Peru Day 3: Sexy Woman!

First full day in Cuzco and another early start - 06:30 wake-up call, leave the hotel by 8am and head off up into the hills outside Cuzco for our acclimatisation walk.

We met Saul and Wilfredo (aka "Eddie") today who are our main guides for the trail. Inca Trail guides have to be Peruvian and both of them are incredibly knowledgeable and experienced. And easy on the eye ;-)

Having sort of got used to the altitude in Cuzco, it was interesting to go an extra 500meters or so and unfortunately one of our group was taken ill with severe altitude sickness and not only had to be taken down from today's walk, but ended up spending most of the week in hospital. Altitude sickness isn't something to take lightly and that was a real shock to us all.

One of the ways to combat altitute sickness is to drink coca de mate tea - dried leaves in hot water. Not sure how good your knowledge of Class A drugs is, but coca leaves are the raw ingredient of cocaine. The leaves are perfectly legal in Peru but it still felt somewhat odd to be constantly provided with them. It seemed to work though as I found the altitude absolutely fine.

The walk itself was lovely and gentle and took in 4 Incan ruins along the way, one of which had only been uncovered 4 years ago.

The biggest surprise though was lunch. We'd expected a sandwich somewhere but got the full camping experience with an impressive buffet of local food (including a goodly sample of some of the 3000 varieties of potato grown in Peru and the most amazing avocado I've ever tasted). We were clapped into camp and had a live band play throughout lunch. All in all, a magical experience.

The least impressive bit of the day was dinner where were taken to a random place owned by a Scottish bloke where we tried guinea pig and had various local dishes.

Anyway, back to the title. This photo is of a very impressive Incan structure called Saqsaywaman, known fondly as "Sexy Woman." As with most of the photos, it's hard to show the scale of it, but the Incas built in room for the rocks to exapand and contract due to the changes in heat and the largest stone weighs a whopping 175 tonne!

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An alternative photo for today of some locals is in my blipfoto.