LIES! (Ed. just stretching the truth;-) )

Today cliff told us that we were going to have a gentle trek... he lied.!

It was day 3 of the acclimatisation treks and we decided to walk up the gorge that we could see at lunch the day before. This meant an hour bus journey in a tiny ‘collectivo’ which was something we had all wanted to do from the beginning. The bus journey took us to Qoya a small mountain village with only a few shops. To start the ascent up the George we had about 20 min walk along the Rio Vicanota. This gave us a false sense of security about the terrain that we would be walking. We all thought that the day would be relaxing and enjoyable, unfortunately we had to turn off this lovely path and start hiking up the side of what is basically a waterfall. This path lead us through a tiny village with lots of animals, some of the villagers decided to come out and stare at us (Ed. Perhaps it was the smell of you girls after a few days of trekking lol).

After this we started to climb up the mountain/gorge. This was really hard and we had to go quite slowly. However the mountain was beautiful as you could see the river running down and you could hear the waterfall as you were walking and as we stopped for lunch we sat in silence listening to the water splashing over the rocks.

Following lunch we continued climbing and eventually reached our high point. The views from here were stunning and it made the hard work worth it. The only problem being that we then had to descend back to where we started; this took a lot less time but was also hard. Eventually we got back Qoya and caught a bus back to Cusco. To some peoples annoyance (Ed. me included) the bus was busy and most of us had to stand for the entire journey back (1 hour). This was not an enjoyable experience after climbing the side of a mountain all day. It wasn’t too bad but then again I was sat down  once we got back to Cusco we went to our bakery that some had been to before and all got pastries for the 2min walk back to the hostel. When we got back we had dinner after which some people went out and others just went to sleep.

Quote of the day : ‘I don’t really care I’ve already had animals having sex on my back today’ Roisin.

Written by: Emilia