Awesome treks and eating pets...

After several nights in the Amazon Jungle and the Inca Trail we have finally returned to electricity and the blogging world! What an absolutely fantastic` time we have been having here in Peru.

The Inca Trail was without a doubt one of the most incredible times of our trip. It was challenging, it was rewarding and it was so much fun! 42km over 4 days with an altitude gain of 1500m to finish in Machu Picchu.

This hiking business is tiring!

Conquering the highest peak on the Trai

At the end of the hike with our two fantastic guides

The incredible view from our campsite on the last night

We had a huge and and inspiring team with us. We had the eight of us in our team doing the trek, with a support team of 12 (two guides, two cooks and nine porters). The porters were out of this world. Most of them were built like scrawny halfbacks. They each carried around 20kg on their backs. We had about 3kg. We were walking and stopping. They ran. They were absolute machines. We had fairly low expectations for the food on the trail. I mean everything we were going to eat had to be carried in and then cooked on a little gas cooker. However our expectations were completely exceeded. This would be an example of our daily eating:

5.30am. Wake up call to the tent. Two porters bring us coca tea and let us know they have water outside our tent to wash our hands. They will be waiting with paper towels when we are ready to be dried!

6am. Breakfast. Porridge, toast and jam, pancakes. More coca tea.

11am. Lunch. Starts with an entree, something small and intricately prepared like chicken crepes. Followed by amazing soup. Followed by the main course, often a selection of vegetables, potatoes, chicken, rice or pasta. Then some more coca tea before we walk again.

4.30pm. Post walking afternoon tea. Hot chocolate, popcorn and biscuits. Hit the spot every day.

7pm. Dinner. Another three courses. The last night consisted of an entree of roast chicken stuffed with herbs, soup, fried rice, potatoes, beef and (amazingly) cake.

You can see that any hopes of weight loss on the Inca Trail were rapidly lost! The second day of the Inca Trail is what most people find the most challenging. It involves lots of stair climbing and hill work, but we managed well and really enjoyed it. Day three was the most challenging for us because there was torrential rain for about 6 hours. We had to get to the next campsite, so we just had to keep walking. We were so wet and so cold, it seemed to be a battle as to whether pneumonia or hypothermia would occur first. But we slogged it out, made it safely and then had the most richly deserved Kit Kat chunky in the history of the world.

Machu Picchu

After finishing the trail we arrived in Machu Picchu. Just amazing- best to check out the photos, but what an incredible place that totally lived up to its reputation. After here we were treated to a double blessing- riding on a bus listening to the Beegees on panpipes, followed by a great Bledisloe Cup game.

We've just been out for dinner here in Puno tonight and we were feeling regrettably adventorous. One of the local specialites here is fried guinea pig. If it's not bad enough that you're eating what we would call a common pet, they put the entire animal on the plate. You see eyes, teeth, little claws... very hard to eat. Safe to say our guinea pig quota has been filled for the remainder of our lives.

Anyone hungry?