Weather: The guide compared the weather to the local women: changeable, unpredictable and bad for the health.
Llama Count: I cant tell the difference between llamas and Alpacas, this probably invalidates all previous llama counts.
South American tour companies just love their early mornings. I suppose the sleepy tourist is easier to deal with, and by the time said tourist wakes up properly they are too far away from civilisation to complain. Today was no different, I left Cusco/ Cuzo at 5.30 am, (like all journeys on this continent it left a casual hour later than intended, I had a wonderful sleep in the hostel reception .) Before I was properly awake I had entered to Peruvian roller-coaster which is the road from Cusco to Mollepata, the collectivo (taxi) sped up for each bend, with Perus finest folk music blaring. We arrived at the destination just before I threw up, I still have the travel sickness of a four year old.
Salkantay is one of the many treks to Machu Pichu...
The Inca Trail:
This is the classic trail, which most people do. However, as I am organisationally challenged, and didn't get my act together in time (6 months in advance) it was all booked up by the time I had even decided to go to South America.
Inca Jungle Trek:
Described by someone I met in Bolivia as the marshmallow option. Involves little walking, a bit of biking and zip lining instead. I thought it would probably be the OAT appreciation society.
Lares Trek:
Easier walking through rural communities.
Salkantay:
The hardest option, and involves climbing to a mountain pass of 4900 metres.
So I turned up in jeans, and an Indiana Jones hat. This is apparently not the correct trekking gear, and I was given dirty looks for the first few hours by members of the group who were kitted out in North Face gear, and had a large love for their trekking poles. It probably didn't help that I had managed to sit on my sun glasses on the way to Mollepata, and had had to go into a local shop and try and buy another pair... The only pair they had was a pair of Prada sunglasses which had definitely spent a couple of years on the mountain side, and were sporting more scratches than my CD collection. I could now see, but the addition of Prada definitely upped by poser status by a factor of about one hundred.
Fortunately there were no politicised republicans or hippies in the group. Instead the Motley collection contained:
Julia, who is the most normal by far, wonderfully cool, grew up on a game reserve in Botswana, and also has an amazing straw hat for the trek.
The Three Dutch.
The Dutch girls mother was not happy with her going travelling around South America on her own, and had insisted she find some people on the Internet to go travelling with. So the Dutch girl found Mark an eruditely geeky man who also needed a travelling companion, later in the trek Julia asked Mark- "were you not concerned about meeting a weirdo on the internet." Mark apparently replied something along the lines of well I have one week left, which leads me to introduce the last of the Dutch trio. Only problem is I couldnt say his name properly for the whole five days... I think it was something along the lines of Gheert. Gheert was definitely looking for something a bit more than a travelling companion, this was advertised by the large pack of condoms he insisted in carrying around in a clear plastic bag for the whole trek, it was never trusted to the mule. However, he very concerned about exertion at altitude, and kept demanding the guide give him oxygen. The guide gave him nothing, and he self medicated by smoking another cigarette.
A Catalan, who basically is Spanish speaking Tom Smith. He did engineering at university before going to to work in Management Consultancy with telecommunications. They even look a bit similar, with dark hair and rather a lot of teeth (certainly more than your average Peruvian.)
And finally last but not least a forty five turkish man, who works in air conditioning, and probably is in the middle of a mid life crisis.
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