Hi all
Sorry for not writing any exciting stories in the last couple of days. We have been having a brilliant and interesting and challenging time!!
Tuesday evening we met up with our old guide Miguel, from our Inka trail, for a quick drink we thought and a couple of beer and a dodgy local chicken joint later, we had arranged for him to take us to his parents property in the mountains for a short hike up the hill to see a place where he wants to build a spiritual temple to the mountains! Great plan and exciting to be able to a trip with a local guy, the local way without the frills of big commercial companies who pay the locals to put on a show for you.
So early Wednesday morning we met Miguel and headed to the local taxi rank, Having sat for half an hour in a car waiting for another person wanting to go our way, a lady finally jumped in and off we went for a couple of hours to the next big town down the valley. Despite the lack of seatbelts and the lady the from smelling pretty terrible and blowing her nose into her jumper, oh and the taxi driver being pulled over by the police and fined for not being registered, we arrived safely!
Another shorter but very bumpy taxi ride took is down the river to a hut beside the railway where we found Miguel's lovely Mother and Father. She was gorgeous, really friendly with a face that lit up when she smiled. She was about 4 foot and didn´t know what to make of these 2 giants following her son around like lost sheep. His father was amazing, so funny and such a character. He too had the smilist face imaginable and as we hopped into his pick-up, next to him in the cap he yapped at us in spanish and laughed a lot. Miguel rode in the back of the pick-up and we almost forgot he was with us until every now and then he would shout to his father to stop talking a keep driving. It was very funny.
So having been dropped at the bottom of the hill the three of us walked for around 2 hours up a track and then through a forest, jumping across a river a couple of times and finally clambered to an amazing opening half way up this incredible mountain. The view was spectacular, with the mountains behind displaying amazing waterfalls and the gorgeous valley in front of us. You could see why this very humble man was so moved and taken in by this magical place.
Another 40 mins later, having walked through the rain forest with Miguel occasionally saying, ´I'm lost, it´s all gone green!´ we got very close to the waterfall where he wants to cleanse people who come to his temple. Unfortunately as he said ´the mountains´ prevented us from getting to her as the river was to large for us to jump across although at one stage he was pulling reads from the trees to attempt a tarzan swing across it!!, (and close enough for us to be his first subjects!)
We walked through his parents incredibly located property and heard of all his plans to build a lodge and bring people to this sacred place and then walked for quite a while along the road until we were lucky enough for a local bus to pick us up and cook, bump and eventually deliver us to the nearest town to commence our journey home.
PHOTOS TO FOLLOW SOON
