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Our first night bus of the trip was worse than your average. We tend to sleep with our valuables in our smaller day rucksacks attached to us, either by wearing our rucksacks on our front or by lacing our seatbelt through the bag handles. It won’t stop our things being stolen if the bus is robbed, but it does help deter opportunistic thieves who sometimes rifle through your bag in the night or take an unattended bag with them when they get off the bus. However, it does make it rather uncomfortable to get to sleep, but once you get off to sleep it’s usually not too bad.

However this time, in the COVID era, each time the bus stopped everyone had to get off the bus for it to be disinfected. After standing in a bus depot carpark for 10 minutes you tend to have woken up, and have to go through the whole getting to sleep process again. When we did finally get to sleep for a few hours we were woken at 6am by a police woman shouting to see our passports, which was a slightly terrifying experience that I think she enjoyed a bit too much to be honest. After being released by the loaded police woman we carried on our journey and eventually rolled into Palenque around 8am. Accompanied by some very swollen feet.

We dropped our bags off at the hostel but couldn’t check in until 3pm so we decided to make the most of the day and got a collectivo to the nearby Mayan ruins. A guy on the collectivo tried to sell us some magic mushrooms which we declined and he then tried to sell us a tour of the jungle near the ruins. As tempting as being led into dense jungle by a possibly high drug dealer sounded, we decided to give it a miss.

We hopped off the collectivo to buy our tickets at the park entrance and then walked the 15 minutes up hill in the midday sun to the ruins. It turns out we were supposed to just get back on the collectivo we had already paid for and it would have dropped us there. But of course we only learned that once we arrived drenched in sweat.

The ruins were really cool and we were lucky it was very quiet, we had it mostly to ourselves, except for a school trip of about ten teenagers all in jeans and jumpers in the midday sun. I’m still not sure they weren’t a mirage, how anyone can be in a jumper in 30°C is madness to me, even if it is winter here. We took it a very slow wander around on my swollen jelly feet, keeping mostly in the shade and we were still covered in sweat by the end. We decided to walk back through the forest alongside the ruins so we were out of the sun. The forest was just as enjoyable as the ruins themselves, with cute little rivers and waterfalls and lots of creatures. Grace also spotted some howler monkeys up in the tree tops collecting and eating fruit, at one point they were directly above us and we had to make a run for it so we didn’t get splatted on the head with their fruit droppings.

We checked into our hostel and were placed in a three bed dorm with a Canadian girl who had a bad cough, we weren’t best pleased. It’s just common courtesy when backpacking that if you’re ill, you check into a private room on your own, no one wants to catch what you have. She reassured us it wasn’t COVID so we let it slide. (Spoiler alert, it was COVID and I am currently writing this while in isolation, but that is a story for another blog post).

On our second day we booked a trip to see some nearby waterfalls we’d heard were pretty. We went on a tour that left at mid day and would be back at 6pm. On the 40min drive to the first waterfall, we got chatting to a girl who had just arrived in Palenque and had all her valuables stolen on the night bus. Suddenly our night of bad sleep didn’t feel as bad in comparison. The first waterfall was pretty but we couldn’t swim there, instead we did the walk behind the waterfall which was cool. We saw three guys (Santi, Tod and Tom) who we’ve bumped into a few places along our Mexico route, who were there on a different tour, and did the walk behind the waterfall with them. Behind the waterfall was this cool little cave which we headed into to explore but were met with a man, or possibly a troll we couldn’t actually see his face, asking for money to look at the back of the cave. Seeing as it was pitch black in the cave, this seemed a pretty pointless investment but did make us laugh that wherever you go in Mexico you’re never far from someone trying to charge a small entrance fee.

Next we headed to Agua Azule which is more of a river that has eroded lots of pools into rocks. It was super pretty, we had a swim and then went for a walk upstream with the boys, stopping at various points for a swim and some beers. We also failed terribly at haggling with the Mexican woman selling various things from baskets on their heads and ended up buying a whole bunch of tiny bananas instead of just the two we were after and also somehow ended up with some weird chocolate biscuits, which we all decided were edible but not very more-ish.

At 5pm we headed back to our minibus to head home. Some people in our tour were heading onwards to San Cristobal rather than retuning back to Palenque. The road by the waterfalls can be dangerous at night so there were lots of police about with large guns to reassure us, but it had rather the opposite effect. We couldn’t leave the people on their own on the road so the driver said we would have to wait ‘a small while’ for their bus to collect them and then we would be on our way. It turned out a small while was an hour and a half. But we eventually made it home around 9pm and headed out to meet the boys for dinner.

Things continued downhill however, when we turned up at the questionable restaurant the boys had picked. I ordered a cheese quesadilla hoping it would be hard to get food poisoning for what is effectively a cheese toastie in tortilla form. However, the waiter had helpfully adjusted my order, as he thought it wouldn’t be filling enough without meat, so put in some cold hotdog Weiners. Grace’s chicken tacos also came with Luke warm chicken and tasted awful so we gave up on our meals half way through. Grace then realized she had been sitting in a chair over an ants nest and had ants all over her, she got very bitten and did not appreciate any of the ‘ants in your pants’ jokes that were made. We gave up on the evening after that and headed for bed.

The next day we decided to check out a reserve that takes care of animals that have been confiscated by the government from people who have illegally tried to keep as pets. We were a bit conflicted whether to visit or not as we had been to similar places before that have claimed to do the same but really just bread animals in captivity in not very great conditions, but after a quick Google of reviews it seemed the animals here were well looked after so we decided to visit.

It was another baking hot day, and we wandered around the park seeing monkeys, flamingos, crocodiles and even two jaguars. The cages for the jaguars were a bit on the small side but overall the park seemed to be doing its best to keep the animals well looked after and entertained. There were keepers everywhere cleaning and feeding the animals. We got talking to one keeper who was feeding the huge manatees in the lake, when no-one was looking he snuck us in and let us help him with the feeding which was awesome!

Next we are headed to San Cristobal del las Casas, see you soon, Alice x

Hey everyone!

I’m sorry I haven’t written a blog in a while but Grace was really sick and hospitalised at one point and I got behind on writing and then I spent days catching up only for my phone to delete the posts and now it keeps losing what I write half the time and I’ve had enough of shouting at my phone and spending ages rewriting things, the last few posts got more boring each time I had to rewrite them. We only have a few weeks left now so instead I’ve just been keeping notes on my phone of what we’ve got up to and any funny stories along the way and I will write the posts on a computer when I’m back home. Not as interesting I know, but I’d rather be out making the most of my last few weeks in South America than sat shouting at my phone and getting stressed out when it loses three hours worth of stuff!

Sorry! love you all,

Alice x

UPDATE: So not long after this post my phone finally decided to give up the ghost and never turn on again. Luckily I managed to save all of my notes about places we’ve been before it turned off for good and now I’m home with some free time (aka procrastinating while job hunting) Ill be updating these again! Although perhaps with a few less photos due to the lack of phone!

The night before the final assent we got a chat by the guide about what lay ahead, we could either get the bus with the guides at 5:30am or we could begin our own climb up at 4am, which consisted of an hour walk up and then two thousand steep steps, directly upwards for one to two hours depending on your pace. The guides advised we got the bus if we weren’t very fit as the bridge across the river opened at 5am and our tour would start at Machu Picchu at 6am, so we would have to do the steps in an hour not to miss it.

I think you can probably guess what my choice was, yup the bus because I’m unfit and lazy, on the step machine at the gym I normally last about 5 minutes, so an hour to two at fast pace was a solid no from me! Apparently everyone else in our small group of friends was a psychopath and choosing to do the steps, including two of the girls who had been slower than me on the trek, so there went my unfit excuse. After a team talk (aka peer pressure/bullying) on how we were in it together I begrudgingly agreed to take the steps.

After a few hours sleep my alarm went off and we got dressed and headed straight out the door, eating breakfast on our way. We walked along in the dark, too stingy to use our phone batteries on a torch, when it was needed for the hundreds of photos we were going to take at the top.

At 4:45am we had reached the bridge before the beginning of the steps, the bridge doesn’t open until 5am but that’s where the real que for Machu Picchu begins. Thousands of people visit each day, hundreds of those choose to take the steps and the closer you are to the front the closer you are to getting there actually seeing Machu Picchu deserted of tourists and how it was in the past, before the invention of the selfie stick.

We were quite close to the front of the que, although it was probably wasted on me, I knew I’d end up falling behind, but it was nice to have a good head start!

We started off over the bridge the minute it was open and the serious hikers with their poles and camel water back packs set off overtaking everyone. We had decided to just set off slowly and warm up, but that went out of the window when a group of dogs decided to start fighting and chasing eachother up the steps behind us, turns out the fear of rabbies is a good motivator to get a move on!

After 5 minutes we all got separated, there’s so many people and you’re constantly being overtaken and overtaking others, you’re so concentrated on the effort it takes to keep going onwards and upwards you don’t have time to keep track of anyone else or the energy to keep up with them if you did.

It was hard, so hard, the first 20 minutes were probably the most mentality strenuous of my life. We went from standing half asleep waiting for the bridge to open to steep steps with no warm up, after the first 10 minutes my lungs were burning, and I felt knackered, I knew it was because my body hadn’t yet switched between sprint and marathon mode yet but that didn’t make me feel any less knackered. I forced myself to push on hoping it would get better, spoiler alert, it did not. After 15 minutes I was getting sick of waiting to feel better and fed up of all my positive mentality tricks, if it had been someone else saying it to me I think I’d of told them where to shove it! I had to stop, I sat down on an out of the way rock at the top of one zig zag of stairs and drank about a litre of water in one go. It was so depressing watching people trudge past, I was only 15 minutes in to something that at this rate would take several hours and I was totally knackered. I looked out for the two girls who had been behind me for most of the other trek, I decided if I saw them I would just suggest we quit now and headed back down for the bus, but I didn’t see them and I was too much of a coward to face the shame of going back down past hundreds of people alone.

Then after 3 or so minutes sat down feeling sorry for myself I realized I felt fine again, I wasn’t knackered, my legs could keep going again, I was just out of breath. Out of breath and knackered are two very different things and I decided fuck it! (excuse the language but it was a profound moment for me!) I’d turned back and quit so many times out of fear of being last or not being able to do it that I’d never really tried, and now more than any other trek was one I really wanted to try. If all it took was a 3 minute break everytime I would have one, screw who ever wanted to over take, let them go. I would get there, maybe much slower than everyone else or maybe I would honestly get to the limit and body wouldn’t be able to make it any further but I would try and at least get to that point rather than turning back at just the fear of it.

Honestly my whole mentality changed, I started upwards again and again ten minutes later I got knackered. But this time, instead of being angry with myself for not being better, I kept thinking ‘well that’s ten minutes further along than we were before’, ‘every step counts’, ‘doesn’t matter if we slow down, slow is still moving’. I let myself take breaks more often, before I was totally knackered and found when I did that I didn’t need as long to recover, ten seconds and I was off again. Because I didn’t keep stopping for several minutes my body finally switched from sprint to marathon mode and everything started to get a bit easier, I got into the grind of it and didn’t have to concentrate on encouraging myself up every step, instead I could look around. That was a reward in itself, the view was beautiful rocky peaks all around peaking above low hanging clouds, the steps were hard and steep but that ment after every set you could see a measurable difference in your height compared to the surrounding peaks, suddenly I felt rewarded for my effort, I may be drenched in sweat but I would have never seen this on the bus, and even if I had it wouldn’t have felt half as special, like I earned it.

I was on such a high, both on the side of a mountain and mentally, even the burn in my legs felt rewarding, I looked at my watch and suddenly it was quarter to 6! I wasn’t going to make it by 6am but even that didn’t bring me down, if I made it all the way up it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done and I’d come so far I knew I’d make myself get there even if I had to crawl the last part. Seeing Machu Picchu would just be an amazing cherry on top who cares if it wasn’t with a guide!

At 5 to 6 I started to feel tired, it was funny how I had assumed I was completely spent 15 minutes in but after another 40 minutes I was actually just starting to feel the beginning of being tired. I sat down and ate half a banana, I would need the energy, I guessed I was about half way and had another hour, I would need to pace myself, my legs were tired but I knew they would do another hour, I would just need to take a bit longer breaks. I got up to move on before my body switched back to sprint mode, that was the last thing I needed. I zig zaged up the next 2 set of stairs when I heard a coach stopping and people chatting, this was the half way point I thought, I could just get the bus the rest of the way, but everything in my body said no we can do this, 1 more hour, I’m knackered but I can do this! Only when I reached the top of the stairs and got onto the road it looked like an entry que, I didn’t let myself believe it, false hope is a cruel thing on the body and mind, so I asked a woman selling water (for £8 a litre!) If this was half way, I almost hugged her when she said ‘no, este es el final’ but I was scared she would try and charge me a £10 for the privilege!

I had made it! And managed to do it in under an hour! It sounds silly but I actually had tears in my eyes, wether out of relief I made it or out of how proud I was of myself I’m not sure, but even writing this makes me a bit emotional (I know I’m a soppy mess).

It probably sounds silly reading it, but I can’t state how much of a enormous mental journey this whole trip was for me, how with a different mindset of being nice to myself and my body rather than hating it and getting angry changed everything, I felt lighter, I went from telling myself I had to give up after 15 minutes to preparing myself for another hour and honestly being quite excited for it! I was so happy I’d made it to the top I almost forgot we were actually here for a reason!

Machu Picchu was amazing! We were among the first 100 people to get in, we got to see it without hoards of tourists, quiet and peaceful among the clouds. It was worth the journey ten times over. I was worried before the trip that it would be over rated and not able to live up to the hype, as some places we’ve visited have been, but it wasn’t, it was beautiful. I can’t say the same for my photos, I was a sweaty mess with my hair plastered to my head! If you every see nice photos of people at the Machu Picchu it means they haven’t done it properly!

Although I was happy to miss the tour if I didn’t make it, I’m really glad I made it in time, it was so interesting and gave me a much greater appreciation for the place!

We learnt all about how it was built, if I felt tired coming up those stairs I can’t imagine how workers felt coming up it every day carrying rocks and building materials! Before they could even build the impressive structures above ground they first had to flatten the mountain peak! Not only that, they put in drainage and foundations while they were at it, 60% of the building and engineering work at Machu Picchu is underground, otherwise it would have just slid off or sink into the mountain during the rainy season, most of the terraces you see in photos are for holding the mountain back not farming as the soil on the mountain wasn’t very fertile. As a solution to that, tonnes of soil was brought up from the river valley below (screw carrying that up!). In total Machu Picchu had been under construction for 95 years. It’s estimated 1500 people worked on site each day, not slaves as you would expect, but civilians from different regions, the Incas used labour as a form of tax so people from different regions would work for a month a year for the government.

Unfortunately Machu Picchu was never completed, there are still statues waiting to be finished or placed in their final positions, although people did live there, it was built for the higher levels of society, not the rich but the important thinkers – philosophers, architects, priests etc. (Did you know the Inca were some of the first to independently use the concept of zero and also invented a secret messaging system involving the position of knots).

It is not 100 known why Machu Picchu was abandoned, but it is known that after one Inca ruler died the empire was torn apart when his two sons fought over the thrown, with one eventually winning but leaving the empire disjointed and weak. Soon after the Spanish invaded the already weakened empire, killing and conquering with force and the spread of western diseases. There are no signs of mass death at Machu Picchu and all roads to it were destroyed and hidden, so the current idea is that the ruler requested everyone leave and hide any trace of it to protect the unfinished project, which worked, the jungle had recovered the site in 10 years and it was never found and destroyed by the Spanish.

After years of conflict the Incas were wiped out, as technically the ‘Incas’ were the ruling class, but the normal lower class people, the Quechua people as they are known, fled into the jungle and mountains and are still around today, with the same language and traditions. Infact out guide came from one such family and told us about how his family still farmed in the Andies with the terrace system used by the Incas.

Hiram Bingham is credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu in 1911 but there were already farmers living there when he arrived and he was directed there by locals. Bingham did however make Machu Picchu world known again and all over the world the site and it’s artifacts were and continue to be studied. Only in 2011 did the UK give back artifacts it has kept from Machu Picchu and even then only 20% of what they hold.

After our tour was finished we had a walk around ourselves and took about a billion photos. By 11am it was starting to get rammed, busses packed people were arriving every few seconds and it was getting hard to move about so we decided to leave. I was so glad we had done the walk and gotten there early, as honestly the crowds were ridiculous!

All in all it was an absolutely amazing 4 days, I went into it crying and dreading making a fool out of myself and came out having done a complete 360. It was probably one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done and at the end I got to see the beautiful Machu Picchu!

Afterwards we piled on an 8 hour bus back to Cusco, which at this point is probably how long it’s taken you to read this huge post so I’ll update you on what we got up to in the next one!

Lots of love,

Alice x

P.s. sorry I’m a bit behind on these blogs but grace decided to nearly die! Which I’ll eventually get to writing about….. And it put me behind a bit.

Day three started with another early wake up call and a banging hangover, by 8am we were all bouncing around in the back of a van on our way the the zip lining place. This was the last of our adventure sports and the one I had been least scared for, more fool me! I’m scared of heights, but before you all jump on the ‘well obviously this was a bad idea’ band wagon, I’m normally fine with anything at height that feels secure or that I’m locked into so I thought that this would be fine and honestly for the first few lines I was fine, as fine as you can be being swung through the air hungover on very little sleep. If anything it was slightly anticlimactic we spent most of the time walking up steep hills (also not fun when hungover) only to sit in a harness and slide down again, I was too sleepy to feel the adrenalin. The scariest part of the first half of the experience was that I’d forgotten to put on bug spray and once again my legs got bitten to death!

On the 4th zip line they suggested we swing upside down apparently they had sensed the hungover groups lack of enthusiasm and insisted this would ‘bring up the excitement’ but the only thing it would bring up for me would be my breakfast, so I along with most of the group vetoed it, apart for a few people who had been sensible the night before.

The next obstical however was much less fun for me and this one I wasn’t able to veto, it was a long suspension bridge with wooden slats we had to all make our way across. I volunteered to go first, not out of bravery but because I thought sod being stuck waiting behind other people as we dangle above this valley! I’m going to get across as quickly as possible before some idiot gets the idea to start wobbling the bridge. Thats exactly what I did except quickly is probably too strong a word, but a reasonable pace for somone who seemed to suddenly have jelly for legs. The wooden slats were placed so you could just about reach them with your legs fully extended which was scary enough, but every third or fourth slat had broken and slid down, a reassuring sign about the upkeep of the bridge! So you had to literally hold on the the cables and jump, as if a broken bridge swaying in the wind wasn’t terrifying enough now there were huge jumps involved. Every time I stopped to think about it I started to freeze up in fear, so I tried to not think about it, I just kept repeating ‘you’re safe, you’re fine’ under my breath and matching my steps to it to keep myself going. Untill a German woman behind asked what I was saying, I quickly explained my fear of heights and how this was helping and she informed me of how stupid I was for coming zip lining and how stupid a fear of heights was in the first place. I think she would have found my fear of heights a lot less stupid if she had know it was the only thing stopping her get a kick in the shin at that exact moment. I made it to the other side in one piece, almost kissed the ground in appreciation and thought about how I’d never take solid non-swaying ground for granted again! My nerves were fraid but I was proud of myself that I had faced my fear and not let it get the better of me…apart from nearly assaulting a poor German woman.

Little did I know that was just the warm up for me, next up we got to climb a vertical rock face by the side of a waterfall, at one point it even jutted out and we had to climb under the part that bulged out. I turned to Grace and immediately said ‘nope, no way, not happening, thanks and goodbye’ my legs were still jelly from the bridge and my hang over made me want to puke just looking at the top. Somehow I managed to talk myself into it though, if I could manage the walk yesterday that I was sure I would barely be able to do and if I could mannage the bridge without stopping, I could mannage this. Again I decided speed was the best option, I hauled my self up using the rusted metal pegs in the rock, thankful to have had my tetanus injections! It was hard work at speed with my jelly legs but if I made sure to look down no further than where I was putting my feet I could just about fight back the urge to cry. That was untill I got to the part where the rock jutted out, I could feel myself leaning backwards and was absolutely terrified but I was almost at the top and kept going, hoping no one would notice my watery eyes at the top, as I pushed myself up and grabbed the next metal peg it came loose in my had. I honestly thought that was how I was going to die, with my last words being ‘Ahh s&*!’ Luckily even though my brain was a blubbering mess, my arm and leg that were still in place tensed up and I just ended up swinging into the rock. I just about held it together untill the people below who had seam me smash into the rock shouted up to see if I was okay, my reply of I’m fine just need a moment’ was probably made slightly less convincing by the fact that I was hyperventilating and crying like a baby. Grace was on the set of pegs across from me and went full mum mode to help me calm down and slow my breathing until I felt a bit of an idiot with everyone watching and clambered the rest of the way up to the top where I was greeted by scott and a big bear hug. I felt like a class A prat, until 5 minutes later when another girl in our group did exactly yhe same thing and also had a cry, at least we could be idiots together! The German lady wandered over again to start her ‘I told you so’ piece but after an angry glare from Grace she seemed to think better of it. After a few more zip lines and a hundred more sand fly bites we were done and got to sit down for lunch. More quinoa soup, lucky us!

After lunch we were all ready for a nap, but the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to a long and apparently uninteresting walking along the train tracks to Aguas Calientes, the town right before the final assent to Machu Picchu. Scott suggested the radical idea that instead of walking along the train tracks why not get the train along them, it spread like wildfire amounts the hungover masses. It cost $25US to take the train and payment had to be in US dollars, to the disappointment of a lot of people in our group who didn’t have dollars and now would have to do the journey peasant style. But for us it was $25 well spent, we got to relax in hammocks for the next hour before boarding a plesent train for a journey that only took us 40 minutes instead of several hours. We brought snacks and made friends with a group of old Argentinean ladies who were relentlessly flirting with Scott, who obviously loved it and even shared a rum and coke with them, hair of the dog and all that! But the icing on the cake was that we got to wave to our group as we went past, watching them slog along in the rain while we wizzed past in a warm comfy train was worth the $25 on its own!

We arrived at our hostel an hour before everyone else and even mannaged to get a shower before all the hot water ran out. After dinner we crawled straight into bed, we were still hungover and our final day started at 3am!

I’ll let you know how it went in the next post.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Day two began with a 4:30am wake up, ready for breakfast at 5am and the start of the trek at 5:30am. This was the day I had been dreading, I asked the guide about the trek, it would start with a slight uphill walk then a steep uphill part, then a strenuous uphill part and then a less steep uphill part and then another more strenuous uphill section and after that I stopped listening, the general jist was that it would be uphill almost all of the way, and my legs and bum were already aching from the previous day!

It was hard, really hard, but it was also doable. It was great to have an encouraging group of people to do it with, everyone took it at their own pace and I was surprised to find I wasn’t at the back, but actually in the first third of the group for most of it. Whenever you took a break people overtaking would offer a smile and encouragement and when they took a break I would pass and do the same, it was nice to know that during the hardest parts even though you were walking alone at your own pace you weren’t really alone. It was the first time on this trip I’ve enjoyed a group trek as much as I’ve enjoyed treks me and Grace have done alone, and it just proved to me how much of my struggling previously was down to my mentality much more than physical incapability.

It had been raining the whole way, but far from annoying I found it was actually quite refreshing and much better than having the sun beat down on us, however around 10am it started to really pour down. Luckily we weren’t far from our first big break stop where we got a sit down for half an hour and a talk about the surrounding flora and fauna such as potatoes and coffee and how it was used by the Incas (fun fact the word jerky is actually an Andian word for dried meat), we also got the opportunity to buy Coco leaves for anyone who was tired and the chance to try a local delicacy, a kind of tequila with a snake in. My favourite part however, was that we got to pet a tiny monkey and some less friendly parrots. We also all got Inca war face paint to perk us up and make us brave for the rest of the journey, how authentic this is I’m not to sure but it was a good laugh none the less. Although less fun once we started walking again and it mixed with the sweat and ran into our eyes!

The next few hours was spent walking through jungle, across rickety bridges, up steep stone steps and even at one point being pulled across a river in a metal car dangling high above! We also at one section were told to run in groups of three along a mountain path, apparently landslides were common at this section and this method ensued only a maximum of three of us would die! Luckily none of us died and we got to stop for a nice lunch of Spaghetti Bolognese, this time even if it had of smelt like cat food I think I still would have demolished it.

We continued onwards and of course upwards using the narrow stone paths built by the Incas until we reached the highest point of 4300m, it was absolutely breathtaking to look down on a gorgeous valley below and see how far we had climbed. We sat there for a while and the guide decided this was a good a place as any for a history break, he pointed out caves above us in the rock and told us how pre Inca communities buried sacraficed women and children in them (funny how it’s never the men!). About how there were several trails built by the Incas to Machu Picchu and this one was only rediscovered in the year 2000. He told us that recently there has been a compition to see how fast the Inca trail could be completed and locals as well as athletes from all over the world were invited to try and complete it in the shortest time, a fit hiker normally does it in 2-3 days, professional athletes completed it in 7 hours, but local Andeans completed it in 3.5 hours! Believed to be the same sort of time it took messengers, information from Machu Picchu was believed to reach all the way to Cusco in 5 hours using a relay of messengers, a journey which would take us 4 days using cars along parts!

With that in mind we decided it was best for us to get a spurt on and get moving again, we finally reached our hostel for the night about 5pm. I couldn’t of been happier, I had done the hardest day! Not only that but I had been in the fastest half for all of it! I had even helped some of the people people who were struggling, I had been where they were hundreds of times and it was nice to be able to give them advice that helped me in the past – your mind gives up long before your body does, repeat a mantra to yourself and match your breathing to it mine is ‘slow and steady wins the race’, the first half an hour is the worst, after that your body changes energy use (from sprint to marathon mode) if you can get through that it’s easier and lots of other little tips I’ve learned over the last 3 months. It was so rewarding to see how far I’ve come but even more rewarding to hear someone else say ‘what you said actually really helped’ I was on such a high during dinner as the whole group were, it ended up turning into a celebration and then into a party….woops!

But what a great evening it was, there was dancing, well attempted dancing but the Latinos in the group were less than impressed with most of us English and our lack of hip movement so stepped in to show us how it’s done, which evolved into salsa lessons (although I proudly received the compliment ‘for an English person your not actually that bad’ but I put that down to the alcohol more than anything else!) in return we treated everyone to a karaoke of classic English songs, not too sure that was a fair trade if I’m honest. It was such a fun evening, a bit to fun for me as I passed out around 3am! I’m not too sure how long it continued after that! But we regreted it in the morning…

Again this has turned into a long post so I’ll update you on day three in the next one.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Cusco is another beautiful city, full of energy, people and more great food, which we took full advantage of! We walked around the city on our first day just to take it all in, while in the main square a shoe shine (yup they still have these in south america and theyre very popular!) Offered to clean Scott’s dirty converse for S./1 (23p)! Apparently Scott had never heard the saying ‘if it sounds to good to be true it probably is’ and accepted the offer, after a quick brush the shine suggested some ‘soap’ to clean the white canvus, by suggested I mean he started applying it and when questioned replied ‘soap, good, protects…..40 sol more’ (S./40 is £9.20). Also by soap he apparently really meant white paint and just painted over the dirt….and the laces….and the logo….and Scott’s socks. He painted pretty much anything he came into contact with bright white, we tried to encourage him to paint Scott’s legs too, maybe he would finally look like he had a bit of a tan! But Scott was keen to leave with what was left of his shoes and bartered the shine down to S./10 (£2.30), which i think was great value for a good 20 minutes of hysterically laughing and the shoes actually did look like new, from a distance anyway!

The rest of the afternoon we spent researching our plan for Machu Picchu. Grace and I had originally planned to take the train but the boys all wanted to do the jungle treck, a four day adventure trail through the jungle to Machu Picchu including different adventure sports/activities. I was so torn, on the one hand it sounded really fun and I wanted to go along with the group and not miss out, but on the other I am the worlds biggest whimp when it comes to adventure sports and I also have super bad anxiety about group hikes, the last time me and Grace had gone on one I had a panic attack.

In the end my fear of missing out won and I reluctantly handed over $150US (£115) and signed up, the first day consisted of four hours bike riding through mountain roads and then several hours of white water rafting down a river, the second day was a seven hour trek on the inca trail, the third day was another morning of walking followed by an afternoon of zip lining and the fourth day was a 4 hour walk from Machu Picchu town to the site itself, ending in 2000 steps up the mountain peak which we had to complete in under an hour or we would miss the tour. Safe to say I was absolutely terrified! I convinced myself the the first day wouldn’t be so bad and after that I would be too far in to turn back. No matter how scared I was, how far behind everyone else, however much I hated it, I would have to continue, I would have to make it, wether I liked it or not. A brave decision in the tour shop but afterwards I didn’t feel so brave, it took everything I had not to cancel it, I even cried as I packed my bag! It was already a huge mental battle for me and I hadn’t even left the hostel!

Luckily we had the most supportive and fun group I could of hoped for! Me, Grace, Scott, Elliot and Jason were picked up early the next morning and met two lovely English guys (George and Neal) and a kiwi (Sam) and then at the next hostel we picked up four English girls (Poppy, Kelly, Liz and Robin) and purely by coincidence it turned out they knew Jason and Elliot from university! So the drive there was a lot of fun, we all shared most of the snacks we had brought for the trek and had a good sing along to some songs and got to know each other, it really helped calm my nerves!

That was until on the drive up the mountain to our biking start point, the weather took a turn for the worst. So far in Peru we’ve had nothing but sunshine, but today was the day we had torrential rain and thick fog, it was terrifying to drive in, there were hair point turns that came out of nowhere in the fog and distant lights suddenly became cars in seconds.

When the driver shouted for us to get out and grab our bikes we all looked sheepishly ay each other. A few people in the second group decided to opt out and stay in the warmth of the car but I’d made a promise to myself that I would try everything, well something like that anyway, the actual promise had a few more curse words! So out we got in the rain, and straped all of out protective clothing on, needing a spine protector is always encouraging when you’re already terrified! The others moaned about not wanting all of the protective gear provided, but not me, I checked and double checked every fastening, honestly if they’d of offered me bubble wrap at that point I’d of put on a good 5 layers just in case!

After a quick photo and a warming about slowing down in the parts where the road was flooded and would turn into a river (affectionately know as ‘gringo killers’!!!), we were off. It was not a good start for me, my helmet kept sliding into my eyes, not that I could see anything anyway in the fog and within seconds I was drenched, we were all going somewhat slowly due to the lack of visibility but I still seemed to be lagging behind, even though I seemed to be putting in twice the effort of everyone else! We reached the first pit stop and the fog started to clear, I gave myself a little pep talk about how I knew I would be the least fit in the group, so what who cares if I’m last and find it hard, I’ll still get there, I will have still done it the same as everyonr else etc., but just as I was about to set off the guide signalled for me to come over to the van. It turned out I had done the whole of the first section with a flat front tyre and not even noticed in the fog! Once it was pumped up I felt like I was floating on air (or more accurately sitting on more air?), the next section was a breeze compaired to the last and finally I could just cycle with the same effort as everyone else, even if I was still a huge scaredy cat who slowed down for every turn!

After the next stop I cycled along with Scott for a while and he gave me lots of tipps for tackeling the turns, how to position the bike before the bend so you stayed on the middle of the tyres and had more grip. After an hour and a half I was much more confident, I even started overtaking people who were struggeling uphill. We were all getting cocky, which unfortunately led to a few accidents. Grace came off after taking a hair pin turn too fast and slid along the road on her back, luckily she had her spine protector on, scott went to wide on a turn and missed an oncoming car by centimetres and Poppy took one of the flooded sections of road to fast and slid off her bike! Luckily the guy behind her had some bike experience and managed to jump his bike over her head instead of driving into it! It would have been a realy cool moment if we weren’t all too busy thinking ‘oh $#!& she’s going to die!’ We even saw somone from another group slide and stop about 3cm from a sheer drop on one corner. Safe to say I went back to slow and boring on the bends after that! But after 3 hours we all made it with only a few scrapes and bruises, we had cycled from 4800m high to 1200m. I’m glad I did it, especially after wanting to get back in the car after the first section, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again, I prefer my bike rides to have a much lower chance of death and injuries thanks!

After that all I wanted was to rest my achey legs and bum and get warm and dry, but no such luck, the afternoon was dedicated to white water rafting.

We were given a quick demonstration of the three basic moves in white water rafting, front paddle, back paddle and dropping. None of us seemed to be in sync and Elliot really struggled to get the drop position, the most important position which stops you falling into the river when hit by a big wave, despite this we were set off into the river to tackle the grade III and IV rapids. It was a lot of fun, although we were all hopelessly out of sync, we got bashed about and absolutely soaked but we still made it through! Despite our guides best efforts to tip us we managed to stay in the boat by gripping our feet and using our already aching bum and leg muscles. Grace even got a go at being head of the boat which suited her down to the ground, she loves a bit of bossing people about, but the guide said she was too aggressive and moved her back, much to me and Scott’s amusement! When we reached the end of our ride we had to walk bare foot up a hill to the main road and got absolutely bitten alive by sand flies (If you’ve never been bitten by a sand fly imagine a mosquito bite but much more itchy, it doesn’t stop itching for a solid week and starts to swell up the bitten area!)

We got to our hostel and hung out our wet clothes, ready for a warm meal and bed. First we were treated to a quinoa soup, everything in Peru has quinoa in, it’s less of a fancy hipster food here and more just basic cheap ingredient! I was just about to tuck into the next course of a beef stew on rice when Grace pointed out it looked and smelled a bit like cat food, after that I didn’t feel that hungry any more!

After dinner we sat about chatting for a while, took advantage of our last hot shower for the next few days and headed to bead ready for our early wake up call for the long day of hiking ahead.

I’ll keep you updated on how it went in the next post as this one is already very long!

Lots of love,

Alice x

Our next stop was Arequipa, another beautiful colonial town, we were glad it lived up the the reputation after the horrible night bus we had to get there! We decided to book the cheapest one, every night bus we’d had so far had been great, lots of leg room, reclining seats, free meal and blankets and super comfy. So we figured the cheaper one would maybe not include a meal and blankets but really apart from that what could be wrong? It turns out a lot. We were crammed into bolt upright chairs that didn’t recline at all and were all of 5cm away from the chair in front, which would be fine if you didn’t have any legs. Honestly I’m sure caged hens get more room and the cages probably smell better too! Eventually we got used to sitting bolt upright crushed into a bus that smelt like a urinal and drifted off to sleep, but you can see why it was a relief to wake up in beautiful Arequipa!

The first day we had a walk around the city, it’s surrounded by 3 volcanos and was built by the spanish out of beautiful white volcanic stone. Arequipa is known as the white city and people assume it’s because of these white stone buildings but originally the buildings where all painted colonial colours, it was actually called the white city because there was no town in Arequipa before the Spanish decided to settle there so it was predominantly a city of white people, after independence the colonial colours were left to fade off of buildings and a more politically correct back story for the white city was spread.

Arequipa also had ammaazzinnggg food and as if that wasn’t great already it was also super cheap! We visited a huge food market and treated ourselves to some super tasty mangos! We also spoilt ourselves and dined in a few nice restaurants while here but our favourite was a burger restaurant that made everything from scratch, the food was great and a huge burger chips and a drink came to S/.15 (£3.45) you can’t argue with that! They also had an amazing selection of home made sauces which were delicious, including a purée black olive sauce, which sounds disgusting and was bright purple but was actually really tasty!

On our second day in Arequipa we went for a walking tour, it was interesting to hear the history of the city and the guide pointed out lots of parts of architecture that mixed Spanish and native symbols to try and integrate the city, especially in the churches where native religious symbols were carved into entrances to ease the transition of the local populations into Christianity. We also got to see the monestry and learnt about the tradition for children of the town. For each family the first son was sent into the army and the last to become a preist, the first daughter was to be married, the second sent to become a nun in the monestry, hence why the monestry here is so huge! Outside of the monestry we got to meet Peru’s most friendly police officer, again this was not just our opinion but he had been voted such for the last 3 years! Me and Grace seem to attract all of Peru’s celebrities!

We also visited an alpaca farm and got to see a few, we learnt the difference between lamas, alpacas and a smaller version called Guanacos. All lamas and alpacas in Peru are domestic after hundereds of years of agricultural use in Peru, Guanacos however were to fast to ever be caught and domesticated. We were shown all of the natural alpaca wool colours and then how these were dyed. There were also local women hand weaving alpaca wool products, which range in price but can be up to £3000 for a single jumper or scalf! Our budget doest quite stretch that far so we had to make do with just feeling how soft the products were.

We had heard about a rooftop bar which supposedly had a beautiful view of the sunset so in the evening we went to find it and after much walking around in circles, checking our phone maps and gawping about at the skyline like idiots we mannaged to root it out and enter just in time to see the sun go down, it was definitely worth the game of blues clues to find it!

After a lovely evening we headed on a night bus (this time the most expensive one! And boy was it nice!) to Cusco. I’ll let you know what we get up to there!

Lots of love,

Alice x

We didn’t stay long in Lima, it’s the capital of Peru but there wasn’t masses to do in the city, we took a walking tour around the old town which was interesting, we found out lots of cool facts like how it is the 2nd largest desert capital city after Cairo, Egypt, it has the largest bull fighting ring in Latin America, A third of Peru’s population live there and it never experiences rain, only dribble. We also saw the world’s smallest Catholic church and tried our first pisco sours, which was delicious!

Pisco is the national spirit of Peru made from fermented grapes, it was developed by the Spanish as an alternative to the expensive gin imports from spain. Unlike most national drinks we’ve tried (looking at you aguardiente) it is actually very nice! The second day we went shopping and I bought some trainers, I finally don’t have to decide between cold toes in my sandles or looking like Dora the explorer in my walking boots!

That night we headed to Huacachina on an overnight bus, we were told it would be cold there so wore our warmest coats, Huacachina is a beautiful oasis in the desert so we should have known it wasn’t cold, but we listened to the locals which again was probaly foolish as they tend to be in a duffel coat in any temperature lower than 25 degrees. After lookong like idiots and peeling off our 500 layers we really enjoyed the oasis, it’s like nothing weve ever experienced before, a tiny little village around an oasis, it was so beautiful. We spent the day sunbathing and relaxing and in the evening we climbed up a huge sand dune behind our hostal and watched the sun go down. It was absolutly stunning and picturesque until the boys got bored and started trying to push eachother down the slope and of course me and Grace had to show them how it was done with a sneek attack rolling down the hill to take out their legs from underneath them.

The next day we went on a pisco tour, ‘tour’ is a strong word, what actually happened was after a guy approached us asking for $100US for a tour and we laughed him out of the hostel a local guy offered to take us for S./25 (£5.80). It turned out to be him and his mate driving us there in old bangers but it did the job. Once we reached the winery we were given a free tour around and the process of making peruvian wines and pisco was explained to us. It’s much the same as in the rest of the world only much faster as it is warm year round here and is stored in big pottery urn type things, technical I know, you try remembering facts when you’re several glasses down! After the tour we also got to taste some peruvian wines and like most things in south america it is far to sweet! The pisco however was absolutly beautiful and we ended up buying a few bottles of different flavours, straberry, passion fruit and coffee. We were then taken to another winery but as wed already heared the ‘official tour’ our driver took us on his own tour which consisted on giving us as much as every kind of alcohol he could get his hands on, which we gleefully accepted. We also got to try pouring the drinks ourselves using the bamboo stick they dip in the pottery urns and then pour from, it was a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially when already quite tipsy, I was voted best in the group, im not quite sure what thay says about me! We decided to carry on our pisco tasting at our hostel with our newly purchased bottles and after watch the sunset from a lovely rooftop bar over dinner before heading off on yet another night bus.

As always I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to next,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Our first week in Peru was mainly spent at the beach, from here on out it will be getting colder and there isn’t masses of things to do in the north of Peru, so after meeting up with our friend Scott and two other guys he is traveling with, we spent the first week or so here traveling down the coast for beach town to beach town. Scott is still teaching Grace to surf but I’ve decided I’m more of a fair weather surfer, I’d rather soak up rays on the beach than surf in the Pacific. You have to wear a wet suit here to surf and me in a wet suit is the opposite end of the spectrum to what I consider fun, there are whales here and I don’t want to run the risk of a mistaken harpooning! So lately it’s just been lots of tanning, I’m now the most brown I’ve ever been, which mainly just makes me look like a need a good shower.

So far our thoughts on Peru are that it’s nice, the food is a lot better than the rest of South America, especially chifa a mix of Chinese and Peruvian cooking, although were less keen on Inca kola, a fizzy drinks that seems to be a national treasure here, it kind of tastes like panda pop and is a bit to sweet for our taste. Women here love an oversized hat and taxi drivers always think you want a taxi. Even if you just got out of a taxi, even if you’re getting onto a bus, even if you’ve just told the previous 10 taxis in a row of traffic you don’t want a taxi, they still think if they bib and nod at you, you’ll cave and decided they’re right, it really was a taxi you’ve been after this whole time, you’ve just been playing hard to get. In fact everyone here loves bibbing, it seems to be a trend in South America, bibbing for no reason, even if you’re the only car on the road, but here in Peru they have personalized horns, which is an unexpected and loud twist. The people here are very friendly and actually speak some English which makes life a little easier.

Eventually we had to leave the beach and headed to Huaraz, a really beautiful town up in the Andies. It is absolutely stunning but also freezing cold and coming from the coast I really felt the change in altitude. This is the first time I’ve had altitude sickness badly, normally I just get headaches but this time I could feel my individual organs throbbing and felt constantly sick, luckily Scott was a diligent nurse and brought me tea made with Coco leaves every few hours which helped a bit.

We spent the first day in Huaraz exploring the town, it’s the third most populated town in Peru and is absolutely bustling with life, we managed to find a shop selling coats and bought some fake North Face jackets that so far have kept us warm against the wind, we just have to hope they don’t fall apart at the seams when it rains!

On our second day in Huaraz we wanted to do a hike to one of the beautiful glacial lagoons in the mountains. The boys all opted to do the 8 hour hike to Laguna 69, an absolutely stunning blue lake at 4700m, but as I was struggling to climb the stairs of my bunk bed without feeling queezy, I thought a 4700m climb may be a bit much (fun fact the average skydiving height is 4000m). Instead we opted for a trip to Laguna Llanganuco, a lower down Laguna which is apparently the inspiration for the paramount pictures logo, how could we refuse?

The Laguna itself was stunning, the trip to see it however was an absolute shambles. The trip was supposed to be 9am-5pm, we were picked up late and then walked around town to different agencies, none of whom seemed to claim ownership of our tour, we were eventually added onto a group of people on another tour. However no-one would read our ticket or speak to us to clarify we were headed to the same destination, until Grace lost her temper and shoved our ticket at the guide shouting “will you just look at it!!”, which terrified the guide into finally helping us and became a fun catchphrase for the rest of the trip (Grace is not a morning person incase that was not immediately clear). Once we were shuttled to the correct bus we realized we were the only English speakers on the tour, that included the ‘english speaking guide’ we had paid for, I guess they didn’t specify how much English he spoke, but we were expecting more than just the word ‘okay’. That did not however deter him from directing his whole tourist information speech directly at me, for several hours. To be fair it was nice to know my Spanish is now good enough to understand a talk about geology, but unfortunately that was only a small part of the tour and I didn’t get much of the rest! The first few hours of the tour consisted of a long drive accompanied by a Spanish guide to the scenery, our first stop was a pretty plaza, we’re still not too sure why, but there was a photo opitnity infront of a random church that we’re still kicking ourselves about missing out on! After that there was a long drive to the lagoon.

The lagoon is beautiful, with cristal clear blue water, surrounded by beautiful snowcapped mountains, we could have spent the whole day here walking around, but unfortunately we only had 40 minutes before we had to be back on the coach. We walked about a quarter of the way around the lake before we had to head back. Although the walk was beautiful it wasn’t the best idea while still suffering from the altitude and I managed to throw up on the side of the lake, which Grace found hillarious and pointed out that I’m always sick in the most beautiful places we go to, lake Atitilan, the Galapagos Islands and by a glacial lake.

We left the lake at 3pm and were taken to a restaurant nearby, unfortunately the only food available was chicken feet soup or fried Guinea pig, after just being sick I didn’t think I could stomach either. As it had taken so long to get to the lake and the trip was supposed to end at 5pm we assumed we would be heading straight home afterwards, so we just grabbed some biscuits.

Instead of heading back south we headed north for another two hours, again stopping at another plaza, we we marched off the bus and into a shop to try a spoonful of caramel and immediately marched straight back onto the bus and began traveling back in the direction of home. The caramel was nice but not quite worth a two hour trip! On the way back we had several more 5 minute stops to take photos infront of churches and to look at not much at all, one stop was to look at a rock that ‘had a face on it’, if you can call a circular rock with a lump in the middle a face. Everyone on the bus was getting more and more frustrated and less people bothering to get off everytime. Around 7:30pm, on our 9am-5pm, tour we stopped to watch a pottery demonstration, the guy was literally in his pajamas watching TV when we turned up, it was actually quite interesting and I’d decided to just go with the flow at that point and enjoy it. After a full day stuck on a coach haven only eaten a packet of biscuits Grace however, was about to explode with anger and when the guide spent another ten minutes trying to chat to her in Spanish instead of getting on the bus…well let’s just say it was probably a good thing he didn’t speak much English!

We got back home around 8pm, a total of 11 hours on the tour probably about 4 hours of that we spent outside of the coach! We grabbed a quick dinner and then had to get straight on an overnight coach to Lima! Hopefully our time here will be a bit more rewarding.

I’ll let you know what we get up to here!

Lots of love,

Alice x