Inca Trail and Cuzco.

2-10 September

We arrived into Cuzco at 9am after an early morning flight. We dropped our luggage at the hotel and made a b-line for Jacks cafe. After eating foreign food for over a month it was asolute heaven to have a full English breakfast and hot chocolate with marshmellows! Anyone walking past the cafe would have thought it was a brothel instead of a restaurant with the noises coming from our table and at the time we would have agreed it was actually beter than sex!
Once my belly was full all I wanted to do was watch TV and relax for a day so I returned to the hotel and was horrified to discover that to get to my room I had to climb 100 steps! I know you think I´m being a fat lazy bitch but at an altitude of 3600, 10 steps sends the heart racing! I was feeling so shit by the time I got to the top I collapsed on the bed. I know it sounds stupid, but you know when you have an idea in your head and it´s all you want in the world, well that day I wanted to bludge and when I discovered that there was no TV in our room, all I could was cry. I eventually got over my tantrum, went back to reception and demanded a television. I almost kissed the porter when he delivered it to our room!
The afternoon turned out to be better and the day was topped off with Indian food for dinner!

In preparation for the Inca Trail we decided to top up our cultural knowledge by visiting the Inca museum on our free day in Cusco. Unfortunately everything was written in Spanish so we didn´t actually learn much but it was great to see so many artifacts. I spent the rest of the day wandering the town and shopping for souvenirs.

The following afternoon, we took a bus to Ollantaytambo which is our overnight stop before the Inca Trail. Shirley took us for a tour through the town and showed us the amazing architecture still left from the Inca times. We visited a very creepy house which had dried fish, llama fetuses and human skulls decorating the interior as well as guinea pigs scurrying aroung the floor fattening up to be eaten for dinner. The hike up to the top of a near-by mountain to see an Incan store house was awesome and the view amazing. I had to take a few minutes for myself just to appreciate the beauty and energy of the place. That night we treated ourselves to a delicious dinner which was topped off by the best Banoffee Pie ever! Early night before our big day tomorrow.

I was very nervous on the first day of the Inca Trail, however I felt quietly confident I could do it, especially after all the climbing practice I had getting to my bloody room in Cuzco! half hour bus ride took us to Km 82 (Piscakucho) where we had to give our small duffel bags to the porters and then do through the formalities of ticket and passport inspections before we crossed a suspension bridge over the Rio Urubamba to officially commence the Trek.
Day 1 is the easiest day of the Trail but for someone as unfit as me, it was still a small challenge. We made a few stops at different Archaeological sites and our guide Fernando told us some Incan history