Another delayed bus later i arrived into Mancora.
I got to the bus station in Trujillo at 11.15pm ready for my 11.45pm bus to Mancora. The t
axi driver dropped me at the Ormeno bus station, and there wasn’t a person in sight, it was shut-up and i thought ‘oh shit, what do i do now?’ I knocked onto on the doors and finally a little man came out and told me to come through....I was a bit apprehensive because it was deserted. But i went with him and sat in the bus station, looking for some other people...but nothing! He left me and my bags and off he went, thats when i thought ‘I’ve been stitched up, hes going to rob me!’ But luckily i was being paranoid as about 15minutes later an Australian girl and her English boyfriend also arrived for the same bus. Shit was i happy to see them! They also thought something dodgy was going on, and were happy to see another face in the terminal! So we sat and waited, and the man came back and said the bus was delayed and wouldn’t arrive until 2.15am. So we had a very uncomfortable couple of hours trying to lay down on bus station plastic seats! Boy were we glad when the bus finally pulled through and we got into some comfy first-class seats and fell asleep pretty quickly!
So after 4 days of umming and arring about where to stay in Mancora, i decided to go with the party hostel. I was deciding between the party hostel, staying in a dorm room or for the same price a non party place with my own room and bathroom. Tough choice, but i though itd be easy to make friends here and i was long due for a drink! I checked in and had a room with 2 guys and another girl. In dorm rooms they are all mixed, so i was lucky i didn’t get 3 guys. And they were New Zealanders, so it was nice actually and they weren’t young and stupid either.
I kind of wish that i had gone to the non party hostel though...i know, thought you’d never hear those words come out of my mouth...millie not wanting a party hostel. But its kind of like that Contiki Island resort i went to when i was 18. Not something i really want at 25. Its just that they are pretty young travellers here and all get blind drunk and stupid. Thank god i wasn’t rooming with them! Also it is eternally loud. Which i knew it would be, but at about 7am the hostel next door resumes their building renovations and continues till about 6.30pm everyday. So all you can hear is grinding, drilling, welding, hammering for hours on end. Then come 7pm and the music starts. It is unbelievably loud too, i know i must sound like a nanna but its constant until the wee hours of the morning. So luckily the first night i was drunk and passed out and tonight i am leaving to Ecuador on a 1am bus, so the music isn’t too much of a drama!\
Friday, May 28, 2010
Trujillo
A testament to ‘Peruvian Time’- very similar to Kimberley time actually, my plane from Arequipa was delayed by 5 hours and i very nearly missed my connecting bus to Trujillo. I arrived at the bus station, after tipping the taxi driver to speed me there, with 5 minutes to spare before the bus took off! Got on the bus and we were delayed by 2 hours along the way with road works. So my supposedly short journey was incredibly long! I arrived exhausted into Trujillo about 10am and checked in. The girls on the front desk then tried to sell me their tours, saying there was an English speaking group leaving today at 11am. They sold me into it, so i showered quickly and headed out on tour.
This was to be my first of 3 consecutive tours, as i met a great couple of people who were also touring with me, Kate and Mark from England and Rachel from Oregon, USA. So day 1 we went to the Sun and Moon temples and Chan Chan. Both are ruins located not far from the city of Trujillo itself. Day 2 we went to El Brujo, about an hour out of Trujillo and Day 3 we went to Chiclayo to visit the Sipan ruins, about 3 hours away. So by the end of the 3 days, i was all toured out, and ruined out!
All 3 days were very similar in some respects, in that we were seeing archaeological ruins. They were from different time periods though, but showed very very similar traits to the ancient Egyptians. I haven’t been to Egypt, i remember from studying them at school, and although in Egypt they have traditional pyramid structures, here it looked like mountains or just desert, but once they were excavated, they found ancient kings and queens buried with their treasure, servants, spouses, concubines etc. They were even slightly mummified, but not with bandages like in Egypt, but with cloth saturated in some sort of chemical to stop the bugs eating them. It was absolutely amazing! Every day was really different, but still similar, but all 3 sites were definitely worth the visit. The museum at Sipan was awesome, it is a pyramid shaped building and you start at the top and work your way down. Inside they had the King of Sipan’s remains and all of his jewellery. It was a brilliant museum, really showed and explained this ancient time period and showcased so much of the materials from that era.
It was great having Rachel, Mark and Kate with me too, we went for dinner each night together and had fun in the day at the sights. Hopefully i will catch up in Ecuador with them! But for now, I am off to Mancora for some long deserved sun and sand!
Arequipa
I was expecting a lot from Arequipa after hearing some great things from people on the gringo trail. And it did not disappoint. Arequipa is a beautiful, fun and charming city. I stayed for one week, the longest i’ve stayed in a city since Ayacucho, and i had a great time.
I met up with emma again which was great and needless to say we had a big night catching up! Then Emma headed off to Chile and I was back on my own. I decided, since it was such a nice town, that i would do a Spanish course. I must admit, i had ok Spanish before-hand but now i am much more confident at speaking and much better at listening and understanding, which is the hardest bit of the whole language! I enrolled on Monday and had 4 days of 4 hour lessons, so 16 hours of tuition in total. And one-on-one classes as well, which Lu thought was a horrible idea. And at first i was a little daunted because i don’t have a long attention span, but it worked out really well actually. On my time off from lessons, I went shopping, to the movies and visited the many sights on offer in the town. The monastery was my favourite, it was unbelievable. It spanned about 2 blocks of the city and was a beautiful old colonial building, one of the biggest in South America apparently. So i had a tour with some other English speakers and it took 2 hours to see everything, it was that big!
I didn’t go to Colca Canyon though, one of the biggest attractions in the Arequipa region, because my foot was finally getting better after being very very sore after the Machu Picchu trek! But nevertheless, a canyon is just a canyon, and i was over trekking for a while! Until Nepal again in Feb 2011! Got plenty of time to get re-enthused! So at the end of my sojourn in Arequipa, i was a little disappointed to be re-packing the bag and heading off again, although it was time. I had done what i needed and was ready to rock and roll.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Lake Titikaka
We were exhausted from Machu Picchu but we managed to get on our bus to Puno, which was about 6hours away. Puno is the capital of the Puno district and is a lovely town situated right on Lake Titikaka, we checked into our hotel which was beautiful, and headed for a walk around town. We booked our tours and ended up having an early dinner in a restaurant with a fire, because it was so damn cold, and headed to bed ready for our early bus ride to Copacabana, in Bolivia.
At 7am we headed on the bus to Copacabana, and stopped at the border for all the formalities. Luckily we aren’t American, it costs around $150 american dollars to enter Bolivia, because their president hates the American’s so much! Buy luckily it was free for us, so we arrived into Copacabana, checked into our hotel and proceeded to look around the town. It was a pretty run down, dirty town actually. I think the difference between Peru and Bolivia was amazing, Peru is such a lovely clean country, and the people are very proud people too, so it was a bit of a shock to see how dirty is was. We looked very out of place too...not because we were westerners but because we were clean! The town was full of rastas (you know Rastafarians) who were smelly, dirty and very unhygienic. I couldn’t believe how many of them were in this one small town! After doing some shopping and having some dinner we headed back to the hotel. This was the most disgusting, dirty and foul hotel i have ever stayed in, in my life! Different if it was a hostel, but it was a hotel and we paid $10 american dollars each to stay in this filthy run down shithole! It was run by children, i couldn’t find a manager or anyone who was actually older than i was to complain too. We had dirty sheets on our beds, stained dirty towels, a dirty bathroom and i had blood stains of my pillow, which was incidently a pillow filled with rags, not a real pillow and when i went to complain he couldn’t care less and gave me another pillowcase with stains on it. You could say i was not impressed at all!!
The breakfast was just as bad and i ate some stale bread with butter, and we checked out absolutely disgusted. Wait till i write a comment on tripadvisor.com!! So we headed off to the port for our boat ride to Isla del Sol. All in all, we were pretty disappointed, the boat ride took 2-2.5 hours not 1.5 which we were told and drove at about 5knots, no faster! The seats were wooden and extremely uncomfortable and were squished in like sardines. When we arrived, we were sort of chucked off the boat with no idea what to do?? Some people walked to the south island but we couldn’t because we had our bags with us, inteneding to stay a night on the island. So we walked around a bit and found a beautiful little beach where we sunbaked and relaxed until the boat was ready to depart to the south side of the island. While we were waiting we decided we wouldn’t stay on the island but head back to Puno that night on the 6pm bus. We got to the south with less than an hour before the boat was going to leave to head back to Copacabana, so we didn’t even have time to walk up to the settlement, because it was half hour up and half hour down. So overall we were pretty disappointed with the service from the people on the boat as well as the island itself. I mean the views we saw were pretty extraordinary but that was about it. So we caught the excruitatingly slow boat back into Copacabana and got on the bus back to Puno. When we arrived into Puno, the hotel staff were so happy to see us and it was no drama being a day early, so we arranged our boat trip for the Peruvian islands for the next day.
Emma headed to Arequipa and mum and I headed out to Uros and Taquile islands for the day. It was 100% better than the Bolivian side, the boat, the service and the islands. The boat was fast and it had bus seats installed so it was comfortable! First off we headed to Uros or the floating islands, which are quite close, about half hour from Puno. It was amazing, there are 40 islands that are made entirely from reeds and anchored using the roots of the reeds, and hundreds of people live on these islands, and speak mainly Amayra, which is a traditional language originating from Bolivia. Mum bought a beautiful handmade rug thing for the coffee table, which has the two most important gods on it, from the Inka times, Pachamama and Pachatata (mother and father earth). It was great and amazing to see that these people live out here on these small reed islands!
We then headed off on a 2 hour boat ride to Taquile island, which was amazing, its like a island lost in time. They speak Quechua, which is the traditional language of Peru from the highlands, and they live like they are still in the 1920’s. It is very old fashioned, even down to marriage and courting, its very traditional. The view was absolutely amazing, and the communities on this island was beautiful, the people are also very lovely. We had a lovely lunch of local trout and a chat and took some more photos before heading back to the boat for the ride back to Puno. Although there wasn’t many ruins or anything on these islands, unlike in Bolivia where the tourist attraction is the ruins, it was the view and the people that made it amazing. We had a wonderful day and thought it was definitely worth while.
Mum wasn’t well so we had an early night to get ready for our bus trip to Cusco, where we will spend 2 nights before we fly out to Lima and mum flies home to Australia!! For breakfast at the hotel, the staffg surprised mum with a present for mothers day! They came into the dining room and asked mum to stand and presented her with a beautiful purple alpaca scarf and said ‘happy mothers day mum’!! It was so adorable! They gave her a hug and also gave us a little pin with dolls on it for our shirts. They were so lovely and the scarf looks so nice on mum and being purple she will wear it to the dockers games!!
At 7am we headed on the bus to Copacabana, and stopped at the border for all the formalities. Luckily we aren’t American, it costs around $150 american dollars to enter Bolivia, because their president hates the American’s so much! Buy luckily it was free for us, so we arrived into Copacabana, checked into our hotel and proceeded to look around the town. It was a pretty run down, dirty town actually. I think the difference between Peru and Bolivia was amazing, Peru is such a lovely clean country, and the people are very proud people too, so it was a bit of a shock to see how dirty is was. We looked very out of place too...not because we were westerners but because we were clean! The town was full of rastas (you know Rastafarians) who were smelly, dirty and very unhygienic. I couldn’t believe how many of them were in this one small town! After doing some shopping and having some dinner we headed back to the hotel. This was the most disgusting, dirty and foul hotel i have ever stayed in, in my life! Different if it was a hostel, but it was a hotel and we paid $10 american dollars each to stay in this filthy run down shithole! It was run by children, i couldn’t find a manager or anyone who was actually older than i was to complain too. We had dirty sheets on our beds, stained dirty towels, a dirty bathroom and i had blood stains of my pillow, which was incidently a pillow filled with rags, not a real pillow and when i went to complain he couldn’t care less and gave me another pillowcase with stains on it. You could say i was not impressed at all!!
The breakfast was just as bad and i ate some stale bread with butter, and we checked out absolutely disgusted. Wait till i write a comment on tripadvisor.com!! So we headed off to the port for our boat ride to Isla del Sol. All in all, we were pretty disappointed, the boat ride took 2-2.5 hours not 1.5 which we were told and drove at about 5knots, no faster! The seats were wooden and extremely uncomfortable and were squished in like sardines. When we arrived, we were sort of chucked off the boat with no idea what to do?? Some people walked to the south island but we couldn’t because we had our bags with us, inteneding to stay a night on the island. So we walked around a bit and found a beautiful little beach where we sunbaked and relaxed until the boat was ready to depart to the south side of the island. While we were waiting we decided we wouldn’t stay on the island but head back to Puno that night on the 6pm bus. We got to the south with less than an hour before the boat was going to leave to head back to Copacabana, so we didn’t even have time to walk up to the settlement, because it was half hour up and half hour down. So overall we were pretty disappointed with the service from the people on the boat as well as the island itself. I mean the views we saw were pretty extraordinary but that was about it. So we caught the excruitatingly slow boat back into Copacabana and got on the bus back to Puno. When we arrived into Puno, the hotel staff were so happy to see us and it was no drama being a day early, so we arranged our boat trip for the Peruvian islands for the next day.
Emma headed to Arequipa and mum and I headed out to Uros and Taquile islands for the day. It was 100% better than the Bolivian side, the boat, the service and the islands. The boat was fast and it had bus seats installed so it was comfortable! First off we headed to Uros or the floating islands, which are quite close, about half hour from Puno. It was amazing, there are 40 islands that are made entirely from reeds and anchored using the roots of the reeds, and hundreds of people live on these islands, and speak mainly Amayra, which is a traditional language originating from Bolivia. Mum bought a beautiful handmade rug thing for the coffee table, which has the two most important gods on it, from the Inka times, Pachamama and Pachatata (mother and father earth). It was great and amazing to see that these people live out here on these small reed islands!
We then headed off on a 2 hour boat ride to Taquile island, which was amazing, its like a island lost in time. They speak Quechua, which is the traditional language of Peru from the highlands, and they live like they are still in the 1920’s. It is very old fashioned, even down to marriage and courting, its very traditional. The view was absolutely amazing, and the communities on this island was beautiful, the people are also very lovely. We had a lovely lunch of local trout and a chat and took some more photos before heading back to the boat for the ride back to Puno. Although there wasn’t many ruins or anything on these islands, unlike in Bolivia where the tourist attraction is the ruins, it was the view and the people that made it amazing. We had a wonderful day and thought it was definitely worth while.
Mum wasn’t well so we had an early night to get ready for our bus trip to Cusco, where we will spend 2 nights before we fly out to Lima and mum flies home to Australia!! For breakfast at the hotel, the staffg surprised mum with a present for mothers day! They came into the dining room and asked mum to stand and presented her with a beautiful purple alpaca scarf and said ‘happy mothers day mum’!! It was so adorable! They gave her a hug and also gave us a little pin with dolls on it for our shirts. They were so lovely and the scarf looks so nice on mum and being purple she will wear it to the dockers games!!
Mum and Machu Picchu
I flew in from Iquitos and checked into the beautiful, but very expensive, Ramada hotel at the Lima airport and waited for mum to arrive. I was so worried that i wouldne be there to meet her cos my plane from Iquitos to Lima was 6 hours delayed! Luckily i arrived with plenty of time, but not enough time to get a swim at the pool in! So mum arrived and it was so so fantastic to see her!! I gave her some presents and she gave me heaps of stuff from home which was so nice! Even though she forgot the vegemite, i’ll forgive her :)
So we headed off for Cusco the following day, and arrived into some pretty cold weather, but the hotel was lovely and the staff were very friendly. So for the 2 days prior to the trek we tried to acclimatise to the altitude by walking slowly around the town and just chilled out basically. The town was a bit of a shock for me, coming from Ayacucho which isn’t a very touristy town, to coming to cusco which is pretty crazy! People bother us to buy stuff from them, or get massages or take photos of their llamas every couple of metres, very similar to Bali like that. But still it is a beautiful town, and considering they thrive on tourism, you cant blame them. So we paid for our trek and got the bad news that we are only allowed 3kg in our bags for the porters to carry!! So we spent the night before the trek trying to shove as many clothes as we could into our bags and then weighing them. First go, Emma had 6kg and I had 4kg, so it was a bit of an effort trying to cut down on warm clothes etc, especially considering it looked like rain was coming and we wanted dry clothes!
We got picked up early morning for the trek with 16 others, and made our way to Ollanytambo where we stopped for a hearty pre-trek breakfast and bought our wooden poles for walking with. We bought 2 each, because we remembered how much easier it was in Nepal with 2, especially on the downhill sections. On our trek we had 16 people, and 8 of them were from Perth. What a small world i know! Not only were they Australian but they were also from Perth. There was obviously Emma, Mum and Myself plus 3 girls who have just finished uni at UWA, Juliette, Naomi and Maddy, and Darren and Amanda from Claremont. The others on the trek, a couple from England, Karen and Rich, a couple from Switzerland Liz and Eyvonne, a couple from Holland/England Emma and Ray, a young girl from London Eva and a young guy from USA, Mike. So this was our group for the next 4 days and they were wonderful, really happy, supportive and fun. It made a big difference having such a great group to trek and camp with.
DAY 1
After breakfast we headed to KM82, the starting point on the Classic Inka Trail Trek. We walked to the checkpoint, showed our passports and entrance tickets and went on our way. Day 1 wasn’t actually too hard but i had a stomach bug, which had hung around since Iquitos, so i found day 1 extremely hard and harder than the other days (which was weird considering it was so much easier and shorter) but because i was sick i wasn’t happy and was very close to tears with bad stomach pains. So with support from Mum we arrived into camp, wet and cold and muddy, because it had started to rain. We had a feeling it was going to be wet, and it sure was. We were saturated and very cold, because it was such high altitude. So we made day 1 but i was reconsidering whether walking was the best option, and barely ate anything for the rest of the day. We had a great nights sleep which was lucky because day 2 was going to be hard hard work....
DAY 2
The food was exceptional, like Nepal, where we all eat in a tent together and we were given at least 3 courses for each meals. So for breakfast we had pancakes and tea and got ready to head off for day 2 in the rain and mud and cold. Day 2 is well known as the toughest day on the trek and before we even started the trek, the guides told us that everyone finds its hard, from the fittest trekkers, to the guides and porters, so that made us really excited about the day to come! B
ut they were right, it was extremely hard. In total it was 8km and roughly about 6hours of ascent up steep hills and steps. And i mean steep, its not like a slow accent to 4200m a.s.l but a really tough, steep walk up there. For the first part of the morning, mum found it really tough and by the time we made it in for snack time at about 11am, we were completely shattered and still had many hours to go. Mum also felt sick from the altitude which didn’t help, and it took a lot of courage and snickers chocolate bars to get up from our snack spot and continue on. 
We had to walk only small sections and then rest, because the altitude made it very hard to breathe combined with the exhaustion of climbing such a steep mountain, it was extremely difficult. Mum and I had one goal every day, which was to ensure that we overtook at least one person per day. We managed to do that which was good, cos it was very difficult to see so many, probably hundreds of people passing us as we were walking up the mountain. We were quite surprised at how fit some people on the trek were, there were extremely overweight people, old people, asian tourists etc. 
We reached Dead Woman’s Pass at 4,200m a.s.l and received a lovely big round of applause from a group of trekkers who were waiting for their last member to make it up the hill. It was such a relief to make it to the top of the mountain. A ‘pass’ is basically just crossing the top of a mountain, and this was the first of 3! After the exhilaration of making it to the top, where it was unbelievably freezing, we were literally surrounded by clouds, we realised we still had about 2 hours to go and it was all downhill, which was a relief for mum but an absolute pain for me. I was in absolute agony
with my knees trying to get down this steep hill of steps. So by the time we rocked into camp, after an 11km day of mostly uphill, both mum and I were absolutely shattered, cold and a bit wet. Mum slept through dinner and so did Emma, trying to recover for day 3 our longest on the trek.
DAY 3
Waking up on day 3 was a mixture of happiness and nervousness, because it had stopped raining and the weather looked beautiful but we were also nervous because we had a 16km and 10 hour day ahead of us. So off we went and headed off on the trek
, it was a mixture of uphill to begin with for about 4 hours followed but downhill and slow accents. We stopped at a couple of ruins along the way which were very beautiful, and had a chat with our tour guide about their importance etc. We made it the second pass before lunch and then headed up to the third pass. At the third pass we still had about 4 hours of walking downhill to go which made me very apprehensive, cos the old knees were very shaky from the day before and very painful. So off we headed and soon both Mum and I were not very happy and in a lot of pain. 
Lots of people were passing us, cos I was going so slow down this massively steep mountain and it took us forever to make it down. With about an hour to go, Mum had had enough and was pretty upset, and i had to be a bit mean and force her to keep going cos i knew if we stopped we wouldn’t be able to get up and keep going. Poor mum was in so much pain and was close to tears but we kept going, struggling on and managed to stumble into camp. We weren’t the happiest campers on this night, but it had been a long day and we were so so exhausted! We had dinner and headed to bed ready for an extra early start of 3.30am! 
DAY 4
We were woken up at 3.30am and packed up the clothes and tents, had breakfast and headed to the checkpoint into Machu Picchu. We were lining up at the checkpoint from about 4.45am and it opened and 5.30 so we all had a little wait ahead of us, but we were in good position, about 3rd group from the checkpoint, and there were heaps behind us. This put the pressure on poor mum, cos we tried so hard to keep up with our group and only when we started to ascend that our group moved further ahead and people started to overtake us. But i kept telling mum that this was it, that we only had an hour to go and that was it, it would be all worthwhile...
We go the to “gringo killer” the steepest set of steps going up i had ever seen in my life and it took all our leftover strength and courage to make it up. Once we did it was a small walk to Sun Gate, where our group was waiting for us, and waiting for the sun to rise over Machu Picchu and the clouds to clear. The sun rose and at the same time as the clouds cleared and it was the most amazing sight i had ever seen! It made the hard work of the trek completely worthwhile when you get to see this amazing view of the lost inca city. I think we appreciated Machu Picchu so much more than people who had just trained up to see it. It was just a beautiful site and so much more appreciated after the work we had put in. So we walked down from sun gate and into Machu Picchu and had to go through another checkpoint where we checked our backpacks and bought a well deserved and icy cold coca-cola! We spent the next few hours with our guides exploring the lost city and it was amazing, such a beautiful and sacred site. At about lunchtime we took the bus down to Augus Calientes and had lunch with everyone on the tour and we ordered pizza and more coke which was so delicious and earned! From there we caught the train to KM82, the beginning point of our trek and then a bus back to our hotel in Cusco. We all showered, after not showering for 4 days we were smelly and dirty so it was wonderful to be clean again and jumped into bed for a well deserved nights sleep in comfort!
The next day we were sore, tired and sick. We all had colds and sinus infections, sore calves and thighs and feet, but we managed to drag ourselves out of bed for a late brunch of pancakes and scrambles eggs! We were planning on going to the day spa but never made it there, we were too sore and more content to lay in bed :)
I was so so proud of mum, so many people along the trek could congratulate her and wish her well along the way. It was a real spirit of comrardery, especially with the number of Australian’s on the trek. She couldn’t have done a better job in the hard and challenging climate we were in. But i think she is ready to hang the hiking boots up, and what a better way to end it, than with Machu Picchu :)
So we headed off for Cusco the following day, and arrived into some pretty cold weather, but the hotel was lovely and the staff were very friendly. So for the 2 days prior to the trek we tried to acclimatise to the altitude by walking slowly around the town and just chilled out basically. The town was a bit of a shock for me, coming from Ayacucho which isn’t a very touristy town, to coming to cusco which is pretty crazy! People bother us to buy stuff from them, or get massages or take photos of their llamas every couple of metres, very similar to Bali like that. But still it is a beautiful town, and considering they thrive on tourism, you cant blame them. So we paid for our trek and got the bad news that we are only allowed 3kg in our bags for the porters to carry!! So we spent the night before the trek trying to shove as many clothes as we could into our bags and then weighing them. First go, Emma had 6kg and I had 4kg, so it was a bit of an effort trying to cut down on warm clothes etc, especially considering it looked like rain was coming and we wanted dry clothes!
We got picked up early morning for the trek with 16 others, and made our way to Ollanytambo where we stopped for a hearty pre-trek breakfast and bought our wooden poles for walking with. We bought 2 each, because we remembered how much easier it was in Nepal with 2, especially on the downhill sections. On our trek we had 16 people, and 8 of them were from Perth. What a small world i know! Not only were they Australian but they were also from Perth. There was obviously Emma, Mum and Myself plus 3 girls who have just finished uni at UWA, Juliette, Naomi and Maddy, and Darren and Amanda from Claremont. The others on the trek, a couple from England, Karen and Rich, a couple from Switzerland Liz and Eyvonne, a couple from Holland/England Emma and Ray, a young girl from London Eva and a young guy from USA, Mike. So this was our group for the next 4 days and they were wonderful, really happy, supportive and fun. It made a big difference having such a great group to trek and camp with.
DAY 1
After breakfast we headed to KM82, the starting point on the Classic Inka Trail Trek. We walked to the checkpoint, showed our passports and entrance tickets and went on our way. Day 1 wasn’t actually too hard but i had a stomach bug, which had hung around since Iquitos, so i found day 1 extremely hard and harder than the other days (which was weird considering it was so much easier and shorter) but because i was sick i wasn’t happy and was very close to tears with bad stomach pains. So with support from Mum we arrived into camp, wet and cold and muddy, because it had started to rain. We had a feeling it was going to be wet, and it sure was. We were saturated and very cold, because it was such high altitude. So we made day 1 but i was reconsidering whether walking was the best option, and barely ate anything for the rest of the day. We had a great nights sleep which was lucky because day 2 was going to be hard hard work....
DAY 2
The food was exceptional, like Nepal, where we all eat in a tent together and we were given at least 3 courses for each meals. So for breakfast we had pancakes and tea and got ready to head off for day 2 in the rain and mud and cold. Day 2 is well known as the toughest day on the trek and before we even started the trek, the guides told us that everyone finds its hard, from the fittest trekkers, to the guides and porters, so that made us really excited about the day to come! B
ut they were right, it was extremely hard. In total it was 8km and roughly about 6hours of ascent up steep hills and steps. And i mean steep, its not like a slow accent to 4200m a.s.l but a really tough, steep walk up there. For the first part of the morning, mum found it really tough and by the time we made it in for snack time at about 11am, we were completely shattered and still had many hours to go. Mum also felt sick from the altitude which didn’t help, and it took a lot of courage and snickers chocolate bars to get up from our snack spot and continue on. 
We had to walk only small sections and then rest, because the altitude made it very hard to breathe combined with the exhaustion of climbing such a steep mountain, it was extremely difficult. Mum and I had one goal every day, which was to ensure that we overtook at least one person per day. We managed to do that which was good, cos it was very difficult to see so many, probably hundreds of people passing us as we were walking up the mountain. We were quite surprised at how fit some people on the trek were, there were extremely overweight people, old people, asian tourists etc. 
We reached Dead Woman’s Pass at 4,200m a.s.l and received a lovely big round of applause from a group of trekkers who were waiting for their last member to make it up the hill. It was such a relief to make it to the top of the mountain. A ‘pass’ is basically just crossing the top of a mountain, and this was the first of 3! After the exhilaration of making it to the top, where it was unbelievably freezing, we were literally surrounded by clouds, we realised we still had about 2 hours to go and it was all downhill, which was a relief for mum but an absolute pain for me. I was in absolute agony
with my knees trying to get down this steep hill of steps. So by the time we rocked into camp, after an 11km day of mostly uphill, both mum and I were absolutely shattered, cold and a bit wet. Mum slept through dinner and so did Emma, trying to recover for day 3 our longest on the trek.DAY 3
Waking up on day 3 was a mixture of happiness and nervousness, because it had stopped raining and the weather looked beautiful but we were also nervous because we had a 16km and 10 hour day ahead of us. So off we went and headed off on the trek
, it was a mixture of uphill to begin with for about 4 hours followed but downhill and slow accents. We stopped at a couple of ruins along the way which were very beautiful, and had a chat with our tour guide about their importance etc. We made it the second pass before lunch and then headed up to the third pass. At the third pass we still had about 4 hours of walking downhill to go which made me very apprehensive, cos the old knees were very shaky from the day before and very painful. So off we headed and soon both Mum and I were not very happy and in a lot of pain. 
Lots of people were passing us, cos I was going so slow down this massively steep mountain and it took us forever to make it down. With about an hour to go, Mum had had enough and was pretty upset, and i had to be a bit mean and force her to keep going cos i knew if we stopped we wouldn’t be able to get up and keep going. Poor mum was in so much pain and was close to tears but we kept going, struggling on and managed to stumble into camp. We weren’t the happiest campers on this night, but it had been a long day and we were so so exhausted! We had dinner and headed to bed ready for an extra early start of 3.30am! 
DAY 4
We were woken up at 3.30am and packed up the clothes and tents, had breakfast and headed to the checkpoint into Machu Picchu. We were lining up at the checkpoint from about 4.45am and it opened and 5.30 so we all had a little wait ahead of us, but we were in good position, about 3rd group from the checkpoint, and there were heaps behind us. This put the pressure on poor mum, cos we tried so hard to keep up with our group and only when we started to ascend that our group moved further ahead and people started to overtake us. But i kept telling mum that this was it, that we only had an hour to go and that was it, it would be all worthwhile...
We go the to “gringo killer” the steepest set of steps going up i had ever seen in my life and it took all our leftover strength and courage to make it up. Once we did it was a small walk to Sun Gate, where our group was waiting for us, and waiting for the sun to rise over Machu Picchu and the clouds to clear. The sun rose and at the same time as the clouds cleared and it was the most amazing sight i had ever seen! It made the hard work of the trek completely worthwhile when you get to see this amazing view of the lost inca city. I think we appreciated Machu Picchu so much more than people who had just trained up to see it. It was just a beautiful site and so much more appreciated after the work we had put in. So we walked down from sun gate and into Machu Picchu and had to go through another checkpoint where we checked our backpacks and bought a well deserved and icy cold coca-cola! We spent the next few hours with our guides exploring the lost city and it was amazing, such a beautiful and sacred site. At about lunchtime we took the bus down to Augus Calientes and had lunch with everyone on the tour and we ordered pizza and more coke which was so delicious and earned! From there we caught the train to KM82, the beginning point of our trek and then a bus back to our hotel in Cusco. We all showered, after not showering for 4 days we were smelly and dirty so it was wonderful to be clean again and jumped into bed for a well deserved nights sleep in comfort!The next day we were sore, tired and sick. We all had colds and sinus infections, sore calves and thighs and feet, but we managed to drag ourselves out of bed for a late brunch of pancakes and scrambles eggs! We were planning on going to the day spa but never made it there, we were too sore and more content to lay in bed :)
I was so so proud of mum, so many people along the trek could congratulate her and wish her well along the way. It was a real spirit of comrardery, especially with the number of Australian’s on the trek. She couldn’t have done a better job in the hard and challenging climate we were in. But i think she is ready to hang the hiking boots up, and what a better way to end it, than with Machu Picchu :)
Health Care Placement
During the two months i was in Ayacucho, there was a health care strike in place. It had been in place for about a month before i even arrived, so it was quite frustrating for the girls who were volunteering in healthcare. Especially for the girls who were using this program as an internship to receive credits for their university studies in nursing and medicine.
So healthcare were on a strike and the girls barely got to go to any placements which was disappointing for them during their stay and most of them left before the strike finished. So it was my second last week of volunteering and there were only 2 girls that were doing healthcare left from about 9, and we got a call from one of the surgeons at the hospital (they were doing life threatening operations and emergencies only), asking for 2 volunteers to assist him that night. So Laura one of the healthcare girls was going to the hospital the following night to help with the enormous amount of live births they have every night, so that left Natalie who was also healthcare. But they needed one more person, so i volunteered since i am not too squeamish with blood and that sort of thing.
So off we went to the hospital, and had a very interesting afternoon. We watched as the surgeon stitched a young mans head back together- lots and lots of blood with that one, watched him insert a catheter and finally went into surgery with him whilst he performed an emergency appendectomy. It was the most surreal thing ive ever done. We scrubbed in, like real nurses and doctors do, put on our scrubs and went into the operating room. This was an amazing experience, this could never ever have happened in Australia or America. They gave the lady an epidural, she didn’t go right under, and then he started work. He cut her open and started to remove her appendix, which was very very enlarged and looked like it might have been very dangerous to leave it in any longer. So there was Natalie and I, literally looking over the doctors shoulder whilst he explained things to me about the procedure. We passed him cutting implements and had a front row seat to the surgery. It was seriously amazing, that I was in an operating room, completely unqualified and assisting a surgeon. Haha very surreal but an amazing experience. I had a great time, and the Dr even offered to teach me to stitch someone up if i wanted, but i respectfully declined!
So healthcare were on a strike and the girls barely got to go to any placements which was disappointing for them during their stay and most of them left before the strike finished. So it was my second last week of volunteering and there were only 2 girls that were doing healthcare left from about 9, and we got a call from one of the surgeons at the hospital (they were doing life threatening operations and emergencies only), asking for 2 volunteers to assist him that night. So Laura one of the healthcare girls was going to the hospital the following night to help with the enormous amount of live births they have every night, so that left Natalie who was also healthcare. But they needed one more person, so i volunteered since i am not too squeamish with blood and that sort of thing.
So off we went to the hospital, and had a very interesting afternoon. We watched as the surgeon stitched a young mans head back together- lots and lots of blood with that one, watched him insert a catheter and finally went into surgery with him whilst he performed an emergency appendectomy. It was the most surreal thing ive ever done. We scrubbed in, like real nurses and doctors do, put on our scrubs and went into the operating room. This was an amazing experience, this could never ever have happened in Australia or America. They gave the lady an epidural, she didn’t go right under, and then he started work. He cut her open and started to remove her appendix, which was very very enlarged and looked like it might have been very dangerous to leave it in any longer. So there was Natalie and I, literally looking over the doctors shoulder whilst he explained things to me about the procedure. We passed him cutting implements and had a front row seat to the surgery. It was seriously amazing, that I was in an operating room, completely unqualified and assisting a surgeon. Haha very surreal but an amazing experience. I had a great time, and the Dr even offered to teach me to stitch someone up if i wanted, but i respectfully declined!
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