It was Danny’s birthday today but we didn’t celebrate much other than wishing him a happy day, the proper party would come later. He did get a few little gifts which was nice. Things got harder today. I believe that is what is called understatement. From our campsite we would today be climbing up to […]
Day 92 : The Inca Trail day 1
Leaving Ollantaytambo we drove in the bus towards KM 88, the starting point for our traverse of the Inca Trail. According to my guidebook the town here is called Qorihuayrachina and we were at an altitude of 2600m. Getting off the bus we were greeted by the sight of dozens of men in matching uniforms […]
Day 91 : Cusco and the Sacred Valley
A bus arrived this morning to transport us through a tour of the Sacred Valley. Our first stop was the Inka site of Sacsayhuaman perched on a hill overlooking Cusco. Our guide Martine sat us down in the wide grassy space between two hill tops and explained about the supposed history of the site. The […]
Day 90 : Cusco
There are a few really good places for breakfast in Cusco and today we ate at The Real McCoy, a restaurant set up by a couple of expat Brits that serves food that you might get back home in the UK. I had cereal and toast with vegemite (it has been about three months since […]
A brief interruption (updated)
The website wasn’t working earlier today because somehow a virus had got onto the hosting server and had added malicious code to all files called ‘index.php’ (or at least that what looks like happened to me). Thankfully I was able to find updated copies of all the infected files and replace them but it was […]
Day 89 : Chivay to Cusco
We drove from Chivay to Cusco today but took a mountain pass that Rhys and Vanessa hadn’t taken in the past. This turned out to be an inspired idea; the day was beautiful and our early start meant we drove through the plains and mountains with beautiful light over the breathtaking vistas. Mostly the road […]
Day 88 : Chivay and the Colca Canyon
Once again we had the company of Miguel as our tour leader, this time for an excursion out to the Colca Canyon. The main attraction of the canyon is the possibility of seeing condors in flight and we were lucky enough to arrive after an hour and a half along a bumpy dirt road to […]
Day 87 : Arequipa to Chivay
We had a different activity this morning, a reality tour of the poorer areas of Arequipa. With our guide Miguel we were driven to a number of different places to be shown what life is like for those without much money. Normally I would expect a tour like this to involve being shown around people’s […]
Day 86 : Arequipa
The Monasterio de Santa Catalina was our first call today. The Monastery was started more than four hundred years ago and was set up as a self contained city within a city for the resident nuns. For hundreds of years the nuns lived a life separate from the outside world, communicating only with family through […]
Day 85 : Puerto Inka to Arequipa
It was another driving day today. We travelled from Puerto Inka inland to Arequipa, a lovely colonial city. The drive itself was mostly through desert, nothing we hadn’t seen before, and I don’t remember much about it. We left Puerto Inka around 9am and arrived in the late afternoon in Arequipa. A quiet breakfast on […]
Day 84 : Nazca to Puerto Inka
For the first time ever on a travel day we were actually leaving in the late morning so we had as much of a sleep in as the temperature would allow. We didn’t do much in the early morning other than returning the empty beer bottles and taking down our tent. We did have a […]
Day 83 : Huacachina to Nazca
The drive today was short, a mere three hours inland to Nazca. The landscape was desert all the way though the large sand dunes slowly disappeared to give us a more arid and flat landscape of white sands and dust. There was the odd area of green, irrigation providing farming opportunities. Before reaching Nazca we […]