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