Episode 34: Cusco and machu piccu

I write this having just boarded the plane to lima, which left half an hour early with no warning - imagine our shock sitting in the VIP lounge (courtesy of Eli's gold card) and getting a 'last call' over the tannoy not even having gone through security yet!

Anyway, so we arrived in Cusco and spent a lot of time at chabad due to shavuot and Shabbat - it's a bit cold there and obviously also 99% Israelis but the food was awesome! They actually have some live in Israeli volunteers aswell, which I would imagine is a great (free) way of learning spanish.

Cusco itself is a world apart from Bolivia - it reminded me of Rome with it's cobbled streets, coffee ships and angry drivers. They have great little markets where we bought some genuinely Peruvian gifts/clothes - in fact, having travelled most of South America it has been so far the best place to buy gifts (take note!). 

So, on Sunday, we headed over to Aguas Calientes which is the small town at the bottom of Machu Piccu mountain having already stopped off at Sacred Valley...

...and despite getting not much sleep (our hotel was conveniently placed next to a ridiculously loud amazon tributary river) we got up at 4.30 to walk up the mountain. Now, we'd heard from people less sporty than us that the inca trail was hard but not that hard, so we were expecting a leisurely hour walk to the top.

It's not. It's up 1000's of cobbled stairs that go vertically up the mountain. Literally everyone takes the bus, and that's probably why - we were climbing stairs for 45 minutes through the jungle getting killed by yet more Mosquitos (bastards) and only passed another 3 people doing the same thing. It was a serious quad/cardio workout, like preseason training come early. Eventually we arrived in a sweaty, exhausted horrible heap at the top - but it was worth it:

The never ending walk...like something out of temple run!

We had a reasonably competent tour guide who told us, amongst other things, that the main achievement of the inca's was managing to build such a structurally impressive town on the top of such a steep mountain, incorporating sturdy architecture with (at the time) impressive facades. We were there for most of the day (we also did the two hour sun gate hike) before heading back to the hot springs (i.e. the worlds grimmest water) and finally, very burnt, back to cusco  and now off to Lima to splash out for the last two nights of the trip on a crazy hotel for Eli's birthday.

Yours,

Thunderthighs