Hi there guys hope all is well wherever you are. Just got half way through a huge Email but managed to delete it - How?? - so starting all over again, luckily it´ll probably be half the size.
Finally made it to Cusco in Peru after a few hairy travelling moments via Santiago and Lima. Reluctantly left Mendoza and started my 3 day journey to start the Inca Trail.
So far not overly impressed with Santiago but I´m going to have to learn to love it as I´ll be there at least another 3 times. I think I found the good area in Santiago but I´m not really sure cos I was there for about 12 hours and no one could give me a map. Lima was slightly better once I adjusted to the constant harassment of the taxi drivers and street venders. Bizarrely the taxi ride from the airport cost twice as much as the accommodation and I had a taxi driver who really got the hump when I refused to go to his Hostel. However he was better than the death wish driver I got back to the airport. I did manage to get a day at the beach in Lima though and I very nearly saw the sun through the smog.
Finally I got on the plane to Cusco, I´d already prepared myself for it being busy but in the time I waited for my flight to be called 5 other flights departed! They also say you should always travel overland to high altitude and never a truer word. The high altitude hit me like a ton of bricks as soon as they opened the cabin doors, it felt like i´d been on speed for 4 days (I hadn´t!).
For the next 2 days I could barely walk the length of me and I slept for 16 hours out of 24. I couldn´t even drink the obligatory glass of wine so something was definitely wrong.
The day after I started the Inca Trail. I was completely shitting myself about walking 4 days at high altitude, but there was nothing else for it, head down, bum up and keep slogging.
I´d guiltily ordered another porter to carry my stuff but they´d conveniently forgotten so I had to trudge up those mountains with my own pack. As it turned out I was the only female in the group to carry her stuff the whole way round, and while I´m blowing my own trumpet I was fastest female and 2nd overall, I am HARDCORE!! Either that or my group was ridiculously unfit, ok,so more likely the 2nd option..
On the last 2 days it rained continuously to the point you just accept you will never be dry again. Our giuide tried to convince us that it was all part of the fun to wring out your socks and squelch in wet boots but despite my slightly maddened state at that point I wasn´t buying it. I was aware I was going in rainy season but I wasn´t expecting the landslides and the fallen trees. This meant there was no water on the last night of camping (everyone camps in the same place on the last night) which made for a highly unpleasant experience. Never mind who needs water when you can have a wet wipe shower every day.
So we finally reached Macchu Picchu on the last day, leaving camp at 4 in the morning and trekking in the pitch black to get there. I expected to be really emotional but when we got there it was pure fog, you could not see a thing. We traipsed past all the day tourists who smelled of soap and clean clothes and proudly got our passport stamped, then miraculously the fog cleared and we ran back up to see it, yes it is as glorious as you could possibly imagine and well worth the 4 days of pain and dampness. But I survived and the only casualties were a few blisters and a couple of toenails. Hopefully this is the end of my days as an intrepid mountaineer!
After a night of celebration I had a well deserved massage which caused more agony than the trek itself as the masseuse pummeled my calves shouting "good massage miiiss" as I lay screaming into the bed.
I´m staying in the hippiest hostel in the world and it´s run by this slightly mad (but lovely) South African woman who runs day trips to take Hallucenogenic drugs - but It´s natural so thats ok!
Anyhow I had a what the hell attitude at that point so I went on Saturday. It´s a plant called San Pedro and instead of "taking it" you "be with her" and accept her into your life and become one with the earth - yeah right.
It´s a foul tasting concoction but I slurped it down and waited to become one with the earth. About an hour later I felt my limbs weren´t my own then totally disembodied. Luckily this feeling passed and I waited for what was going to come next which was not the answers to the life, universe and everything but an overwhelming urge for cheese (Shropshire Blue to be precise). Damn, and I used to be such a good hippy!
No matter, when I regained the ability to walk Lesley took me up in the hills, it was an amazing view of Cusco and I feel I did appreciate it more in my drugged up state. There is the Temple of the Moon there, a pre Inca site which has carvings of when the Eagle and Condor meet and the world will change, fascinating really, see I am a good hippy. It also had this alter where I sat and contemplated life. Lesley left me to do so and I promptly fell asleep only to wake up half an hour later flat out on a sacred site looking at a group of bemused Peruvian tourists, God I am such a good advertisement for encroaching middle age! Note how no family members have been included in this E mail
I seem to have survived the experience though and am now going to hang out in Cusco for another few days and go back to Spanish school. I had to take a test so am now having feelings of inadequacy all over again.
Off to La Paz in Bolivia on Friday night which means 3 hours on the Peru Bolivian border trying not to get robbed. Going to meet Cath and Clare on Saturday - can´t wait - and possibly Carolien, Allison and Sean if all goes well. It´s Paddy´s night and I´m sure there will be an Irish bar, there is everywhere else.
By some minor miracle this hasn't deleted. Write soon
