Cuzco and the Inca Trail

On Thursday we arrived in Cuzco, we were pleased to find that we could still breathe even in the high altitude (3300m)!  We got to our hotel and met the rest of our tour group and then went and explored the amazing city!

That night we had a briefing about the Inca trail and were alarmed to find out we were only allowed to take 3kg with us up with mountain.  The rest of our night was spent deciding as a group what we would take with us to get us through the hike and after many weighing attempts we all managed to get under the 3kg limit. This did mean though that none of us could fit our puffer jackets which we were pretty gutted about...

Day 1 of the Inca trail we visited the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo where we started to learn about the ancient Inca culture. We went and visited a village and were amazed to see how they live. There were only mainly women and children at this village as all the men are employed as porters for the inca trail.

We started walking the Inca Trail on Saturday and over the 4 days we walked a lot! The maximum altitude we reached was 4,200m which made it a little bit hard to breathe! Our nights were filled with hot chocolate, playing cards and lots of laughing.  The porters were amazing, we had 22 and they each carried about 25kg on their backs and were running past us on the track to get to the camp sites before us to set up our beds and prepare food for us.  We found out on the last night that one of our porters was 69 years old! Mind blowing...

After the walk we went down to a place called Aquas Calientes and went to the hot springs, our muscles were thankful for that! We got the train back to Cuzco from there and were stoked to return to the hotel and have our first shower in a while!!  That night we went out for dinner with the rest of our tour group.  Our tour guide had been talking about guinea pig most of the hike so we had a try of that, was different!! Then we went to a local night club which was pretty interesting, we didn't end up staying long!! 

The last two days have been spent doing laundry and catching up on sleep before we head to Buenos Aires tonight! 

Sophie, Catherine, Olivia and Sian. Xxxx