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We arrived late at night by plane and found a place to stay. Cusco was a really beautiful old town with lots of old buildings built by the evil culture raping conquistadors. We signed up for a 5-day hike along the Inca Trail and toured the city in the few days we had to wait. We had to ride a bus a few hours from town to get to the trailhead, going up for what seemed like the whole way. The first day of hiking was pretty tough, but then again we weren't even carrying our own tents or food. The guides would run ahead (and I mean RUN) and prepare our meals for us and at the end of the day set up our tents. We saw some great ruins and and walked up a really nice river valley. The second day will stand out in my mind as the hardest I have ever pushed my body for an extended period of time. We got all geared up in our ponchos and coats. Those lasted about 5 minutes. We were hiking straight up a mountain. Everyone was huffing and puffing like they were going to die from the altitude and work. After a few hours of this, everyone split up to walk by themselves. (you weren't really able to talk to them and breath at the same time). Everyone was on their silent mission to get to the top, trudging along in super slow motion. One genius kid who lived in the mountains nearby, ran up to a flat area and was selling snickers bars for exhorbitant amounts, I bought two. They really, truly gave me the energy to make it the rest of the way. I even ran the last hundred feet or so just to show off. It backfired when I just passed right out. I woke up to some one saying to just "leave him alone, he'll get up eventually." Then I learned that going down can be just as hard as going up. My legs were like jelly the whole way down, I thought I was going to crack my head open on sharp rocks on several occasions. We made it over the next few days to Macch Picchu. It was worth every bit of the struggle. That place is amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone. They definitely had some higher intelligence that we had to rediscover in recent centuries. Unfortunately, our batteries died and we got very few digital photos. I'll have to scan the film ones in sometime. We got to the end of the trail and spent the night in Agua Caliente, boozing it up with our new friends we met hiking and relaxing in the hot springs. We spent another few days in Cusco with them and then left for Puno to see the islands of Lake Titicaca.
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