Peru: Last Few Days In Cusco

So in hindsight I probably would have cut short the remaining 2 and a bit days we had left in Cusco in favour of an extra day in Lima to bookend our trip. Don't get me wrong, Cusco is beautiful, but it's pretty small and Lima is definitely short changed by the guide books in my opinion. Melissa and I made the most of our time in Cusco though and wow did it feel good to not have to carry loo roll with me wherever I went. It's the small things ;-)

Unfortunately I wasn't feeling so great on the first day after throwing up several times the night before - the first time I've ever had traveller's tummy - so we took it pretty easy and just moseyed around Cusco and paid a leisurely visit to the site of the Coricancha, or Temple of the Sun, the most important temple in the Incan empire, which the Spanish colonists tore down and built the Cathedral of Santo Domingo on its foundations.

That evening we met the rest of our small tour group: Jamie, Sarah, Dinh, Jackie plus tour leader Ybone, for a farewell dinner at Marcelo Batata restaurant where everyone but myself, Melissa and Ybone ordered Cuy, or roasted guinea pig entree. Ewwwwwwwwww!!!! We had pet guinea pigs at my junior school, there was no way in hell I was eating one, although even if I wanted to I didn't exactly have the stomach for it that day and so I went with the veggie stuffed Peruvian style potato and a glass of camomile tea. Rock and roll.

Roasted guinea pig. So. Very. Wrong!!!

After showing each diner their roasted guinea pig the waiters took it away to be carved. According to Ybone guinea pig is primarily eaten by Peruvians on special occasions!!

"It was interesting," said Jacqui, "but I feel like I ate a rat, I wouldn't have it again."

Good to know!!

On Tuesday morning the rest of our group, except for Jacqui, left for the remainder of their tour in the jungle while Melissa and I checked out of the Cusco Plaza II hotel and into the Rumi Punku hotel behind the main square on Choquechaca. To be honest I thought it was a waste of time moving for just one night, but once we'd settled into the hotel I am so glad we did, in fact I wished we'd forfeited our final night at the Cusco Plaza II and moved in the night before. The Rumi Punku is a divine hotel and was relatively inexpensive at $90 per night for a double room. I highly recommend this hotel if ever your travels take you to Cusco, it had all the mod cons that the Cusco Plaza II lacked like a hairdryer in the bathroom, heating, a flat screen TV and a full length mirror, plus great cushions. I loved loved loved the cushions and tracked down similar ones at one of the local artesian markets for a bargain $5 each.

After settling in to our new digs we headed down the street for a satisfying lunch at Jack's Cafe. The blurring in this photo is a complete accident, but our waiter did whizz around a lot. He was always checking in to make sure all his customers were okay, he was an excellent host.

The fries may look a little on the pasty side, but they were delicious.

Having only previously had the tea-bag version, I didn't realise that camomile looked like this. Kind of daisy like.

Lunch was followed by further explorations of Cusco. We were running out of things we hadn't seen by that point so we headed down to the Mercado Central.

My favourite Peruvian market trader ;-)

These wool masks are replicas of those worn by the Ukukus dancers for the religious festival of Qoyllur Rit'i.

That evening we met Jacqui for an early and delicious dinner at Gaston Acurio's Chi-Cha restaurant.

Pork shank with baked apple and potatoes.

I was stuffed, but I couldn't resist ordering the traditional Peruvian dessert of Suspiro de Limena. It was so hard to resist that I ate a spoonful before I remembered to snap a photo ;-)

Continuing the tradition of the trip we were in bed and snoozing come 8pm. So much for that post Inca Trail bender we'd planned on ;-)

Wednesday was our last day in Cusco and after a 7am breakfast at the hotel we searched high and low for Peruvian style cookies to take back for our work colleagues. Who knew it would be so hard to find a super-mercado in Cusco?

We had a second breakfast at Ciccolina restaurant - what can I say, sightseeing is just something I do to burn calories before I try I new restaurant - before resigning ourselves to airport food for the rest of the day where for 13 soles - not even $5 - I indulged in amazing hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon, cloves and star anise...

...followed by homemade campesino bread topped with asparagus, roasted tomatoes, crispy bacon and a soft poached egg.

And then it was back to New York!!

Inca Trail Final Day: Machu Picchu

Phew sorry for the delay in completing these Peru posts, I got side tracked by a long weekend in San Francisco - the hills of SF were a breeze in comparison to my Peru trip - but I hope to post more on that later, although it's really going to depend on how work goes when I'm back tomorrow.

So back to the Inca Trail. It was cloudy when we reached the sun gate at 6.25am, no view of Machu Picchu for us, but it was still amazing to arrive there.

Relaxing with our fellow hikers at Intipunku, before heading off on the final stretch.

Continuing along the path to Machu Picchu

Hector, the tour leader for half of our group, met us at the sun gate with the 5 remaining members of his group who had chosen to opt out of taking the Inca trail with 2 plastic bottles of Pisco Sour to celebrate us completing the trail. We hiked down a little from the sun gate to an area that was set back from the path where we could toast our efforts away from the crowds. Phew, they were quite strong, just one tiny Pisco Sour went straight to my head. Delicious though and well deserved.

Continuing on, half-sozzled on the side of a mountain. Hmmmmm!!!

A first glimpse through the morning mist of Machu Picchu mountain.

So can you believe that just as we were approaching Machu Picchu my camera decided to pack up. Grrrrrr!!!! This being the case all Machu Picchu photos are courtesy of Melissa. Original photos taken by Hiram Bingham in 1911 can be viewed here.

It was so lovely and peaceful at Machu Picchu just before 8am on the morning of Sunday 5th September - notable for also being my sister's 36th birthday.

This part of the Machu Picchu site is chocka with llamas with pom poms on their ears, but thankfully not chocka with tourists, at least not at that time of day. We relaxed for a few minutes taking in our surroundings and enjoyed our ham and cheese sandwiches and guava juice boxes.

The view of the main area of the Machu Picchu site.

Taking a photo of the whole group. Say chicha!!

Efraim led the group down to the main entrance of the site to pick up our pre-paid tickets and have a bathroom break. It was a whole different world down there from the solace we'd briefly enjoyed earlier. Machu Picchu tourists are early birds, there are hoards of them, and it's easy to spot those who hiked the trail vs. those who took the bus from Aguas Calientes, those who took the bus don't have that same tortured look on their faces when faced with steps, of which there are many!! Many many many many stairs. I was fantasizing about moving into a bungalow after all the steps. Lots of mosquitos too!!

When we first began our Peru trip our tour leader, Ybone, told us how a lot of hikers just liked to curl up in a ball and go to sleep when they arrived at Machu Picchu*, the notion of which I found completely ridiculous. I mean seriously, how could you sleep when you've just hiked 3 and a bit days to see one of the great wonders of the world? Well after hiking 3 and a bit days to get there I completely understood where those people were coming from. I was completely exhausted and antsy for a well deserved lie down. That sounds terrible doesn't it, but it's true. It will also show me in something of a poor light when I say I felt a slight resentment towards all the tourists who got there via bus, particularly the handful of misbehaving ones that pushed you out of the way in their excitement and I would find myself thinking "Watch it buddy, I hiked here 3 days for this, what did YOU do that you feel you have a right to push me out of the way. If you don't watch it you'll have a walking pole protruding from where the sun don't shine." Machu Picchu made me kind of testy!!

Of the many posters and photos I've seen of Machu Picchu one thing I never realised is that the entire site is surrounded by mountains. I always thought there was just the one, the famous one that's in all the travel brochures, but nope, they whole site is perched up there on top of the world. No wonder it lay undiscovered for so many years. Those Incans were crazy people eh!!

The purpose of the site is also unknown, although speculation has been rampant over the years. When female human remains were found a number of years ago some archeologists speculated that Machu Picchu was where the Incas kept their 'vestal virgins', however that theory was blown to bits when male remains were later discovered and archeologists continue to make new discoveries at the site.

If you are lucky you'll get to see a chinchilla, like this one, which sat grooming itself while Efraim gave us our tour.

"They taste good," said Efraim.

Goodness me, is there anything that man won't eat? A few days earlier he'd told us about a small tribe in the Andes where he claimed they ate cats and how he was interested in trying it. Ewww!!

Actually chinchillas are a protected species as they are nearly extinct in Peru, so I would hope Efraim was exaggerating about cooking them up.

By noon the place was overrun and extremely hot - it's hard to find shade at the ruin and the mozzies were biting - so we hopped on a bus down the extremely windy, narrow and steep road - seriously my heart was in my mouth and even though I am not suspicious, but I was not happy to note we were on bus #13 - to Aguas Calientes and headed to the meeting point, Apu Salkantay restaurant, where we indulged in a chicken sandwich with fries and 2 well deserved Cusquena beers.

After lunch we explored Aguas Calientes, a cute little town, and did our bit to shore up the Peruvian economy at the craft market buying gifts for family and friends, spotting lots of familiar strangers from the trail as we explored.

Indulging in this ice-cream came back to bite me in the arse later**, at least I think it was the ice-cream, but it was delicious.

*The fact that the bar at Winay Wayna campsite used to stay open until 2am may have also had something to do with their torpor.

**Ugh I was up all night throwing up and then later, well, let's just say I had to break out the Imodium!! It put the mockers on our plan to go out on a bender once we got back to Cusco, I was in bed by 9.30pm thankful that my touch of the trots had at least waited to start until I was back at the Cusco Plaza II hotel.

Inca Trail Final Day: Scurrying to the Sun Gate

The final day on the trail was to be a relatively easy 2 hour hike to Machu Picchu. "It will be 30-minutes of undulating terrain, 30-minutes with a gradual incline and about 60-minutes steep climb," Efraim informed us over an early breakfast of bread, butter and jam.

Um...60-minutes steep incline??? That's Efraim's definition of an easy day, not mine, especially considering my thighs were like rocks after 3 days of strenuous hiking. Nope, I definitely wasn't looking forward to walking up a steep hill for an hour.

"It's not that bad," said Efraim, "the worst bit is the 100 steps. Once you are over that, it's easy."

A 100 steps didn't sound so bad, after all I'd counted over 450 steps yesterday morning on the way up to Runkurakay Inca ruin and there'd easily been another 200 steps up to the pass, a 100 steps would be a breeze, maybe today would be okay.

The last day on the trail began with a wake up call at 3.45am. WTF, can you believe I PAID for this treatment. Unfortunately I didn't get the best night's sleep since it was pretty hot in Winay Wayna camp ground and then on top of that I had to contend with the unbelievably loud snoring from one of the guide's in the neighboring tent - good Lord it was like a freight train coming through the camp, I don't know who it was, but Efraim blamed Miguel who was not around to defend himself. I felt like I was just about nodding off when I heard two loud farts from next door, which set me off laughing and which then woke up Melissa. 3.35am!! Ugh!!

By 4.45am we were in line for the camp entrance to Machu Picchu which opens at 5.30am to let the hikers through for the last stretch to the sun gate.

At breakfast Efraim advised us to be careful on the final stretch of the Inca Trail, that our fellow hikers would potentially aggressively push past us in an effort to be first to the sun gate and if that happened we should graciously step into the mountain side and just let them by, because being first at the sun gate wasn't worth getting pushed off the side of a mountain. Too true.

The first half hour or so of the hike is in the dark. A headlight would have definitely have come in handy. It wasn't so easy to handle the walking poles, a camera and a flashlight, but hey I'm a trooper so I pushed on ;-)

It was absolutely beautiful walking in the early morning light and the nicest thing was that Melissa and I - at the back again with Efraim this time - weren't as crowded by other hikers as I was expecting to be, in fact for a good hour it was just the three of us. I was pretty surprised by this and assumed that they must delay the other groups back at the entrance, but Efraim said that wasn't the case.

A view of the Aguas Calientes dam

The trail was pretty overgrown in places, but at least I didn't have to walk on rocks.

Okay, so the question I get most when I show people this photo is "why did you take a photo of some girl's ass?"

Believe me, that wasn't my intention, it's the 100 steps people and well...this person was ahead of me, there was no avoiding her arse if I wanted to record my experience, certainly not given a couple of other people coming up behind me who were keen to get started on the 100 steps, so deal with it people, it's some woman's arse in the photo. The one thing that does bother me the most about this photo is the fact that you cannot tell how steep this thing is, I mean, this shit is vertical. VER-TI-CAL!! In fact as I said to Efraim "that's not steps, that's a WALL." Seriously that f****r is VERTICAL!!!

Being passed by fellow hikers. By the way the porters take a different route on the last day, so you have no need to be concerned about dodging out of the way of them passing you on the last part of the trail.

Within sight of the sun gate

Yay, we made it!!