MACHU PICHU - DAY 1

SATURDAY 25th JUNE

  Up at an unearthly early hour and ready and waiting with my two bags at the hotel entrance.  Santiago, the guide arrived about half an hour late, but hey that doesn't seem to be that unusual in these parts.  I got on the coach with him and we had about a three hour drive to the starting point. We crossed the plain of Chinchero and quickly descended into the Valley of the Sacred Heart, with beatiful snow capped mountains in the background.  About half way to Km 89 (the starting point) we stopped to pick up the other 10 members of the Tucan Party as well as the chef and the porters and the assistant guide Marco and carried on to our destination.

                                                        The Starting Point.
   The rest of the party are aged between 18 and 34, which makes the eldest exactly half my age.  They have been traveling all over South America under the leadership of a Spanish speaking tour guide, Mark (on the right) with who I shared a nocturnal tent on the trip.  Worryingly they were going to follow in my footsteps to Puno and La Paz, but there has been rioting in Puno with 6 people killed, the border to Bolivia closed and doubts about the Andean Explorer train running.  Just what I need.

  For about an hour I managed to keep up with the group, but gradually started falling further and further behind.  I must admit that the scenery was spectacular and the trail was as abysmally masochistic as I had imagined in my wildest nightmares.  My toenail on the large toe is nearly falling off and my right knee is taking a terrible pounding.  I managed to stay in touch with the group at least until we reached our first Inca ruins.

 There Lisa very kindly asked me if I would like to have my photo taken against the backround of the ruins.  An offer made on several occasions by some of the other girls as well.

  I finally arrived an hour or two behind the others just in time to see the porters introduce themselves and get themselves photpgraphed.  I in the meantime grabbed a litre bottle of cold Pilsner, made available to us by the landowners where we were camping, and I did not begrudge a penny of the 16 soles I paid for it!

  After dinner we played a game of "Who am I?" and I eventually got Ronald McDonald, and went with Ronald Reagan.  It took them a while to get him.  When I got Neil Diamond I went with Neil Sedaka, and had to drop some heavy clues before one of the girls got it.  One of the 18 year olds said, "Neil who?"  Oh well there are some advantages to being older.

  Our briefing for tomorrow was not encouraging.  It is apparently the toughest day of all four, and you have to climb up to 14,000ft to get through the pass.  But the so-called encouring news is that it is good to know you have the worst behind you!  It was a bloody cold night and I was glad I had on a T-shirt, shirt, fleece shirt, fleece jacket, thick socks, wooly hat, gloves, underpants and trousers inside Scott's sleeping bag.  However the shape of the ground was not conducive to the shape of my body and I kept tossing and turning, and do not recall getting to sleep, although I guess I must have dozed for a while here and there.

  10KM down and 29Km to go - I must have been mad booking this trip!