90 dollar knickers

Hola de Aguas Calientes where we have just returned this afternoon from our 5 days trekking to machu Picchu. The title of this blog is because on our way home from the trek brief the other night I stopeed into buy the cheapest pair of ´trekking´knickers that I could find as our clean laundry had got a little low! I managed to find a pair for 5 soles - even had lace on them! Thats the equivalent of just over a euo, however between leaving the shop and getting to the bnank a little over 100 metres away someone managed to get my wallet out of my bag and close it back up again and therefore they ended up being the most expensive pair of underwear I have ever bought!! Takin somehting positive out of this a Peru family should be able to feed themselves for a couple of months with my money , Im going to think of it as involuntary donation to charity!!

Moving on from that we arrived into here yesterday afternoon and then took a bus from here at 5 am half hour ride up to entrance to Machu Picchu where we then had a two hour guided tour with Miguel - our tour guide for the last 5 days and then we were free to explore for the rest of the day so after another almost 5 hours of hiking we have finally made it back down and are awaiting our laundry which we have dropped into some random sweet shop which also had a sign that they do laundry so God only knows what our clothes will return like but they having slept, walked and sweated in them for the last 5 days hopefully it will be an improvement!!



Our trek has been a great success , there were 14 of us altogether, a few English, a Scot, a couple of Dutch, a couple of Americans, a very tall Norweigan, 2 Aussies and us! Luckily the random bug setteld down just in time and my body was able to cope with an average of 15 k a day , our longest day being 18 k going up to altitude of 4650m. Day 1 started off at 5am with a supposed 2 hour bus ride to breakfast and the starting point of the trek, however half an hour in we pulled over, I oulled down my eye mask to find we were in a garage - seemingly we had a pucture so we were going to be here for a while! Had to pull the duvet jacket out for the first time and we sat and waitred for a very long time while they rooted around for a tyre and then magically changed it without even us noticing that they had jacked up the bus - not really sure what went on , but within an hour we were back on the road. Knowing we had a 16k walk ahead of us and having being up since shortly after 4 I pulled the eyemask down again and pulled my divet jacket around me and tried to get some sleep in. A little later on I lifted my eyemask to discover we were going up a "road" that had absolutely no barrier and a very steep drop off - this was to become a regular feature of any vehicles we travelled in for the next 5 days!!I pulled the mask back down and decided sleep was more imnportant than worrying about the extremely rocky road with no barrier that we were hurtling along on quite a large bus!



Breakfast went down ok and thankfully stayed down and finally it was time for the trekking to begin - well almost! Miguel - our local Peruvian guide had decided that as we had wasted so much time with the tyre change that we were going to cover the first 2 half k uphill that was planned in a truck instead. So within minutes all our bags, walking poles, 4 chefs, 5 porters , cooking utensils, pots, food, water , 2 guides, 14 of us and a random woman and child were all piled into the back of a truck and off we headed up the mountain.Ofcourse this caused great amusement amongst us all and as we hutled up the dusty roadway hanging onto the side of the the truck we soon got to know our trekking companions for the next 5 days. Jo got upgraded to a seated position beside the random mother and child (although shes not too sure whether it really was an upgrade as it was very bumpy!) Meanwhile I was wedged betweent he side of the truck and the large saucepan sticking into my thigh and Alistair - our new Scottish mate was propt up on a bag of straw like stuff with a bag of what we reckoned was tonights dinner - a bag of raw chicken beside us for company too. With the blazing sun beating down on us and the chicken we hoped we werent too far from our destination. Harold - the 6 ft 7 Norweigan had to do a lot of ducking and diving to avoid the branches that flew into his face nad back every so often along the route. All in all it was a very amusing start to our trek and we were glad that we had managed to knock a coupole of k off the ´forst days trekking ,afterall tomorrow was supposed to be the toughest day and we had to acclimatise!



The rest of the day went pretty smoothly, stopping for lunch along the way. Our team of chefs and horses and porters went on ahead and when we arrived we were ushered into our tent, but not before being guided to our infdividual basins of hot water, bar of soap and hanging towel to dry with outside the lunch ten - this was way posher than we imagined and then we saw our chef - chefs hat and all cooking up a storm. We soon learned that we wouldnt be going hungry on this trip as we were served up avocado starter, soup, main course, yummy garlicky bread and ofcourse what was to bacome the ritual coca tea. After a short siesta and a trip to the very lopsided toilet tent we were on our way again. Unfotunately the 2 Aussies had only arrived into Cusco a couple days before and hadnt had a chance to acclimatise to the altitude and they were being hit hard by headaches and nausea. However everyone battled on and late afternoon we arrived to our first campsite and after settling into our tents were served up our daily snack of popcorn, crackers, jam and ofcourse coca tea! For those of you who dont know coca tea is supposed to help with the effects of altitude and therefore is served up as often as possible or given in leaf form to shove in the side of your mouth and chew. Basically it is the basic ingredient of cocaine but obviously isnt bad for you unless you mix it with acetone and a lot of other chemicals and purify it a lot more - this is clearly the less technical version of the cocaine making process than we were given, put it htis way you wouldnt be allowed bring this stuff through customs but its part of the daily diet here! As tonight´s campsite was to be our highest altitude we were sure to down a good few cups of this to keep us feeling the negative effects of altitude. Dinner was another 4 course meal and then we were sent to bed in shortly after 8 and told we would be woken up at 6 with yes you guessed it a cup of coca tea brought to our tent! We put on plenty of layers , hats, socks, gloves and crawled into our sleeping bag liners nad then our special cold weather sleeping bags and tied to ignore how cold we still were - had to put on the last of our available clothes at about 1,30 am and thanked God it would be slightly warmer the next night!! Woke up to our cup of coca tea brought by the cute Perucian Marcileno - tour guide number 2 who was so sweet and encouraging the whole 5 days and appreciative that we were visiting his country. He would always be waiting at the top of the hill ready to give you a high five and congratulate you on what you had climbed so far!

It was one of the guys birthdays on the second moring so we sat down to cake and bread for breakfast adn they had even made a whole second ´lactose free´cake for me! They catered really well for this and I felt guilty how much trouble they went to always making a second lactose free batch of stuff for me e.g. porridge, hot chocolate etc.! Off we headed for what was to be our toughest climb of the 5 days and everyone was a littel nervous of how the altitude would affect them. An hour or so in as we began to climb Miguel told us all to grab a pile of coca leaves, roll them into a ball and stuff them into the side of our gum - this seemingly would then soak into our bloodstream quicker, make our mouths a little numb and prevent us feeling the effects of altitude - and thankfully it worked! Not sure if we were just acclimatised or is was a placebo effect of taking the coca leaves but whatever it was we thankfully reached the top 4650m which was the highest we would be climbing. We sat in awe and admired the surrounding snow capped mountains and cracking glaciers which were beginnig to make me feel very small and insignificant. We were at the base of Salkantay mountain 6271m and this is what we next had to trek around! We offered up some coca leaves to the condors, the pumas and the snakes as is the done thing and thanked the mountains for protecting us and keeping us safe , then we hid the leaves under a few rocks and off we went downhill for the next 3 hours to the lunchstop. Calves were beginning to burn by the time we reached lunch and everyone gratefully climbed into the glacier water for a bit of muscular relief! Another few hours on and we reached our campsite for the night welcomed by the chickens which all had red tags on them - denoting them to be llamapath chickens - our tour group - we wondered what would be for dinner tonight!! Spent the evening playing cards, watcing the stars and enjoyed a slightly warmer night until woken by the cocks crowing at 3.40 - just what you want when you have another days trekking ahead of you!!

have to put blog on hold for a bit now but will be back to finish rest of trek adventures asap!