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general travel trip reports

inka trail – day one

The classic Inka Trail is 45km long, and usually covered in four days. Following major overuse and abuse of the trail, the number of people starting the Inka Trail (the classical Inka trail to Macchu Pichu) was limited a few years ago, with guidelines instated regarding porter (or chaski “fleet-foot messenger”) welfare, and limiting how much they can carry. It is not allowed to trek the Inka Trail independently, as you must have a trek permit and guide. So we signed ourselves up for a group trek a few months back, and ended up with a group of 14 trekkers (6 English girls, an English couple, and American couple, a solo American girl, and a solo Dutch girl), 21 chaskis, and our guide (David) and assistant guide (Gustavo).

After travelling in a bus from Cusco, with a breakfast stop at Ollantaytambo, we reached KM82 – the point along the railway line where the trekking begins.

 

 

Burros carrying a load wander along the train line by the start of the Inca Trail.

More than half the group elected to hire a personal porter to carry their sleeping gear and extra things, so they just had to carry a daypack. We were feeling sheepish enough at having someone else carrying our tent, food, and cooking supplies, so couldn’t bring ourselves to pay for a personal porter. This was all good until we saw the size of the sleeping bags we’d hired from the company. They were warm, but just a single one of them nearly filled up one of our 30L daypacks. Prolonged puzzling led to an attack forcing two sleeping bags into a single daypack, jumping on them repeatedly to make them fit, then quickly camming the straps on the bag to trap them in place before they could spring back into shape.

 

 

Walking by the Urabamba River on Day One.

We started off wandering along by the train tracks, cursing the lazy tourists who were taking the easy way in on the noisy trains, then swung up into the hills, following along the river.

 

 

Llactapata

We reached our first sizeable Incan site with Llactapata, an old village at the fork of the Urabamba River and Kusichaca Stream. At some point we stopped for lunch, and had our first experience of the lunch tent, and the three course meals that were to await us every day. I can remember that the entree on our first day involved avacado, and then there was soup, and the main course involved trout from the ponds nearby… I really miss the cook.

And now because I have far too many photos to post, click more for camp on the first evening…

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general travel

cusco, peru

The town of Cusco, sprawled out over the surrounding hills – which also have hill graffiti scrawled over them, not very visible in this photo though.

 

 

An ‘istorical monument (the Cathedral).

 

 

And some Incan stonework. There’s lots of it around town, and if you read the guidebooks they tell you to go and look at it all. I was not particularly excited by it – though it did manage to fill me with disdain for all modern attempts at building worldwide.

 

 

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general travel

lake titicaca

In Puno, Peru – altitude of 3826 metres. It’s definitely up high (we didn’t see the Bolivian Navy though).

 

 

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general travel

uyuni, bolivia

When we arrived in Uyuni after the trip through the Altiplano, we discovered that a lot of the buses to La Paz weren’t running that night, due to blockades. So we booked a ticket for a bus the following night, and hoped it wouldn’t be cancelled as well. And spent a day and a half hanging out in Uyuni, a little town with a population of 10,000 or so, some really good street markets, and lots of tourist shops selling tours out onto the Salar. The night markets sold huge slices of tasty cake for 15 cents. Actually, there were lots of places you could buy slices of cake throughout Bolivia, and in Peru as well (maybe in Chile too, but I didn’t notice it so much there). A girl could grow very large with such ready access to enormous slices of delicious cake for such a low price.

 

 

Bolivian women with one child in hand, the other in load carrying stripy device on her back. It was a common sight to see women carrying young kids like this (and if it wasn’t young kids, it was some load or another). Also with trademark Bolivian bowler hat perched atop her head, and two long plaits with tassels tied on the end.

 

 

Political graffiti in town – there was a lot of this throughout Bolivia and Peru.

 

 

Lovely communist style statue on the street by the train line.

(In the end the bus we got tickets for was not cancelled, and the vibrations of the rough Bolivian roads even became calming after a while – it was a bit like sitting on a massage chair)

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general travel

salar de uyuni

Salar de Uyuni – at 10,582 km² , the largest salt flat on Earth. Around 40,000 years ago it was part of Lake Minchin (an enormous lake that encompassed the Salar as well as another neighbouring Salar, and two existing lakes). It sits at an altitude of 3650m on the Bolivian Altiplano being salty and flat.

 

 

It’s also very handy for taking lots of silly photos – here we see Alex executing a perfect star-jump style ‘jump’ photo.

 

 

Up-close with the salt – it’s very hard, and forms strange patterns on the surface.

 

 

And is also good for napping (but then again, where isn’t?)

 

 

And more silly photos, as I attempt to fly.

 

 

As we draw closer to Uyuni, we reach the salt harvesting operations. I was under the illusion that these pyramids would be something like an enormous pile of table salt – not so, they’re really pretty solid.