Sexy Woman

We had a few lazy days after Christmas. So on Saturday we decided we'd better go and visit the closest inca site to Cusco, Sachsayhuaman, pronounced Sexy woman! It's just at the edge of town, up a really steep hill. The ticket includes 3 other inca sites a bit further out of the city. So when a bloke at the ticket office said we could hire a couple of horses to go round and see the other 3 sites it seemed like a good idea. We were just dressed for a morning stroll around some ruins. I´ve never ridden in shorts and sandals with a handbag over my shoulder before. Here's Gav on his nag.

The ruins were nice, but ruin fatigue is starting to set in with me a bit. But it was nice to be able to get a few pics for a change. The Spanish dismantled most of Sexy Woman to build Cusco, but even the bit they left is very impressive, it must have been amazing.

The weather caught us out a bit, we went prepared with our rain ponchos in my bag, but the sun stayed out for longer then the usual Cusco 30 mins so we both got burned. Gav keeps doing an impression of Anne when she firt met me in France "Oh Becky you look like a bolisha beacon!"(first pic).

Footie Peruvian Style

This is how Macchu Picchu should look if the camera hadn´t gone on strike, I´ve tried photo shop etc but had to settle for taking a pic of a postcard.

So last night was the play off 2nd leg for the league here in Peru. The year is split into 2 seasons with the winners of each season competing in a two-legged home and away final. The 1st leg here in Cusco was a sell out including lots of gringos like me.

The game itself was lacking a bit in atmosphere despite the hard core supporters behind each goal who really did give it their all for 90mins. Fair play to the Lima fans too who had a flight or 24hr drive to get to the game. I´d say there were about 22,000 there and we were sat on concrete steps which cost 3 quid each. The price is really high when you consider that teachers are paid about 80 pounds a month and everyday objects are very very cheap; bread rolls 1p, electricity bill in the porter´s house was 1 pound and a 3 course lunch at a local cafe (rather than tourist place) is about 30p. Our guide from the Inca trail said that tickets were normally 3 soles and ours were 18 so a mark up of 600% is pretty extreme when it´s the same stadium. The crowd looked like pretty well off Peruvians and most were families rather than the predominantly male crowds at the Ecquadorian games.

The match itself was pretty unispiring but there were a few notable happenings: A Lima player was taking a corner and someone threw a toilet roll onto the pitch, it grazed his shoulder and he went down as if a sniper had shot him, classic. I also had a genuine first at a football match when the lady sat next to me started breastfeeding her baby after 5 mins of the first half. One of the assistant refs was called Sr. Huanca (pronounced with a silent H) so the infamous song about refs was right on this occassion. After the match I had a kebab that disagreed with me, to say the least, in fact you could say we had a full blown argument.

After winning the first leg 1-0, Cusco lost the 2nd leg 3-1 last night so there are a lot of long faces today.

I´m enjoying watching lots of footie including seeing a Seba Veron led Estudiantes win the Argentinian league for the 1st time in 23 years, classic Boca v River Plate derbies from the 80s with Maradonna and of course UTD playing great football and scoring a few goals as well. All I need now is my new signing Harewood to start scoring on Sat for me to climb the FF table...

Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Since we´ve been back from the trail we´ve not done much really just enjoyed being settled in a beautiful city, living in a comfy modern apartment with access to lots of sports channels!

At the bottom is Bec at the huge Christmas Eve market in the main square. The country folk selling moss, grass and sawdust for the floors of Nativity displays (you can see them in pic 7) were setting up there stalls the night before. We had our own nativity around my object of worship (pic 5)

Here´s me with a couple of my presents from the market : Incas v Spanish chess set and scarf. We had a traditional turkey dinner with stuffing, Christmas pud, crackers and daft hats. The woman sat next to Bec, Erica, is from Bolton and her sister used to live in Didsbury so it was another nice reminder of home after just speaking to our parents to sit next to someone and hear the words "Yeah, I know Northenden, we would come off at the Post House and stop at Victoria Wine opposite Tesco on the way to my sister´s house." We adjourned afterwards to the "highest Irish owned Irish pub in the world" and swapped tales of comments from Boltonians after eating out. You have to defend yourself twice now, Sam.

Um and Luce & Rich we haven´t had your cards yet but will keep checking at SAE, there´s still plenty of time, we are here until at least the 5th Jan.

Naturally we missed everyone being away for our 2nd Christmas running but we had a really nice day, had a good laugh with other Brits, Kiwis and Europeans and ate and drank very well.

It´s the play off for the league title in Peru tonight and I went to the first leg so I may do a footie round up tomorrow.

Khmers v Incas

Maybe the camera didn´t like sharing the garden with a tethered pig or was worried about us using the hole in the ground as a toilet but for whatever reason it decided to have a 4 day break while we did the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu. All our pics our blurry like this one.

Bec´s right I had wanted to see Macchu Picchu for years, so I was really looking forward to doing the Inca trail. You start the trail at Piscacucho and it lasts 3 nights (camping out, sometimes without toilets or running water) and 4 days. Having been in Cusco for over a week we were fully acclimitised to the altitude and the very hard treks in the cloud forest in Ecquador had prepared us well. Before long we were overtaking all the other groups and making great progress. The 2nd day is notorious as the first part is up hill for around 4 hours and you rise to 4200m at the high point (Dead Woman´s pass) but again we were fine and despite the early start (up at 5am), the snow at the peak and the pouring rain it was still wonderful to stop, rest and take in the surroundings.

The 3rd day is fairly easy and you see some of the other sites that line the trail. Inipata & Wiñaywayna were agricultural "experimentation" sites where the Incas tried out new crops as the surroundings are so lush between the jungle and the cloud forest. They had 3000 different types of potato, 500 hundred varieties of orchid and other types of vegetation all supported by amazingly intricate irrigation systems that still work.

No-one really knows what Macchu Picchu was. What we do know though is that thousands of Incas came from all over and did the holy pilgrimage now known as the Inca Trail. I am really glad we did and had a fantastic time, the guide was brilliant and knew what time to leave each day so that we had the trail to ourselves. He picked the quietest and most scenic campsites and was happy to admit that 70% of the information about Macchu Picchu is guess work. It does feel like a mini pilgrimage when you turn a corner and finally see it in all it´s glory (I will buy a postcard, take a pic and then post it on here!).

The top pic is me receiving energy from the sacred wall, behind which I placed my uncle Roy´s pink quartz which I had carried in my rucksack for 7 months. Tony (the other person on our tour and new neighbour in the apartments) and Bec didn´t feel any energy from the wall but despite my cynicism I did feel something from under my outstretched arms, but that was probably due to the fact I hadn´t washed for 4 nights.

But, did you know there was a but coming, for all its magic and mystery I was more impressed architecturally by Angkor Wat built by the Khmers in Cambodia around the same time.

Inca Trail - Meeting the Porters

Gav has always wanted to do the Inca trail, in fact that was the main point of coming to South America when we decided to take "a year" off.

We did a lot of research when we booked the inca trail as we'd read a lot of stuff about how badly the porters are treated. In the end we paid a bit more and picked a local company that had a good reputation for looking after their porters. They had an option where the night before you start the inka trail you go and camp in the village where the porters live to meet them and their families and have dinner with them at home.

The morning we were due to leave, 2 guys from the company came round to the apartment to go through last minute plans. My Spanish must be improving becuase I manage to understand that they were saying that we'd have to carry our own stuff as the porters just carried the tents, food and cooking stuff. We were in shock, we thought we'd skip a long just carrying a bottle of water and a light day pack and porters would lug up our back pack with our clothes and stuff. We didn´t see the irony of our early concerns for porter welfare.

So after stripping down our packs to the absolute essentials we set out for the porters village on Thursday.

It was a tiny place, Huayllaccocha, an hour and a half from Cusco in the middle of no where. All the houses are made of mud bricks (you can see the bricks behind gav and the tent). We set up camp in someone's garden surrounded by a mud brick wall with cactuses planted on top, which made a rustic change from broken glass or barbed wire. Their pig was tethered nearby.

They took us to meet a lot of the villagers, and introduced us to the men who would be our porters for the next 4 days. They were busy in their fields, getting ahead so they could leave them for a few days. Their kids work in the fields too after school. Gav gave them a hand with the maize but they didn´t think much of his technique. Just before we had tea there was an improptu game of football with the local kids. The other guy with us, Tony, said to Gav "in this altitude you can't run around you just have to pass it don't you?" He obviously didn't appreciate that Gav doesn't run around even when he plays at sea level!

We had a lovely dinner in one of the porters houses, soup with lots of maize. Then a bloke arrived with a harp and started playing it and the porter and his wife started dancing, and got the 3 of us up too. It was great they made us really welcome even though it was difficult to communicate at times as they spoke Quechua not Spanish.

After the dancing it was back to the tent for a good nights sleep to be ready for the start of the inca trail. Unfortunately when we woke up the next morning the camera had gone all wonky and wouldn't focus. Great we're just about to embark on one of the highlights of our trip, one of Gav´s lifetime ambitions, without a camera. Hopefully Tony will email us some pics this week that we can put on the blog this week.

Sorry all the pics are of Gav, I don´t think he likes taking my pic.

Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Bec´s birthday. I bought her a lovely bracelet (we chose it together). We had a great meal overlooking the main square of Cusco. I also tried ceviche for the first time (raw fish with a lemon marinade) which went down very well with the music and dancing.

We´re off on the Inca trail tomorrow but are spending the evening meeting the porters in their village so we leave at 2pm today.

Sam tells me she has tried to refute Ste´s comments with very witty ripostes but she is having problems logging onto the site.

PS We didn´t wear our coats during the meal this is at a bar beforehand. And yes, I am feeling rough today.

Sharking in Ecquador

OK, get your magnifying glass out for the shark and penguin pics, the throwaway underwater camera didn´t have a zoom. These are the underwater pics from the Galaps, it´s taken 3 attempts to have them developed from the negatives. I want bore you with the story but it´s been a frustrating process for a seemingly easy task.

We were kayaking when we took the penguin pic and were capsized soon afterwards by some pretty decent waves so it was a good decision not to take the digital camera. Capsizing was a good laugh but there had been a few cross words between us before hand and Bec´s rowing ability didn´t transfer to kayaking but her overall general bossiness did. She got an oar in the mouth though for overstepping the mark.

I´d better explain what the pics are:

First 2 are self explanatory, yes that means I´ve forgotten the names of the fish.
Pic 3 Is a Galapagos shark, they aren´t that big only about 3ft long but this was close enough for Bec (look very closely for the shadow in the bottom left hand corner!)
Pic 4 A type of Ray, I think it´s a manta ray rather than a sting ray
Pic 5 Believe it or not these are penguins
Pic 6 A friendly sea lion who wanted to play and swim with us
Pic 7 The turtles . The pic doesn´t show how big they are - about 18 inches to 2ft long

If you think these are small, blurry and hard to make out you should see the other 17 we haven´t put on.

We have a home!

Well it´s been a huge week at home. I am very pleased to announce that Neil and Helene are engaged and are looking to set a date for Sep next year. My little bro has become a dad and acquired a fiancee since we´ve been gone. Unfortunately, we also missed Sean´s birthday party today and Helene´s 30th do last night. I´m especially gutted that I missed Neil re-enacting his proposal from earlier in the week on stage last night. Dad said he couldn´t believe it when Helene said yes again!

Congratulations Neil and Helene, we´re both delighted with the news, and when you told me I suddenly realised that someone had been chopping onions in my telephone booth before I used it(!)

We are in Cusco, Peru, now which has an altitude of over 3300m. As we are in Cusco until the New Year we decided we would rent an apartment for the time we are here (just under a month). Here are some pics. We have a shared courtyard and then the apartments lead off from there. It was renovated last month so everything is brand new.

There is good news and bad news for Bec. The bad news is that we have a TV with cable and on Weds morning I had a choice of 4 matches on 4 channels of the previous night´s football (also shown live). The good news is that now we have our own apartment Bec is able to have her own salt cellar for the first time in over 6 months. You should have seen the grin on her face and glint in her eye when she converted the plastic container the negatives had been in to her very own fast release salt cellar.

The city itself is very striking, these Incas knew how to town plan and the Spanish built some fantastic churches and plazas. We set off for the Inca trail on Friday morning, a 4 day trek. It is one of the main reasons for coming to South America, to see Macchu Picchu in all its glory.

The first pic is me after the derby looking smug, especially for Chaz and Dave (Um and Ste)!

Nasca Lines

We´re in Nasca at the moment. We came to look at the ¨world famous, Nasca Lines¨. They are pictures scraped in the sand about 2000 years ago (although gav has started his own conspiracy theory, saying that they were done in the 1920´s). No one knows why they are there as they can only be appreciated from the air, but the people of Nasca are making the most of them, diverting all the Gringos en-route to Machu Picchu to their otherwise pretty awful little desert town.

I took a flight to see them in a tiny plane, only space for the pilot and 3 passengers. Gav said he didn't want to go, partly because he thought they were something people just see for the sake of it and partly because of his conspiracy theory, but I think mainly beause of his fear of heights.

Here's a couple of pics of the 2 best ones, a hummingbird and 'the hands'. They look a bit like doodles really. When you've seen the naked giant in Cearne Abbas (Near Dorchester) in Nick and Anna's back garden it's hard to be impressed by a few swiggles in the sand.