Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Today was a day of recovery and washing just about all our clothes after finishing the Inca Trail yesterday (4 days, 42 kms, altitude up to 4200m). Not a bad little walk and we were very, very lucky with the weather considering the wet season has just started, so overal a great few days. Definitely one of the best hikes I’ve been on.

Will worry about putting up some photos one of these days, but might be tricky until we get to say… Canada

Some overal thoughts:

Cons

• hikers everywhere, feels like Piccadilly Circus in July! Which is an interesting sensation at 4200m above sea level in the middle of nowhere
• can be misty sometimes (understatement), you can see why it took them a while to discover most of the trail including Machu Pichu): literally within minutes an entire valley can appear and disappear from view. This can happen any time of the year though, so it really just feels like gambling, you either get lucky or you don’t
• hard work if you happen to get a case of TD (traveller’s diarrheoa) two days before you start (as I might have ) Otherwise the walk is very do-able compared to some
• definitely not a place for people with a fear of heights (luckily I’m over mine nowadays… or enough anyway!)

Pros

• amazing views (when there’s no clouds) with a great variety of plants, flowers and landscapes 
• service with a smile: the porters carry so much stuff, they really make your life pretty easy on the tour (including three course meals and chairs to have lunch on!) 
• what an ending! Machu Picchu really is an amazing place, made even more spectacular by the surroundings

Off to Lake Titicaca tomorrow, then Bolivia which should be interesting (http://article.wn.com/view/2007/11/27/Morales_defiant_as_protests_leave_4_dead/). It looks like our first change of itinerary is coming up already and we haven’t even left our starting point yet…!!

Well, in Cusco (Peru) now. Have recovered from trip over here (47hrs door to door from Melbourne… and who said travel can’t be fun) and have vaguely acclimatised to the altitude (approx 3300m). With that out of the way I’m actually quite enjoying being quite the tourist again. Which you know you are when

• You struggle to understand a single word the locals say (although also had that issue in Glasgow)
• You struggle to identify most foods at the markets. And heading to the local ”supermarket” doesn’t improve things.
• You can’t help but giggle childishly at your Do Not Disturb sign (which reads No Molestar) even though you already knew that one from previous travels.

Pretty standard stuff so far really, it’s just that it’s been a while.

One thing that was cool though was watching the Brazil – Peru game the other day on TV (1-1 btw for anyone following world cup qualifiers). Didn’t understand a word the commentators said but when Peru scored the equaliser, not a whole lot of translating was needed.

Oh, and I think I forgot to welcome you to our travel blog. This is where we’ll be putting any updates on our adventures over the next few months (the photos that I usually put on www.dylanav.com might not eventuate for a bit…), so come back here if you’re interested to find out where we are.

Last tip: to see a Google map of our itinerary (and some arrival dates in the various places), check out the Itinerary page on the left.

We’ve put up some of our photos on www.dylanav.com (under the Happy Snaps section which you’ll have to log to using the usual details). The link on the left has a few of them as a preview and has the details of where to check out the photos by our wedding photographer.