Jeanette and Pat go to South America

Other than three week-long trips to beach resorts (Fiji in 1990 and 2001, and Club Med Malaysia in 2000), this was our first overseas holiday since we were youngsters back in 1983. It was of course also our first trip away without our children.

23 years is a long time between trips.

We have discovered that we really enjoyed the physically active side of the trips, especially the walks of the Inca trail and in Patagonia. Visiting large cities is certainly interesting, and we think all Aussies should make a trip to Europe at some stage of their lives (preferably when they are young). We DON'T like overly organised tours, and like getting around independently when we can. But having someone carry our full packs when hiking was good!

We were reminded of how lucky we are to be born Aussies, and what a privilege it is to be able to afford to live well, and to be able to travel to see other parts of the world. We are incredibly fortunate.

Gay from Jetaway did a fantastic job of linking together our 23 flights and three different sub-packages. This was obviously more complex than we initially thought. We hope to be able to spend a bit more time researching our next trip, as we realised that we were able to maximise our experiences where we had prepared more. Nevertheless the places where we basically just arrived (like Rome) were still easy to explore!

If anyone wants to know any more about any of our experiences, especially in Peru on the Inca Trail, in Patagonia with World Expeditions, or on the Galapagos with Samba, just send us an email (using the link) or post a comment.

We would love to hear of other's experiences as well, so please contact us.

Meanwhile, its back to the real world, and saving some more money so that we can do this again soon!

Signing off from South America

Jeanette and Pat

We spent our last day of our holiday wandering through St Peter's basilica and then the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel.
No amount of reading and photographs prepare you for the vastness of St Peter's square and the church - it is just mind-blowing. The artwork in the Vatican is similarly breathtaking, and it was amazing to actually be in the rooms that Michaelangelo and Raphael and all those great religious artists of centuries ago created their masterpieces. Artists were very respected back then!

If you only ever go to one art museum in your life, then the Vatican is probably the one to go to! There are 1400 rooms of artwork, and no way can you take it all in in one day! We lasted about 5 hours.

We then decided we needed to check out the Trevi fountain again and see if the coin-stealers were back at work. FOr the first 15 minutes or so, it seemed they were gone, then the old guy from the day before turned up and cased the joint for 20 minutes or so. We think we have some photos of him, and will post them when we get home. He was an interesting old bloke for sure.

The biggest problem with the Trevi fountain is that you can't sit there peacefully for more than 30 seconds without a hawker trying to sell you a flower, or a plastic toy or what have you. Finally in exasperation, we decided to give them some of their own back, and offered a choice of hotel pens for "only one euro each" to anyone who came near us! They didn't initially either get the point, or see the humour, but after a few minutes, they finally understood, and we even managed a smile from a couple of them.

Walking at last got the better of us, so we headed to an Irish pub and caught the rugby game between Wales and England, which unfortunately was a very one-sided game, with England thrashing the Welsh side, who played atrociously. We were sitting next to a Welsh couple spending a dirty weekend in Rome - he was addicted to the rugby, and was not a happy camper by the end of the game.

A final dinner at a restaurant that must have inspired Fawlty Towers. There was a waiter who was trying to serve us, but spent a lot of time yelling at the cook because nothing arrived, a stuck up waitress, about 17, and almost certainly the bosses' daughter, who refused to wear her uniform, or serve anyone (but was quite decorative, a meal that finally arrived without the requested accompaniments, and was literally a piece of meat on a plate, and a bill that was of course completely incorrect! Still it gave us a laugh, and the red wine was quite quaffable!

Our flights home were.... long! We checked in early to ensure that we got exit row seats, and then just got on with travelling. We are currently at Qantas Club in Sydney waiting for our final flight home.

We still have a day more in Rome. We will probably make that our Vatican day. The story so far......

We ended up at the airport in Barcelona way earlier than we needed to be, but had a bit of a rest in the Iberian lounge - no internet unfortunately. The flight was uneventful, but an hour late.

On arrival at Fumicino Airport, we got our luggage and quickly worked out that a taxi ride was going to cost way too much, so we bought tickets on the train. The train ride was pretty easy, and we got to the city at about 7:30pm. We knew our hotel was close by, but with our bags thought it would be just as easy to get a cab. We ignored the hawkers, and found the taxi rank, and the taxi driver seemed surprisingly happy that we were going to Hotel Universo (we thought as it was a short ride, he would be annoyed). We seemed to go the tourist route, and the cabby was happily pointing out various sites and chatting to us incessantly. I did notice his hand was over the meter but did not think too much of it. After a less than 10 minute (probably should have been about 3, but I thought it was our due for such a short trip) ride we were at our hotel. The meter read 26.7 euros (about $45 Australian)!!! Don,t know which planet he thought we had arrived from, but there was no way we were sucked in to that. After a quick exchange, Pat gave him 10 euros because we just were not into the fight! Not a great start to Rome unfortunately.
Our hotel then assigned us a room that was broken! Absolutely nothing worked, and after a couple of minnutes we made our first call on this holiday to housekeeping. Without too much ado they gave us another room - we relaxed and went out for a classic Italian pizza and red wine dinner.

Today we simply walked around Rome - the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman fora, churches, ruins, columns and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. All were very awe-inspiring and we definitely think Europe is a special place for anyone interested in culture and history.
Our favourite stop though was the Trevi fountain. We bought some pizza in a deli (an experience in its own right) and sat and watched the people. Tourists throwing coins, a couple of people stealing the coins! One had a stick with a magnet or something on the end - he just got one coin at a time. Another had a little net which he seemed to trawl the coins with. Then the police came, and they quickly disappeared. A little while later one of them was interviewed by the cops - a long and gesticulated conversation ensued and he got off!
We are about to head off to do some more quality control checking on the beer! Hard to believe we will be home in a couple of days, but we are really looking forward to seeing our kids (who have made us proud over the last few weeks home alone).
BFN!

Had to think about the title for this one. Pat's first suggestions was 4731 Vespas, 4732 Vespas, 4733..... The place is full of them - for very good reason. Much of the city is made up of tiny narrow cobbled streets, and parking is a total nightmare.

We loved Barcelona! We walked all over the city for two full days. One of the places we visited was the port - it is the second largest shipping port in the world, the largest in the Mediterranean, and the largest cruise port. The vies from the Hill of Montjieu was mind-boggling - thousands upon thousands of shipping containers. Pat admired the multimillion dollar private yachts of course.

And then there were all those funny buildings! Gaudi really put his stamp on this place, and we really enjoyed searching out his buildings and admiring their interesting shapes. We were all the more impressed when we went to the Gaudi museum, and learnt how the architecture really made sense from an air, space and light perspective.

We got a bit culchured and went to the National Museum of Art and also the Picasso museum, we enjoyed a paella dinner, and on the second night we went on a bit of a tapas and beer crawl which was also fun. Our hotel was not as centrally located as others, and that just meant that we walked even more. We went to the Olympic site and the football stadium (next visit we will definitely make sure there is a footy game on to go to see).

Basically our two days were extremely packed, and on foot except for one metro journey. It was even a treat to put our feet up for the short flight to.....ROMA!

Our flight to Barcelona was the 18th and 19th flight sectors of our 23 sector expeditions, but befpre we got on that flight we had 36 hours of our 78 hours of scheduled flying time left to fly.
I am still very unused to flying business class, so it was a big thrill to be upgraded, and especially nice as we delayed boarding for an hour then sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half while they fiddled with the electrical system (or something). We got drinks and settled ourselves in to our big comfy chairs while cattle class just got cramps.
The only thing I did wrong was take a half a sleeping pill to try to adjust to the new time zone. It zonked me out totally till several hours after the flight was over - not to be recommended for me in future!
Other than that it was all very straight forward, and we enjoyed a couple of movies and excellent food. Iberia has a very good inflight entertainment system (but pretty ordinary lounges).

If you are going to spend 4 days in a city with 11 million people, then Buenos Aires is not a bad place to go!

We have been told that Argentinian women are the most beautiful in the world. It is true, that with their dark skin, dark eyes, long hair and vacuum-packed jeans that the young ones are very attractive and sexy, but young people are attractive everywhere, and we will stick by our view that Australian kids still rank Number One!

Buenos Aires is very much a city that come awake after dark, so we adjusted our time clocks from our 4am - 6 am wakeups of the last three weeks, to staying up till between 2 and 3 am to take advantage of the lights!

We managed to pack a lot in to our four days, including a classic tango show at Cafe Tortoni (one of the "original" tango cafes in town), a couple of amazing steak dinners, ice-creams at Freddos and shopping in Florida Street for leather.

We went on a bit of a pilgrimage of Eva Peron, including a visit to the famed Pink Palace where she spoke (sang!!!) to the people, a visit to her grave in Recoleta (the most amazing cemetery that is more like a city than a cemetery), and a visit to the Eva Peron museum, which tells the story of her life and fight to get the vote for women (in 1947!) to open schools and hospitals across the nation, and generally to get a better deal for the working people. It is amazing that she died at only 33 yers of age.

Buenos Aires is broken up into separate "barrios" or districts, each of which has a very distinctive personality. From the working class suburbs of San Telmo and La Boca, where it is common to see people dancing tango in the street (with the standard hat out for donations of course), to the upmarket Recoleta and Palermo where we saw the famous professional dog walkers walking up to 15 dogs all together!

The weather here is very hot and humid. Unless you are used to the humidity you will probably find that a better time to visit this city is in autumn or spring. As we spent hours and hours walking every day, and the temperature was in the mid to high thirties, and very humid, we found our energy was sapped by the end of the day. Still, I guess Barcelona and Rome will be the opposite!

The best night we had was at a restaurant called Cabrera. Our friends Tris and Jasna who we met on our Galapagos cruise organised it all for us. We first went to their apartment in Recoleta, and up to the roof of their 20 story apartment block for a view of the city. Then a short taxi ride to Cabrera. It is an amazingly popular restaurant, and when we arrived at bout 9:20pm , our 9pm booking had been given away. Fortunately less that 100 metres away is their satellite restaurant, Cabrera North, the same food and atmosphere, just a few yards down the street.

We shared three enormous steak meals (sharing steaks is not uncommon here), which came served with a large array of accompaniments or tapenadas, including roast garlic, eggplant, mashed pumpkin, roasted carrots, potatoes and so on. We shared a very nice bottle of Argentinian Malbec, had some dessert and coffee and the entire bill came to about $Aus 50 per couple! A fantastic memory of Argentina!

Today we leave again for Barcelona. The good news is that we have been upgraded to business class for the entire trip. The bad news is that we didn`t know that to claim our tax-free refunds we needed to go through Customs BEFORE Immigration, and missed that. Now we cannot get back out to Customs, so guess we will not be able to claim our $22 refund. Pat also lost his Goretex hat in BA yesterday - no idea how, and at least we wonçt be needing it for the remainder of our journey.

Next stop Europe!

Our final day involved a 6am wakeup call, and a dinghy ride around some mangrove swamps. We think this was so that the cruise could be called an 8 day cruise, rather than a 7 day cruise!! Still it was a nice finish to the Galapagos. After getting off the boat at 8am on Tuesday, for a flight planned for 1015, we found out.....what a surprise....that our flight was delayed.

Baltra airport is not the most happening of places! It does have a few souvenir shops outside, which you can check out in about 5 minutes, then.....waiting, waiting......

Our flight finally left about 1130am, and we flew to Quito via Guayaquil. Once again it was about 4pm before we got to our hotel, so there was not too much left of the day. Enough time to copy our photos to DVD though (this was not as easy as it sounds, as the shop´s technology was too old to take big memory cards, but eventually we got it sorted.

We found a good pizza shop for dinner - after the excesses of 7 days acting like marine iguanas (basking in the sun and eating and not much else) we didn´t feel like a big meal.

Quito is an interesting place to spend a day. We had heard that pickpockets were rife (Mike and Suzanne had a camera picked on their day before flying to Galapagos) so were on the alert.

We headed off to the Old Town, which is very picturesque - cobbled streets and narrow bustling alleyways, with churches nearly as prevalent as marine iguanas in the Galapagos! Those Spanish conquistadors were really into big churches.

The Iglesia de la Compana de Jesus is lined with gold - very glittery! At the Iglesia and Convent de San Francisco there is a museum of art and sculpture and so on, so we visited that too. Then we walked to the Iglesia de la Basilica del Voto Nacional. We found out that you can climb to the Belfry for only 2 Dollars each so we climbed......and climbed.....and climbed..... First steps, then a spiral stairway, then a few ladders! I started to get vertigo, but we had got that far we had to keep going! The view was quite grand of the Quito town, and we were as high as the hill with the Virgin Mary on it. This is an excursion to be recommended. We also visited one of the Spanish gentleman´s houses, but I can´t remember the name.

We had read in a book that there is a nice mirador (lookout) of Guapulo (another valley we think, although we never did really work it out) a few kilometres away, so we decided to go. It was about a 2 hour walk or thereabouts, and we got to see some of the less touristy parts of Quito along the way. Another 2 hour walk got us back to our washing place (we had dropped off our washing first thing in the morning) then back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and back to......Quito airport.

Our flight was overnight, from Quito to Lima, and then a 3 hour wait before flying in to Buenos Aires and arriving about 7:30am the next morning. We were able to catch up on our email at Quito, and were happy to get emails from the kids that all was well at home! The highlight of this trip was probably watching Justine Henin-Hardenne beat Maria Sharapova in the semi-final of the Aussie Open - live from Lima VIP lounge!

After arriving at Baltra airport and paying our tax of $100US each we met our guide and the 11 other passengers that would be joining us for the next week.

We were a mixed lot, ranging in both age and nationality (and personality). There was Manfried and Traute, a retired couple from Hamburg, Germany, who had just finished a cruise of the Antarctic; Barb and Rosemary, also retired, from Atlanta Georgia (we have discovered that people from the US always give there town and state, rather than country when introducing themselves); Barb´s daughter Kristen and her friend Sarah, two primary school teachers currently living in Santiago Chile; Marcus, a young doctor from Sweden, Mike a (Canadian) pilot with Air Canada, and his wife Suzanne a wedding photographer; and Tris and Jasna, two Brits living in Buenos Aires. Our guide was Fausto, a delightful, upbeat, friendly Ecuadorian who has been a guide for about 15 years. We had five crew, Isaac our captain, Juan, first mate (and dinghy driver), Freddy the cook, Wilmer the steward and Manuel the engineer.

We headed off to our boat, and home for the next week. The M/Y (motor yacht) Samba was all we had imagined it would be, or better. There were 7 guest cabins, each with a decent toilet and shower (not those temperamental heads that we have been used to on boats we have chartered). The Samba is 40 years old, and "Tourist Superior" class - we decided that we didn´t require anything more than that. The airconditioning in the cabins was apparently a problem for some of the guests, but for us it was perfect.

Amazingly the Samba runs tours weekly from Tuesday to Tuesday without a break. We got on the boat at around 12 o´clock, only about 4 hours after the last guests had left. The crew also work for between 4 - 6 weeks before getting time off.

The Galapagos is a very controlled environment, so all our visits were together as a group. You aren´t allowed to go anywhere without your guide. While this is a little constrained, it is the only way they can preserve the unique environment while still allowing people to visit and enjoy the wildlife.

Every excursion starts with donning a life jacket and all 13 of us plus Fausto plus Juan, getting onto the dinghy for either a "wet" or "dry" landing. A wet landing just means getting off at the beach and wading in to shore, while a dry landing involves wearing your shoes and landing usually on rocks. Typically our visits were 2 - 3 hours, and we usually had something like 2 visits and a snorkel each day.

Most nights the boat motored to our next destination while we relaxed or slept. We were surprised at how big the Galapagos islands are - we motored for from 4 to 12 hours per day at 9 knots. We were also surprised by how barren the volcanic islands are, although this varied from island to island.

Our first highlight was our first landing, where we had to wait for the sealions to move before we could land, and we nearly stepped on the hundreds of marine iguanas who simply basked in the sun and totally ignored us. This was to become our daily experience. If you like lizards, Galapagos is the place to go. The sealions were all in families - and it is baby season, so there were many many inquisitive baby sealions who wanted to check us out (the bull of each family was always on the prowl though so we had to be careful).

Some of the animals we saw on land were giant tortoises, sealions, land and marine iguanas, blue'footed boobies, flamingos, Nasca boobies (and their babies), flightless cormorants, albatrosses (huge), crabs, fur seals, pelicans, penguins and gazillions of finches. Each day we would be introduced to different species, as many of them are unique to only one island, but the iguanas and sealions were ubiquitous.

Another highlight was snorkelling. We went for one or two snorkels each day, and the first surprise is these equatorial waters are COLD! Apparently it is to do with the Humboldt current, and the coldness increases the diversity of the sealife. If anything there was more diversity of life under the water, and our snorkelling (despite the cold) was definitely a high point. Some days we snorkelled with sealions, others with turtles (watch your t-shirt or it might get nibbled), sharks (not great whites, but big enough to startle us), penguins (nowhere else in the world can you snorkel with penguins - its a bit cold in the Antarctic), stingrays (so graceful), and multitudes of different, multicoloured fish.

One day we were "whale watching" (tourist speak for motoring on the Samba) and we actually spotted a whale! It was an Orca and came very close to the boat - we are hoping that Suzanne´s photography skills captured the moment.

Our food on the Samba was tasty and plentiful. A big surprise was on the last night when we had a celebration cake. Coincidentally it was Pat´s birthday, which he admitted when Fausto was trying to find out who had the next birthday!!! Another great moment was crossing the equator (although the promised equator cocktail failed to materialise, and it was a little hard to spot the white line).

Mostly the Galapagos is not inhabited by humans, but there is one town - Puerto Aroya, with 17000 people, and a couple of small villages. We learnt the history of the inhabitants - some of whom have very colourful stories.

The week came to an end very quickly, and Tuesday rolled around again. We would highly recommend the Samba. It had a great itinerary (and we discovered that a number of the other boats don´t even go to the Western Islands for example) and it was a true tour of the Galapagos Islands.

Another 4:30 am rise. Our hotel in Cusco included breakfast, and breakfast was served from 4:30 - 1030 every day. This was also the case in Quito. We had to be at the airport at 6am, and still needed to pack.

Today was another typical airport day in South America, with a lot of waiting around airports and delayed flights. We flew Cusco - Lima then hung around for ages (thank God that Pat is a Gold Frequent Flyer with Qantas, so we are able to use the international VIP lounges) before finally getting on the Lima - Quito flight. We finally got to our hotel at about 4:15PM, and decided that a priority would be to see if we could get some laundry done, as we were joining our Galapagos cruise the next morning.

After walking around for a while, we met a nice local at a bookstore who told us he lived near a Lavanderia and would take us to it. It was only about 5 minutes walk. It was about 4:45, and the lavanderia girl, after a lot of discussion, told us she could get it all done by 6:30PM. The charge was per kg, and our washing cost US$2.40!! The hotel charged more than that for a hankerchief, and double for "express service"! This was without a doubt the best bargain of Ecuador!

Next morning was to be another 4:30 start, as we needed to meet the Galapagos travel agent at the airport at 6am to pick up our tickets for Baltra.

We got to the airport as planned, and after waiting around for a while, our travel agent arrived at around 6:30am and we got organised. More delays of an hour or two, and we were on our way to Galapagos.

We can´t finish our story of the Inca trail without telling you some of the natural remedies that Marisol told us.
Many times when she spotted a flower or herb along the way we would hear what it was used for: Stomach ailments, headaches, preventing colds and so on. But there were two tales which really will stay in our minds.

Jamie, our NZ companion, was a little worried that his hair was thinning. At 28, he thought this too young to be going bald. Marisol told him of the "guaranteed cure", with total sincerity.

Every night for a month, you must wash your hair in urine, leave it in overnight, then rinse it out in the morning. Marisol did warn that rinsing out the smell was almost impossible, but the effort would be worth it. Darryl initially offered to have his evening pee over Jamie´s head, but Marisol was not impressed! You see, it must be your own urine! Amidst much hilarity over dinner, we discussed the pros and cons of the solution, and Jamie considered that now would be as good a time as any to try it. His girlfriend was home in NZ, and Darryl was his travelling companion! Darryl was not looking forward to sharing his tent with Jamie! We haven´t yet heard how the treatment is going, and hope to hear from Jamie soon with news of a full head of hair!!

Marisol´s second therapy also involves urine. Apparently if you want to stay really healthy, you should drink a teaspoon of your own urine each morning and evening. This is because your urine contains your "information". This led to a discussion about studying for a maths test, and bottling (and labelling) the information for retrieval as required! When we get back to work and you see little vials of yellow liquid in our desk drawers, you will know that these are our Peru answer to "yellow stickit notes".

We had agreed with Marisol that we would like to be one of the first groups to arrive at the Sun Gate the next morning, even though we thought we might not get a classic sunrise due to the rain.

She woke us up at 3:50am and sure enough it was raining. We had breakfast, and got ready in the wet and dark. Our short walk to the "control station" was in the dark, and our nearly flat torches were not terribly useful. Next time we will buy LED headlamps which light up the path like daylight (and which Beate and Magnus had). The control station does not open till 5:30, and despite arriving at ten to 5 we were still about the third group there. It was raining and there is certainly no shelter, but we were excited nevertheless.

Just before 5:30 the staff arrived, and Marisol elbowed her way to the front of the guide queue. The starting flag was effectively dropped and we were off!!! Marisol had rather psyched us up the night before and there was no stopping us. One by one we overtook people in front, until we were quite near the front. I had not walked so fast ever I think, especially on slippery rocky trails (which amazingly seemed to feel totally firm with our serious determination). The very last part was about 60 steep steps, and I was really puffed, but there was no stopping me. Jamie and Darryl had been setting the pace, with Beate and me close behind, and Marisol at the back running interference from anyone trying to catch us! It was really very funny. We made it to the Sun Gate, and Marisol popped up behind us! Her first words were "48 minutes! Congratulations!".

We relaxed for a while at the Sun Gate, and after about 15 minutes the mist lifted and we got our first glimpses of Macchu Picchu (pronounced PICK-CHU, not PICHU, as Marisol told us many a time).

After a two hour guided tour of the city, Marisol left us to climb Wayna Picchu (a mountain above Macchu Picchu) and suggested we might like also to go to the Temple of the Moon. The climb up was a tough one hour, including wriggling through a tunnel with our backpacks in front of us. It was a fantastic view though and worth the effort. We headed off to "Temple of the Moon", not entirely sure where we were headed, and certainly not expecting the walk to be as tough as it was. It was a very steep descent almost as far as the Urubamba River, several hundred metres lower than Macchu Picchu. Then we had to climb back up to the town, to catch the bus to Aguas Callientes. Although only three and a half hours in total, it was probably the hardest walk we had done.

We caught the bus down, and enjoyed a pizza. We heard some rumours about problems with the train, and when we got to the train station we found out that a landslide had closed the trainline, and no trains had run all day. This caused some consternation, as we all had places to be. Pat and I were on a plane to Quito the next morning, and if we missed it we were going to miss our cruise.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were offered "standing places" on the train we had originally had reserved seats on. We took them, and Marisol
Oops will have to finish this later....about to miss a plane to Buenos Aires!!!

EDIT: Later on, now in Buenos Aires!!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were offered "standing places" on the train we had originally had reserved seats on. This train was running about 1 hour late. We took them, and Marisol arranged for us to get off at Ollantaytambo and provided a bus from there to Cusco which was supposed to save us an hour of time.

All was well, and the six of us got off at Ollantaytambo, and found our bus. Then we sat on the bus, and sat and sat, with no-one telling us anything. Finally after Pat making a lot of noise, we found out that we were waiting for "the Russians" (another group), who obviously did not make this train, so we were waiting for the next train to arrive before the bus would leave. As it was already late, and we had a 430am start the next morning, we all got slowly more agitated, but to no avail. We were about to hire ourselves two taxis for the hour and a half journey back to Cusco when finally the next train arrived, with said Russians, and better yet, with Marisol! Marisol had serious words with the bus driver, and we got started.

The bus had a little statue of Jesus that was connected to the brakes and lit up when the driver braked! I guess it was his way of praying that the brakes worked! Fortunately they did, which was just as well. We ended up back in Cusco a little before ten, and went straight to the shop to get our photos copied to CD, then home for a shower - after four days of walking this was very much enjoyed!!!!

The restaurants were all closed and in any case we were getting up at 430, so we flopped into bed, congratulating ourselves on conquering the Inca Trail!!

Today we woke with satisfaction knowing that we were in for an easier day.

Today we call Inca Steps day. Yes I know we had a lot of steps the day before, but today we were on original Inca Trail, and there were over 3000 steps down.

I was getting more confident on my downhill, even though it was still pretty slippery. Because we had some time up our sleeve, we were able to add on a little side trip to some Inca terraces which added about an hour to our walking for the day.

We had a late lunch at the third campsite (still raining but mostly light). We were very pleased with our wet weather purchases. They certainly earned their keep.

We went to another archeological site, and then had a couple of beers (at this campsite there was a bar). After dinner we had a farewell ceremony as our porters would be leaving us at 4:30 am the next morning.

The farewell ceremony was very moving and emotional. Each of the eight porters told us a little more about themselves and then we made a thankyou speech to them. They had been so amazing the whole time, and we were starting to get to know them. Chapulin was the head porter and also our cook. At 32, he had been a porter for 15 years. Freddie was the youngest, the "baby of the group" at 19, and Domingo was the cheeky one. Felipe (I think) was the oldest at 43. They all looked older than their years (except perhaps Freddie), as they have a very hard life. We would really like to see the companies provide better gear for the porters (boots and proper backpacks as a minimum).

After giving each of the porters a hug and kiss, or handshake, goodbye, and them thanking us once again for our tips which help to feed their families, we went to bed. Unfortunately our tent was not very waterproof, and each morning we had woken with something wet. One morning it was my boots (which I managed to dry out enough). Tonight it was our sleeping bags which got wet, so we spent the night curled up so that we did not get too damp. Tomorrow was going to be another exciting day.

We started early with a good breakfast and commenced our walk about 7am. Marisol had estimated that we would take 4 - 5 hours to reach the top of Dead Woman´s Pass, based on our previous day´s efforts.

The first couple of hours were steady climbing, then we reached the major climbing part. The walk was mostly on paths rather than Inca steps. The last two hours were slow, but we just kept plodding on, and drank heaps of water and didn´t feel the need to stop. After three hours and 50 minutes we reached a very windy and cold peak of Dead Woman´s Pass (4200 metres) to the sounds of lots of clapping from the small group at the top of the hill, and Jamie telling us that we had another 45 minutes to go!

None of us had had any trouble with the altitude, even though Marisol assured us she was carrying oxygen just in case. We had all had very mild moments of dizziness and the suggestion of a headache, but it was almost nothing.

Unfortunately there was no view to look at, as the mist had closed in and it was raining lightly. We were still very happy to have arrived, and when Beate and Magnus arrived a few minutes later, we had a group photo.

Then came the real challenge. One and a half hours of slippery Inca steps, oddly spaced, at odd angles. Contrasting with the uphill walk, which we didn,t have much trouble with at all, and noone passed us on, we were passed a lot downhill, as I struggled with my poor balance and lack of confidence on the slippery steps. My knees sure felt it, but we got to our designated campsite (3500 metres) at about 1pm.

At lunch we had a group conference, and we decided that we would like to press on and knock some of the next day´s climbing (including the next pass at 3900 metres). I think it was an extra 6 km altogether, but a lot of up and downhill climbing.

About an hour from the finish we climbed to another ruin and got a history lesson from Marisol. It then started raining more, and the last hour was pretty cold and wet and would have been miserable were we not so pumped from the days´s achievements!

Our campsite was allocated late (because of our lastminute change of plans) so we had a pretty bad site. It was about 500 metres down a slippery muddy path to the toilets (which Pat refused to use in any case because they were so smelly). Toilets on the Inca trail were usually a hole in the ground in any case, and even with the rain we preferred to find ourselves a bush if possible! Cleaning teeth in the pouring rain out the back of the tent will be a memory that will remain for a long time!

Our campsite was at 3600 metres though, and Pat reckons we now qualify for the "mile high club".