but we were robbed by Freddie, our guide, who charged us 20USD for trekking poles each. He made 80USD on our group and we wished we thought to bring our poles from home (although you must fit them with rubber stoppers for the inca trail). Yure was not as personable as he was on his ...

We were well organised today, out the door by 4am into the waiting taxi to the Airport. The early morning light was not yet up on us, late night revelers were still stumbling home and people were already up cleaning the sidewalks. The taxi cost us 30 soles and we were at the airport by 4-30am, plenty of time to check-in and wade our way through the x-rays four our 5-45am flight. The airport had free wifi so a chance to catch up on some emails.

The flight was comfortable ...

... some spices in it along with yellow chilis. It is served with rice.

Leche Asada - or, baked milk. This is a dessert that is similar to flan but a little thicker. It is made with eggs, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, sugar and vanilla. Yummy! No pic of this one because we haven't actually served it yet - it was still cooling when I came over to the office to write the blog. I snuck a taste though and it is good!

We also boiled some corn on ...

... later. We flew TACA, which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone flying in Central or South America. Big, spacious seats, plenty of legroom, pleasant flight crew. If you have to spend 10 hours stuck on a plane and can't go first class, this is a pretty good substitute. After only an hour in the San Salvador airport, we got back on the same plane for a 4 hour flight to Lima. We landed about 2pm local time, which is the same as Central time in the U.S.

Urubamba, Cusco, Peru derekjjensen

... to investigate. The pictures Iīve posted are only a small percentage of what we took! I canīt wait for the film prints to come back. This was a blast because it was just Jared and I and there werenīt a lot of random people in our pictures. Jared actually managed to get ahead of me (heīs a bit more nimble getting down tall, rock, wobbly steps down the side of a mountain than I am) and hid in one of the huts only to jump out of the window and almost ...

... and everyone proceeded getting off the bus and then to the ruin's entrance. Once inside the Machu Picchu's terrain, it was a run for it. A run for the gate of Wayna Picchu.

The gate was way way way in the back. Everyone proceeded in different directions, some running others walking fast. The grass was slippery in certain places, so were the steps and the rocks. But carefully, off, we all went, with one thing in ...

... you can since Hope is on the march. Salinas is a vast series of ponds built by the Incas to trap the water of a salty spring. The pink salt is still harvested and sold as "Peruvian pink salt" which strangely we have not seen anywhere for sale. We slide and bucked over the rocky path and zoomed past the entrance to the salt fields to avoid the 5 soles toll levied by the guards for using the path. The rest of the ride back to Urubamba was mostly single ...