Cusco and Machu Picchu

18/06/13 to 27/06/13 – When we arrived in Cusco we thought we had arrived during Gay Pride week, as thousands of rainbow flags were about and there were lots of parades taking place throughout the city. Actually, the rainbow flag is the Cusco regional flag, and the parades were for the festival that takes place around winter solstice every year. Cusco was quite touristy, but the festival meant we got to see some locals in traditional dress about the place too. There were also some odd guys with scary masks who were literally ‘whipping’ misbehaving cars in a forlorn attempt to get them to obey pedestrian crossings.  Cusco was different to other colonial cities we'd visited, mainly because the Spanish used the existing Inca walls and ruins as foundations for their churches and villas (rather than just smashing them up, like they did elsewhere).  You can still see the Inca walls at the base of many of the buildings.















After a couple of days in Cusco to get to know the town we embarked on another trek. The Salkantay trail is an alternative to the long sold out 'Inca Trail' and takes 5 days. In fact, it follows the route of another old Inca trail to Machu Picchu, but most of the trail has been eroded due to the use of horses (the Inca's only built the trail to withstand llamas).

Unfortunately we didn't get a good night's sleep before we left Cusco (at 4.30am!) as the Cuscenos were partying all night for the festival (and we mean ALL night). They were still going at it in the squares as we caught the bus just as the sun was rising.  We traveled for 3 hours to a village where we began our trek. Unfortunately Dave had to stop the bus for a private moment after several switchbacks left him feeling pretty poorly. We started walking, along with two Swiss tourists, our guide, one chef, one porter, a horseman and 7 horses carrying our belongings, food, tents, cooking equipment, etc. The chef and the porter soon raced past us (as they would every morning to come) in order to get ahead of us and to give them time to prepare us lunch, which would be ready when we arrived at each lunch stop.

Dave still wasn't feeling well (we realised it was actually a stomach bug and not travel sickness) and ended up riding on the ‘emergency horse’ for an hour and a half of the trek after lunch, where we made our way up to 4800m and the Salkantay pass. It was cold and although he was too dizzy to walk, he was shivering and felt sea-sick from the motion on the horse. It didn't help matters when the horse dropped some 'fertiliser'. We spotted a couple of huge Andean Condors flying high above us.

We made it through the cold night at our campsite down at 4200m and continued the next day descending down a muddy track through trees and more small villages. We saw several nice plants and fruits, some of which we sampled (including passion fruits and avocados). After 10 hours of hiking we were glad to rest at a village called La Playa (with no beach) for the night. Our chef cooked some amazing food, with a banquet which seemed impossible to prepare on his tiny camping stove. He picked up fruit on the way, like avocados and potatoes (Peru has over 1000 native varieties of potatoes) and made some awesome guacamole and quinoa soup, as well as pasta, chicken stew, goat steak, chips... the list goes on. Dave was feeling better by this point and was able to tuck in and enjoy the food.

The third day was more interesting as we descending into the warm jungle, passing oranges, lemons, papayas, coffee trees and more passionfruits, as well as the hallucinogenic, but beautiful, ‘Angel's trumpet’. After visiting an Inca archaeological site, which the Incas had fled to when they left Machu Picchu, we finished up early to have lunch at an amazing spot overlooking the sacred valley and with an excellent view of Machu Picchu perched high on the mountain in front of us, with the 'Happy Mountain' just behind. We had lunch before relaxing there with a little boy called Manuel and the dog, enjoying the view and finally camping the night there. Before dinner we had another chance to stargaze and our guide, Sabino, explained to us some of the constellations the Incas used to use and we showed him the malfunctioning Google Sky app on our smartphone.

The next day we trekked down into the valley and along the river to Aguas Calientes, the nearest town to Macchu Picchu. We stayed in a hotel after we had said goodbye to our porter and chef earlier in the day. We would wake up very early (4.30am again!), to make our way up the mountain to see Machu Picchu city before sunrise (and before it got too crowded). The next morning Sabino showed us around the whole city with great explanations of all the buildings, and it was amazing to see the quality of the stonework remaining from the Incas time (around 600 years ago). After the tour we walked alone up to the Sun Gate for a different perspective of the city and then walked to see the Inca Drawbridge, which was designed to stop the Spanish getting in, should they ever discover Machu Picchu city (which luckily they never did).

After a lot of walking we returned down to Aguas Calientes and caught the train to Ollantytambo (with free snacks and tea), then a bus took us back to Cusco, where we would spend one more day strolling around Cusco, enjoying the unique Peruvian food and resting from the trek.