peru leg over!!!

hi there all!

been a while since the last entry but trust me, we've been busy and away from the internet pretty much cnostantly ;) peru is an amazing country and to be honest im a lickle sad to be leaving such lovely people (both locals and new friends from the trek) and the most amazing scenery ive ever clapped eyes on in my life. totally ticked the box for seeing the andes from the air and land!

so yeah, day 3 was a bus tour of cuzco and the surrounding interesting stuff. highlight for me was the temple of the 3 lightnings which is just unbelievable and was our first proper glimpse of how good the architecture that we came to see really is.



the church in cuzco was also pretty damn impressive



tricky made a friend at the water temple



plus more alpaca sweaters than you can shake a stick at....



randomly, a walk to the bus station led us down a road they were digging up but hadnt bothered barriering off. so people were just walking down it. most odd - wouldnt get that in london! that night found a late expedition into cuzco to find some booze with aiden - top lad from cork who wasnt to be found without a smile on his face at any point.



the next day was a bit of a tour of the sacred valley with guide marselino who again, was so passionate and knowledgeable about the area and its history. no question was left unanswered and we were really lucky i think to get such brilliant guides throughout.

mostly this day was about me cooing over the extensive and impressive terracing on the hillsides plus more gorgeous stonework and getting to know our trail-buddies a bit better. a lovely group and a really interesting cross-section of nationalities and backgrounds. you guys rocked!



the scenery was, of course, stunning...



and my new love/obsession for sinobi origami starts to drift into the photos



the day was capped off with possibly one of the best meals ive ever eaten - a gorgeous and idyllic japanese restaurant out there in the middle of nowhere which was surrounded by interesting stuff and things like the bilingual parrot (who says hello in two languages) giant aloe vera (one for you here mum...)



and (also) giant flowerpots. on their side. well...they didnt leave me much choice did they?



more cool stonework in ollyantambo - i mean, seriously. look at the size of these rocks. that was at the top of a huge sodding hill. the mind boggles as to the manpower involved. plus, you couldnt slide a sheet of paper between them - millimetre perfect.


we spent the night there in order to start the lares trek proper the next day. i test-built my sun-themed origami piece to take to macu piccu too, which was pretty hare-brained but actually worked. very exciting stuff!



so, the next day, up hills we went! pretty tough going at that altitude (i think we got to about 3500m that day) but once again, proper good scenery. i saw my first glacier


and heres one of tricky looking proper knackered at the top of the first big pass we did. i think this is my favourite pic of the trip so far ;)



and heres one of us all looking really rather fresh at the highest point of the first day. little did we know what was to come.....



that night we met our porters and got drunk. it was fun. i couldnt sleep because i was stupid enough to bring my thin sleeping bag and think that i could get away with wearing lots of clothes to make up for it. it did mean that at 3 in the morning i went out for a wee and saw what was apparently the southern lights flickering away in a valley a few miles away. very very pretty, unfortunately id left the camera in the big tent where people were asleep so dont have any photos of that :(

day 2 of the trek was, in short, bloody hard work! we got as high as



and it looked like this on the other side of the pass



but what you cant see from this picture is that tricky is pretty much holding me up. once we got past 4000m i couldnt do much other than try not to pass out or throw up. proper wierd feeling is altitude sickness and not one that i care to repeat if im honest. am extremely proud of the achievement but bugger me, that was difficult.

we also met a lot of little communities of people on this day. there are families up there who still live according to the inca traditions and are completely self-sufficient from the potatoes and livestock they keep/grow. was very odd to see the little kids running around doing all this work and really makes you think about the levels of expectation you have from life through living in a city and having the sort of life you do. the catch 22 of the situation of course, is that i could never figure this out as ive been brought up in the more developed world and would never be able to manage living like that. same im sure is true for these people and london - itd just be too much. this is some of the stuff i came here to see though and im very glad i did. a greater sense of awareness of where my life fits into the world feels good, and the truth of whats out there might not always be comfortable but i feel better knowing it.

went to bed at 3pm that afternoon and slept through till the next morning. luckily, the sun came out for a bit when we got to the campsite so i at least got to go to sleep in the relative warm ;)

heres one of the survivors at the highest bit. felt good that did, really good. its quite cool what going through something like that together does for the speed you get to know people and the unity and camiraderie it breeds - i really enjoyed my time with them and hopefully, ill get to see some of them again someday.



third day was all downhill - woop! so after a bit of breakfast


and a little go with some local farming tools



we got to the place where the coach was picking us up and found some kids to entertain with paper things



then it was a coach and train to macu piccu pueblo. a lovely little town thats basically only there to serve as a hotel/restaurant hub for the site itself. as a result, the atmosphere there was definitely one of excitement id say!

stayed out way too late that night and got proper pissed.....pretty difficult not to when everyones so geared up for the next day. problem was, the hotel forgot to give us our wakeup call so we ended up sprinting for the bus on 3 hours sleep and doing that waking-up-halfway-down-the-road thing that happens when you get up late for an interview or some stupid bloody thing like that.

hey ho, on to macu piccu itself and it delivered in every single possible way. i was completely blown away by the fact that not only had the incas figured out how to make this stonework, they also integrated it with the mountain. the temple of the condor is the best example of this. didnt manage to get any pics but go look it up if youre interested. basically they carved the head out of the floor and the wings are these two outcrops of rock that were just there in the right place, facing east.

the whole philosophy of working with the elements and respecting the mountains and the earth was really evident throughout the whole place. i wont go into the history any more than that cos you guys are more than capable of doing that yourselves if you wanna ;) but its definitely worth seeing. a very humbling experience and one that made it even more blindingly obvious how much we're currently screwing things up as a race.

lovely weather too, which apparently isnt normally the case....this is another of my fave pics :)



the plan was basically to do an origami tour of the place (including a specially designed themed trapezoid modular piece - thanks to jenny for the idea!) taking photos is great, but they have to be a little bit individual i rekcon or else you might as well go get some stock shots from the web taken with a much better camera! so heres a few choice ones:







and the headstand shot - just for you sis!



and yup, proper lovely night out last night with pretty much everyone we've seen at various points in the week which was a great end to this leg of the trip. i really cant say enough how lucky i feel we were with the group of people we had. everyone looked after each other, shared, supported and encouraged to the nth degree. most of you guys wont see this for ages (if at all) but i want to say a genuine thank you to all of you for making it so lovely. the guides too, mario, marselino, johann, jose and all the porters did a brilliant line in combining efficiency with making us feel right at home.

so yeah, in conclusion, i reckon we had a top time this week. we've currently had a couple of days in cuzco to chill out and we are mid catching flight(s) to salvador for the beachy, sunny leg of the tour. its been awesome so far, this travelling thing is proper wicked. looking forward to some less structured time on the next bit, a lie-in or two would be nice! (not that im expecting any sympathy ;))

so to sign off, my best proper-grown-up-with-proper-grown-up-facial-hair impression (including once again failing on the sunscreen front and getting a ridiculous vest line.)



dont worry, its gone now. and it wont be back. clearly one way that i definitely SHOULDNT take after my father....