The manifold delights of the Cusco area

Well hello folks, it's been a while since my last post. There's a lot to do down here in Cusco. I arrived here back on the morning of Saturday 20th and I've been doing rather a lot since. I begun by doing some ruin bashing, in the local vicinity of the town. I'm too stingy to go to the sacred valley so I went to some local unsung ruins instead. Imagine then my astonishment, when I realized that the rip-off ticket for the local ruins included those far more famous ones in the sacred valley as well! You would have thought I'd have been pleased at this unexpected revelation, until you consider the fact that I discovered this, oh, less than half a day before I was due to go off on a trek to Machu Picchu. Hence, my 12 pound ticket (and that's extortionate for Peru), which was only valid for a few days, went largely unused, and I ticked off just five of the twelve possible sight entrances that it allowed me.

The Cusco area offers lots for tourists and travellers. I won't bore you with pictures of mundane ruins here, since there are some more exciting Machu Picchu ones at the bottom of the post instead. Rather, I will show you some photos of other things. A week ago, I went river running with some jolly nice American and Czech people.



It was a bit rubbish, but good fun nonetheless. The river did get a bit rougher than the photo suggests, but not a lot. The second most exciting thing I did pre-trek was eat some carrot cake.



The next day I embarked on a trek with a friend of mine called Dale. He's a molecular biologist, but otherwise OK. In fact he's a lucky bugger, because he lives in Seattle and gets to play in mountains all the time. Anyway, we had met on the Chiva party in Quito back at the end of November, and by chance we were in Cusco at the same time, and ready to explore the mountains. Dale likes both proper cultural travel and trekking, so we're a good mix. We set off early on the morning of Thursday 25th for the Salkantay trek. It is an alternative trek to the Inca Trail, that lacks the Incan sites, but gets much more into the wild, and closer to indigenous communities. It's a longer trek (usually advertised as five or more days), and sounded to us like good fun.

It didn't quite work out as desired, owing to a severe back pain that overcame Dale pretty much as soon as we got off the bus at our start point. Dale's not the kind of guy to manifest pain in order to avoid trekking, and we eventually concluded it was probably the undesirable product of two nights' worth of nightbuses in a row. We worried that this would jeopardize the whole trek, but we decided to walk for a couple of hours and set up camp at a nice spot overlooking the general area, with the thought of reassessing the situation in the morning. The sun was beating down on that day, and we eventually came up with a cunning shelter, with the aid of my tent outer, a few pegs and a couple of trekking poles.



As it turned out, we deemed it best for Dale to turn around and nurse his back in Cusco, which was, by the next morning, causing him crippling pain. I was gutted to lose him as a trekking companion, but I carried on anyway.

I had a great trek, saw some excellent mountains, spoke to some very friendly local people, and got to Machu Picchu Pueblo in only three more days. It is a beautiful walk, around 88km in total, and includes the Salkantay mountain pass, at 4700m. Numerous different types of terrain were passed through, including mountains, lush valleys and cloudforest.











I have been speaking more to local people lately. I've found that my Spanish has come on a long way, just from having been in Spanish speaking countries for so long. I can now understand South Americans far more easily than Spaniards, who to me sound like they're harbouring an overallowance of ping pong balls in their mouths. This friendly guy saved me on the last day by providing me with bananas and sugary drinks. He was lovely and very hospitable, but was quite lacking in the tooth department.



I eventually arrived at the Machu Picchu hydroelectric station, about 9km from the town below the ruins. The final 9km was hence along these train tracks in the searing heat, which didn't agree with me at all.



I arrived in Machu Picchu Pueblo on Sunday afternoon and pretty much couldn't move my legs. I was very tired, and put off Machu Picchu itself for another 24 hours. I finally ended up at the ruins yesterday morning, on the first bus, at 6am before the crowds arrived.



Machu Picchu was better than I expected. If you spend any time in Peru you are constantly shown pictures and postcards of Machu Picchu, to the extent that you start to become numbed to the wonder of the ruins. However, when I actually arrived there, I was stunned into contemplation about how long these ruins had gone un-discovered by the modern world. The Spanish completely failed to find them in the conquest; they were discovered hundreds of years later by an American historian. I find it fascinating that such a huge Incan city could go unnoticed, and so unspoilt, for so long. These ruins are something to get excited about.



Enough of Cusco, I'm outta tomorrow morning. I'm heading to Puno on Lake Titicaca, before entering Bolivia there.

Before I finish, I want all of you to buzz positive vibes to Emma, my brilliant girlfriend who is on the verge of submitting her PhD thesis. All being well, it'll be done and dusted tomorrow, and there is the hope that she may come out to Bolivia next week to visit me. I think the collective brainpower of all the distinguished readers of this blog can push this thesis over its final hurdle. Thanks!