Saturday, June 10, 2006

Choquequirao (2-7/Jun/06)

Cuzco, Peru

Got the morning bus to the village of Cachora, about 4 hours from Cuzco (though a lot longer if you are left stranded at the turnoff with nobody in sight to share a taxi). Got there quite late so decided to stay the night (in a hotel still under construction) and make an early start the next day.

First day didn’t start well. Quite a lot of cloud and mist, which combined with some confusing directions, meant we got lost for over an hour. But anyways, by the time we got to the first stop it was sunny and the view was amazing. Basically we were walking around a mountain into a river valley. After lunch (and a cold shower, luxury!) we got down to the river, crossed, and started on the way up the other side. Here we started getting really tired and were completely knackered by the time we got to the campsite halfway up. Esther wanted to kill me as I patiently explained we hadn’t got mules because we were purists. We decided to not be purists anymore and get a mule for the next 3 days.

What a difference! We weren’t carrying much weight but we really noticed it with the mule. Even so, the previous day had taken its toll and we were really slow the rest of the way up. At the top we got to the night’s campsite, left the mule and went off to the ruins, about 2 hours away. Since we were pretty knackered we didn’t give them their full attention, and didn’t go down to the agricultural terraces, or see the panted llamas, or go up to the upper square. But still, we had lunch and wandered around for a couple of hours and quite enjoyed it. It’s quite small but at the end of the day we were doing it for the trek and not the ruins.

The way back was pretty easy as by then we were more-or-less OK again. The only major problem was we were bitten to death by mosquitoes even though we smothered ourselves in repellent. Esther looks like she has chicken pox. We then stayed an extra night in Cachora as it is a really nice little village (here we noticed we could see kids playing in the street for the first time in a long time, not working).

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