Edmond Chan

From La Paz, our next stop was the Salt Flats in the south of Bolivia. We were joined by Emma and Joe from the Wild Rover on the bus down to the jump-off town of Uyuni. The bus was overnight but sleep was a distant possibility. The journey was around eight hours but the last six were easily the bumpiest I‟ve ever experienced; it was like being on a bucking bronco ride. I couldn’t be sure, because it was pitch black outside, but it must have been the rockiest dirt track in the country.

We arrived in Uyuni at around 6am and we were exhausted. Even so we were refreshed by the sheer outback look and feel of the place with dusty, sandy roads revolving primarily around one main street. We found the travel agent for our three day trip to the Salar de Uyuni, the legendary Bolivian Salt Flats; the biggest salt plains in the world. Our contact was a classic looking Bolivian old woman with two or three teeth left. She introduced us to Alejandro, our guide and protector for the next few days. Alejandro, at well over six feet tall, was easily the biggest Bolivian I‟d seen so far. He was quiet most of the time, and very good natured. He almost always wore classic dark aviator sunglasses and had a frontier look to him. He was also an extremely fast driver. One of the concerns of travellers going to the Salar de Uyuni is that some of the drivers are drunks; hopefully, Alejandro wasn‟t! Unfortunately, he didn‟t have much English. Luckily, Joe had some Spanish, becoming our de facto translator and was banished to the front seat as his reward.

Despite assurances from every operator that, were the maximum capacity of six for the trip not be met, we would just go as a group of four, we trawled the streets for additions to our party. We were told that an Australian couple was late and that we were waiting for them. Eventually, a Dutch couple, Michel and Leonie, got into the 4×4 and they promptly asked us if we were Australian!

The Salt Flats are part of the Bolivian desert and, immediately on leaving Uyuni, we were straight into huge landscapes and mighty vistas with mountains far off on the distant horizon. We raced to a locomotive graveyard where we stood on rusting old trains; a totally surreal place, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Our next stop was the Salar de Uyuni itself, an absolutely mind-blowing landscape and the closest thing I‟ve ever experienced as to the Sublime. These are the largest Salt Flats in the world, at more than 10,000 square km. By way of brief history, 40,000 years ago, the area was part of Lake Minchin, a pre-historic lake which dried to leave two smaller, modern lakes and two salt flats, one of which is Uyuni. The Salar de Uyuni has an estimated 10 billion tons of salt of which only 25,000 tons are extracted annually. The Flats are pure white, and, during the dry season, crusty to the crunch underfoot. It‟s like a thick, impossibly large layer of rock salt and is „cracked‟ into almost hexagonal „tiles‟ about the size of a book. I‟ve never been able to have such a panoramic view of a landscape. The terrain is almost completely flat meaning that the horizon is incomprehensibly distant. Some mountains are just about visible to the west; I‟m guessing they were the feet of the Andes. This flatness combined with the whiteness of the ground and the brilliance of the intensely azure sky means you can have some great fun with the use of perspective in photographs. You can make yourself look the same size as a small object (like the height of a can of Coke) with some clever positioning and with the camera placed really close to the ground. We had lunch on the Isle de Pescado or the Island of Fish, a huge „iceberg‟-like natural structure of coral that stands incongruously, improbably alone in the middle of this astonishing terrain.

The whole place is like driving on Star War‟s Tattooine; totally otherworldly and exhilarating. The Flats had a powerful impact on me, the kind of feeling I get when in true wildernesses. We drove through the Salar de Uyuni for hours (it‟s such a massive space) and stayed the night in a spartan village. We were sharing the house with a family and we were in a barracks-like annex at the back. The conditions were basic with cold running water and a narrow bed each, but it felt exactly right; we needed nothing else. We ate like kings for supper; Alejandro rustled up some delicious fried chicken and some sopa verduras (Andean vegetable soup), with enormous, chunky chips. We got to know the others: Leonie and Michel Van Lieshout were really lovely people; they were on a three-month honeymoon making their way south to Chile via the Salt Flats; we couldn’t help but notice that the Dutch speak incredibly good English, probably better than most English people. Joe was in IT consultancy in London and took regular extended holidays; this time he wanted to explore Bolivia over the course of a month. Emma was a student who was six months into a huge year-long round-the-world trip. We washed the meal down with mugs of hot coca tea. That night was so cold. I went outside where the wind-chill factor made it feel below freezing; I have never seen so many stars in the night sky; thousands and thousands of fiercely burning stars; a sight I‟ll never forget, seared on my memory.

It was an early start the next day to drive further south-west towards the volcanoes that populate this part of the desert. As with the Salt Flats, the landscapes and the skies seemed so exceptionally vast; I‟m not sure what causes this perception. We saw a volcano smoking in the distance around the Bolivian-Chilean border and, remarkably, a young man cycling through the desert with his backpack on the back of his bike. What the fuck was he doing here?! The sun was at its midday strongest and there was nothing of navigable note to guide him. Alejandro slowed to check with the man that he had enough water and gave him rough directions to the nearest town and we waved him good luck. It mustn‟t be that infrequent an occurrence to see a cyclist in the middle of the Bolivian desert with no visible civilisation in sight.

We saw several huge lakes with various minerals in huge quantities giving their waters brilliant colours such as coppery greens, rusty reds and deep cobalt blues. At one lake, we saw a huge flock of pink flamingos just lolling in the water; a beautiful, utterly random and unanticipated sight. What do they feed on? What can live in this shallow body of water in the middle of a huge desert? Hmmm…a flock of flamingos of course! We ate a fine lunch on the shore of that lake gently pickling under the strong sun, munching on Bolivian sour apples. I looked around and had a feeling that I‟d not enjoy a lunch like this again for a long time. We‟d spend most of that day driving around that vast landscape gentling tracing an anti-clockwise circle back towards Uyuni, our starting point. I‟d grown to love long distance car and bus journeys; I enjoyed long bus trips and now, just sitting in the back of a battered but perfectly functional 4×4, gave you time to think. Something about the starkly beautiful and faintly supernatural desert was conducive to thought; I‟d stare out of the window and think about everything from where I was going with my life to my travelling experiences so far and to evolving thoughts on my own beliefs.

One topic we discussed was the nature of love; specifically on the theory of whether there really is “the One”, a preordained match. Both of us had had mild crushes on the Inca Trail trip and we were in the mood to ponder the question. The opposing theory would be that there wasn’t a “the One”, and that there are in fact countless possible, compatible partners with whom you could fall in love. I thought there might be a middle way between these two opposing views. The basis is “attraction”; attraction in the widest sense. Attraction could be between anybody. It‟s between people who are drawn to each other. This ‘being drawn to’ doesn’t happen between one person and too many other people; it’s too dependent on mutuality and like-mindedness to be. It’s also not necessarily sexual. For example, a girl could have a best friend (might also be a girl), who she’s drawn to (i.e. attracted to) but not necessarily want to have sex with, perhaps because they’re both heterosexual. Whilst, they exhibit all the signs of attraction (they’re happier in each other‟s company, they yearn for the other when they’re separated) they’re just clearly not each other’s future love-match because they‟re not sexually attracted to each other. Anyway, over the course of your life, you’ve met probably about 5-10 people to whom you’re attracted to as a person and to whom you’re also sexually attracted to. Any of these 5-10 people could develop into your future love-match. Therefore, there does not need to be a “the One”, just several possibilities who could develop into, well you know! If so, then neither do we have to believe in the „many fish‟ scenario. It‟s all theoretical of course; it could be a third way for the sake of finding middle ground. Perhaps it‟s just best to plump for one side. Sorry dear reader, I told you that you start to think random stuff!

Another thought: we‟d also noticed how much more receptive we‟d become to new things, new people and new experiences. We‟d already met so many great people in such a short space of time and we wondered whether that was because the number of interesting people we‟d met had simply increased on the road or if instead it was because we had become more open, and less judgmental, towards new people. It wasn‟t difficult to at least correlate this feeling with our current happier and freer states of mind. It became a recurring thought, along with the determination to retain this attitude when we returned home. I began to wonder about the extent to which your environment impacts on your state of mind. Clearly, being taken out of your normal surroundings (work, friends, family, societal expectations etc.) is a mentally liberating experience. It‟s probably this „freeing‟ property that enables this increased receptivity. A related state of mind was the increase of the “Yes” function whereby because of this increased openness, you‟re just more inclined to say “Yes” a lot more, especially to things you‟d normally “Um” and “Ah” about and say “Maybe” to things you‟d normally just dismiss. I‟d see it in myself and almost every traveller I‟d meet. To the guy we‟d just met in a market, “Fancy coming to Uyuni tomorrow?” “Yes why not!” Or to some random traveller you’ve just met over breakfast, “Fancy a morning of sightseeing round galleries and museums then a walk for four hours round the city?” “Sure thing, sounds great!”; “Fancy a three day detour that wasn‟t in your plans to see something you‟ve never heard of?” “Absolutely! Sign me up! It could be the time of my life!” It‟s just a “Yes, Yes, Yes” mentality when travelling; a state of being that‟s just joyful. Anyway, enough of my journal ramblings for now!

That evening, we pulled up to about 3,900m into one of the most otherworldly places I‟d ever seen; rocky, mountainous and, once the sun fell, incredibly cold. In the wind, it must have been about minus 20 degrees Celsius. I walked by myself in a straight line in this treeless, flat hinterland and, after twenty minutes, I couldn‟t have been more alone; I was literally on the other side of the world. That night, we all drank some vodka that we‟d brought with us and chatted by the fire until the early hours.

After just a few hours sleep, we were back on the road at 5am whilst it was still dark. We sped off to a collection of volcanic geysers where we peered into a steaming mud-hole which was so hot compared to the freezing air around it. I‟d heard that some of these geysers had been man-made for the burgeoning tourist interest in them. I got close enough to feel the heat from a live geyser and to feel the bubbling, grey mud sliding underneath me.

We drove off to a nearby rock pool where we were going to enjoy breakfast. It looked busier here, with more tourist groups. It seemed like the idea was to jump into this open-air pool heated by volcanic activity and enjoy our first bath since we‟d arrived in South America. The trouble was that it was still ball-shrivellingly cold and, despite the first beams of sunlight appearing, no-one wanted to get down to their smalls. Grant thought about it for a second and just jumped in. Of course, I couldn‟t let him just be the only one in, so I was next. It was glorious! The water was warm and soft and the surroundings were just magnificent; a slowly emerging sunrise atop a mountainous backdrop; it was an expansive and almost unbridled wilderness; it was easily the most memorable bath I‟d ever had. It was memorable for Grant in a different way when he received the sight of another man‟s early morning semi-glory just inches from his face!

As with the Inca Trail, bowel movements had been a running joke throughout the Salar de Uyuni trip so far because facilities were so sparse that, even if you didn‟t really need to go, you went anyway to avoid pain and embarrassment down the line. That morning we knew that we wouldn‟t have the chance to go for the next six hours so we decided to give it a go despite not really needing to. Alejandro was about to leave so we ran to the banos which were really just holes in the ground (with sand and shit at the bottom about two metres below); each hole separated by a thin wall. I hadn’t really mastered this technique yet; I don’t think that men’s leg muscles are used to the squatting position. My legs started wobbling almost immediately; I mean this is actually a stress position used by interrogators! I needed the wall behind me as a support. The fact that Grant and I could talk to each other over the partition during the act was even funnier; we were trying to make each other laugh so that the other might fall down the hole!

We dropped Michel and Leonie at the Chilean border near San Pedro from where they would head to Valparaiso to continue their honeymoon. It took us six hours of straight driving to get back to Uyuni where we said goodbye to Emma, Joe and the fantastic Alejandro and jumped on the overnight bus back to La Paz via Oruro.

We had decided to climb Huayna Potosi.

The next morning, we loaded up the van with our duffel bags. We were allowed 6kg per person and I just filled mine with socks and baby wipes. Jose was in high spirits, joking around and getting to know the group; it was great to see that my first impressions may have been completely off. We left Cusco for the Sacred Valley, passing a small village along the way. In the village, we met women and children who fashioned artisanal products such as blankets and scarves using traditional means. We saw how they extracted dyes from local plants, how they coloured the fibres in huge pots over open fires, and how the alpaca fibres were made usable. The people were dressed in frilly black skirts and bright red shawls with jauntily angled stiff berets. There were no men around; they must have been working in the surrounding hills.

From here, we slowly climbed in altitude again to a point high on a mountain. The sun was incredibly strong by now and, despite the altitude, we were all in t-shirts. On the other side of this mountain was a huge valley with massive roofless stone structures and steppes cut into the steep slopes. Here, high above the Sacred Valley, Jose told us impassioned stories of the wars between the Aymara and their enemies. His stories, we would later find, had a tendency to go on a bit too long but, listening to him telling sweeping legends in these majestic surroundings, we all began to warm to him.

We drove a couple of hours to Ollytaytambo, near the beginning of le Camino Inka, the Inca Trail, a historic pilgrimage for the Inca peoples who would make the journey to Machu Picchu. Ollytaytambo is an ancient and charming Inca town which has been beautifully preserved. The streets are cobbled and laid out on a grid system. The buildings are single-story with impressive stonework and, that afternoon, from the vantage point of a temple set into the face of a mountain, we saw that the town is set at the feet of three massive mountains that surround and dwarf it; a truly awesome sight. That evening, some of us had a superb meal in one of the many tourist restaurants; how we came to this one and had a meal was sheer pot-luck; a tourist kid, seeing that we were dithering outside, ran out to implore us to come into this particular restaurant. We feasted on great, fat burritos, heaving with guacamole and sour cream with impossibly, finely-cut matchstick chips in a highly après-ski-like, convivial atmosphere (candlelight, everyone squashed around a table that was slightly too small and with very friendly owners) – what more could you want!

That night we played cards under the stars. It was so quiet and the room we stayed in was probably the darkest I’ve ever had the pleasure of sleeping in. The coffee the next morning was the best I’d had in Peru so far (and, unfortunately, the best I was to have until I reached Australia and South-East Asia). It was thick, black as death and stronger than neat whisky; it was rocket fuel served just as I like it. That morning was also the beginning of a continuing preoccupation with bowel movements for the whole group for the rest of the Inca Trail. You never knew when your next opportunity might be, so take them when they arise, even if you don‟t really need to.

The final addition to the group joined us that morning; he was Hubert, another guide and a friend of Jose. He was an immediate hit on the group; the guys liked him for his ruggedness and easygoing nature; the girls liked him for his, well, his ruggedness, easygoing nature, and his just smelling of “man”! He was about 5 feet 10 with long hair and eyes that you just knew had seen many things. He was clearly a ladies‟ man and the women in the group were no exception; they giggled about him all the time. Hubert threw his gear into the van and we drove off to the beginning of the Inca Trail at the famous 82km point. Here, we met the porters for our group; around fifteen men, young and old, all Amerindian, who looked to be carrying a huge amount of luggage. They had no English, nor it seemed much Spanish. Some were friendly and outgoing, others shy. All had, at first sight, deeply inadequate footwear for such a journey: just trainers and sandals. These were the men who would be carrying our tents, the pots to cook our food, basic staples and our duffel bags. Jose explained that there used to be no restrictions on the amount a porter carried on his back but that now the industry had become more regulated and the maximum today is around 30kg. It made the backpacks we carried seem light and, as we watched the porters fly past us after every mealtime and every stop to set everything up ahead with all that on their backs, we felt increasingly humbled.

The first day was very easy; the trail was mostly flat and paved path. Every now and again, we would climb and be rewarded with stunning views across the valleys and mountains. The group became very spread out; Grant and I changed pace often so that we‟d have the chance to meet and get to know everyone in the group. Rich lived a particularly interesting life; he was a carpenter who‟d work like a beast for six months (12 hours a day, six days a week), save every penny and then go travelling for the next six months, go home, and then do it all over again; he‟d seemed to have found a middle ground between normal working life and being a perennial traveller.

Emma had been travelling solo for 13 months through Asia and Australia, now she was working her way up through South America; I can‟t even imagine being on the road for that amount of time; with the exception of Rich, Emma was easily the most seasoned traveller of the group, with absolutely no qualms about things such as the drinking water or the facilities. That first night, our group camped in a field, two to a tent, and all in a row, with a squat toilet in a hut on a nearby hill. We feasted on traditional Peruvian stews and soups, and drank some hot tea mixed with local rum. Afterwards, we all went into Emma‟s tent to chat, play card games, drink some more rum and slowly stink out her tent with all our sweaty socks (no showers just baby-wipes!); it was just like camping as kids. Before everyone went to sleep, Jose and Hubert warned us to put our boots inside our tents just in case animals such as wolves ran off with them. However, it wasn‟t until the next morning at breakfast that the rumour went around that Jose had actually been concerned about tarantulas but didn‟t want to alarm us!

The second day of the trek was much tougher than the first; we started the climb in the morning walking up huge, rough-hewn „steps‟ and climbed around 800m, again with the effect of spreading out the group. We munched on coca leaves which apparently are excellent for alleviating the sharp headaches caused by altitude. They‟re about the size of sage leaves and they‟re really bitter. You roll up a small bunch and chew them to release the juices and then you hold them packed against the inside of your cheek, like a hamster. It does seem to work; I had no headaches and felt great. After a quick lunch, we trekked up to „Dead Woman‟s Pass‟, the highest point of the Inca Trail at around 4,200m. On the way, I had a quick chat with Hubert, a man, it quickly emerged, who simply loved his job. He told me about how much he loved Cusco and about the peaks that he‟d climbed around his city. Some of them were over 6,000m and didn‟t require oxygen. The impassioned way he was talking about the rewards of climbing and the views from the summits really left a mark on me. The rain started coming in hard now and, by the time I reached the Pass, it was torrential. The descent into the second camp was steep and slippery under foot. It was here that I encountered my first squat toilet. I‟d held out up until now but that solitary hut was calling my name! Inside was a porcelain hole in the ground with footholds. You place your feet on these and squat. It‟s deeply uncomfortable; I don‟t know how women do it! Your legs start to shake and your muscles start to cramp; all you can do is concentrate fiercely on making sure you don‟t fall over or shit on your heels or both! The views of the surrounding mountains, verdant and partially obscured by thick cloud, were majestic. I later heard from Grant that someone had asked Hubert how he was as he arrived at camp. Apparently he swept his arms all around him, smiled beatifically, and exclaimed, “This is my office!”

The third day began as each morning so far had done: a wash in a basin, hot coca tea and a spot of quinoa porridge (quinoa is a versatile grain native to the Andean region of South America. It isn‟t really a cereal but has interesting nutritional value, being high in protein and gluten-free. It was sacred to the Incas whose King used to sow the first seeds of the season). The trail began with a particularly steep climb; it was lucky that Grant and I had put in some proper preparation before the trip. We descended through beautiful cloud-forest as we approached the tree-line again. I had a great chat with Jose on the way down to camp three; he told me about how he‟d met his wife on one of these trips. She was from California and apparently fell for him on one of these trips. They‟d had a brief fling. She‟d come back out to see him, pursued Jose over a few years, and she now lived with him in Cusco. They married but, sadly, he wasn‟t allowed by US immigration to visit his in-laws.

By now, the trail was becoming much busier and we saw first-hand how the impact of tourists was negatively affecting the Inca Trail. A couple of people in our group saw a girl from another group literally take a shit on the path; it smelt like death and there was toilet paper all over the walking trail; it was just nasty. The final campsite was packed; we walked past the horrific communal toilets to the only bar onsite. Here, the balcony views were probably the finest I have ever had the pleasure of wolfing down a pint with; huge, densely forested mountains all around, with a cold beer in hand. That evening, we drank and danced and chatted with the porters, who asked me, through translation, what I did for a living. I explained that I had resigned from my job in order to go travelling around the world. They looked at me and Grant in astonishment and asked whether we were millionaires. Jose told me that they just couldn‟t comprehend the notion that someone could do that; I didn‟t say anything; I had the strongest feeling that we were immensely privileged and said no more. I didn‟t feel guilt, just a sense that there was massive inequality in the world. I can‟t even think of the word that describes the gulf in freedom that allows me to do what isn‟t really that outlandish in the developed world and that of a man who doesn‟t have the money to travel anywhere close to even beyond his own borders.

The final push to Machu Picchu began in the pitch black of early morning at 3.45am. We trekked for more than an hour to the Sun Gate and marvelled at our first view of Machu Picchu far below in the distance with the iconic Huayna Picchu looming over. It‟s like something out of a Tintin comic; that kind of exoticism and mystical imagery. It‟s one thing to see Machu Picchu in photographs; it‟s surreal actually being there and walking around it surrounded by clouds. You‟re keenly aware that this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Machu Picchu is a huge complex of ruined stonework and huge steppes carved into the side of the mountain. It‟s set on a lush green plateau, on top of a ridge and surrounded by a crown of huge forested mountains and clouds all high above the Urubamba Valley. It was thought to have been built by the Incas in the 1400s but was abandoned before the arrival of the Spanish. (Some theorists suggest that smallpox may have wiped out the Incas around Machu Picchu.) Soaking up the enormity of the place, it‟s astonishing that the Spanish never discovered it. It was only discovered and brought to world attention by the explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911. Strolling around the ruins, and looking at the mountains, you wonder, in a similar fashion to Stonehenge, how these huge slabs of stone came to be here. There‟s no quarry nearby and no obvious place where the rock could have come from. It‟s a marvel! I lingered at the edges to stare at the surroundings and tried to spot a Peruvian eagle (a national icon); I‟m sure I did see one circling high above in the distance. I even saw a llama strolling across the grounds and managed to get close enough to pose for a picture with this fantastic creature.

We made the short descent down into the valley below to the town of Agua Caliente; again a picture-postcard Peruvian town, with fairly ramshackle and charming buildings built around a single train track going back to Cusco; fantastic for posing on the tracks. That night back in Cusco, we enjoyed a massive drinking session in and around the Plaza de Armas; they keep clubbing simple in Peru; it‟s just cheap, strong drinks, free entry to each venue, a big dance-floor, loud, upfront, cheesy music and an almost unhealthy obsession with all things Bob Marley, who dominates the playlist. This was the case all through South America; South Americans love Bob!

I‟ve been on some great holidays, but the Inca Trail was easily the most enjoyable one that I‟ve ever been on so far; talk about setting a benchmark for the rest of the trip. I put this down to the combination of a challenge, to the strong camaraderie within our group and to the absolutely awe-inspiring setting. The tour guides were awesome fun: Jose and Hubert. I‟ll never forget a line from Jose regarding a woman that he once admired: “If I don‟t kill her, I‟ll send her to the mental home!” A Peruvian saying, basically along the lines of “God, she‟s hot! I‟d fuck her to within an inch of her sanity, or beyond!” The camaraderie was fostered by shared hardships such as a lack of sleep, cold nights, squat toilets and rain, and also a sense that we were privileged to be there; a sense reinforced by the amazing native porters whose physical strength and good natured kindness put into sharp perspective any difficulties that we may have encountered. I don‟t think that bowel movements, aches, pains, gut rot and state of the toilets have been discussed as frequently as on this trek; I‟d never planned my next shit with such precision before.

The end of our Machu Picchu trek was also the end of any structure in our travelling. Our only restriction was that we flew out of Buenos Aires on 21 January 2009. From Cusco, our plan was to head west to Bolivia. We planned to make our way to Argentina overland, and, as South America has almost no trains, that meant buses. Eventually, we grew to love South American bus journeys because, given the enormous distances, they were almost always overnight, meaning we saved money on a night‟s accommodation.

Buses, as the sole mode of transport on the continent, we would find were generally really comfortable, but not in Peru! Our first bus journey was seven hours to the town of Puno on the Peruvian shores of Lake Titicaca, which at 3,812m is the highest commercially navigable body of water in the world and the largest lake in South America. That bus journey was an eye-opener; the bus smelt stale and the seats were slightly damp. On one of the legs, some locals came on board the ancient bus selling their wares; one of whom was an old woman with a huge cloth pack on her back. Inside was a massive piece of undetermined meat; I‟m going to guess it was beef but I couldn‟t be sure it wasn‟t horse or llama. I had images in my mind of a horse‟s head. I tried to sneak a look at the contents of the sack; all I could see was a large knife slowly hacking into it and pieces of meat emerging which she would dole out to passengers with some loose potatoes. You‟re probably thinking “Just try it you pussy!” but I don‟t really think I could have stomached it, particularly on a long distance bus with no facilities on board!

We went through the altiplano highlands where life, whilst beautiful and isolated around the huge Lake Titicaca, is also bleak and desolate. We passed a town called Juliaca, which was nowhere near as pretty as its name suggests. The roads were unpaved with workers moving debris for no apparent reason. The buildings were mostly decrepit or half-finished; yet this was no new town. All of the towns on this road from Cusco to Puno to La Paz had an unfinished look to them. Half-finished houses and broken roads are the norm and the people had the dead-eyed look of years of being weathered by the harshness of their environment. (I’ve since read however that the buildings are deliberately left unfinished so that its owners don‟t need to pay full taxes on them (similar to the Window Tax in Britain in the 18th Century)). The terrain here is rocky and dusty and, with no signs of vegetation or crops, I imagine it’s impossible to cultivate anything. This was pure poverty and, with no signs of any means of production or commerce, I imagined it must be perpetual poverty. Despite this poverty and desolation, I had an insistent feeling of being pleased to be here; and why not! I was on the other side of the world! It sounds ridiculous but, even travelling for this short period of time and on a fairly well-worn route, it’s a satisfying feeling that you‟re out here. Fuck holidaymakers in Majorca! It’s all relative though; I’m sure that Antarctic or jungle explorers look on backpackers with the same degree of condescension.

At 4.30am, after some brief, violent stomach upsets at Lima airport, we were on a plane to Cusco and, looking out of the window at our first sighting of the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Andes, it felt for the first time that I was actually ‘travelling’. Growing up in the UK, the Andes are an absolute mile away, both in distance and in the imagination, and it carried a powerful mystique. I knew that the range contained the mighty Cerro Aconcagua (in Argentina), the highest mountain in the western hemisphere, thousands of kilometres to the south, and here I was flying right over its northern tip. With few clouds in the air, I could see just ice and snow below.

Despite the flight from Lima to Cusco being little more than an hour long, Cusco was a huge change in altitude. The city is more than 3,000m high and the thinness of the air had a noticeable effect on our breathing. It reminded me of going skiing; it was freezing cold in the shade, whilst the sun felt uncomfortably strong. We all packed into our hotel and I nearly fell backwards down the stairs on the way up to my room. My head felt really light and my legs suddenly had very little strength in them, certainly struggling to cope with a 16kg backpack. We had the rest of the day to do with as we pleased; our only task was to try and acclimatise to the altitude as fast as possible; we‟d be on the Inca Trail very soon.

Cusco is an ancient city and it predates the Spanish. It was once the capital of Peru and the seat of Inca power. It‟s a magical city full of spectacular Spanish architecture and Inca ruins. It‟s dominated by the Plaza de Armas, an enormous square in the centre of the city. From above, Cusco is a maze of terracotta rooftops, squares and high walls. It‟s one of the most unique cities I‟ve yet visited, easily up there with Florence and Venice, perhaps even more so, given its literal otherworldliness. From here, some of us wandered through the cobbled lanes around the plaza under impossibly blue skies, lazily popping our heads into artisan markets, posing for pictures next to goats and with people dressed in traditional clothes of woollen alpaca hats with the distinctively Peruvian extensions over the ears (a classic orange Peruvian hat was my first travelling buy).

Cusco’s main income is, undoubtedly, from the tourist industry. Visitors come here from all over the world to marvel at an incredibly well preserved Inca city and also to use it as a spring board to the Inca Trail. There are market stalls, cafes and ATMs in the main square; there‟s even a McDonalds in the corner of the Plaza de Armas, although to be fair, it‟s the most discreetly signposted Golden Arches I‟ve ever seen, with just a small, black McDonalds “M” on the front wall of the restaurant. Without debating the „ins‟ and „outs‟ of globalisation, it was completely incongruous with its ancient surroundings, even with all of us tourists and travellers milling around; apparently, there‟s even plans to put a Starbucks in the Plaza.

We were on a budget of less than 30 US dollars per day; that‟s for everything from accommodation to food to transport. The Rough Guide to South America leaned towards our travelling demographic (the budget traveller) and we lapped up its tips on saving money. One of the tips, though completely obvious, was music to my ears. I was already keen on eating in markets and street stalls and would have done so even if I was a „flashpacker‟ (a mild jibe used by backpackers at travellers who travelled in greater comfort than they did; people who didn‟t stay in dormitories, didn‟t eat cheaply etc. More often than not, they‟d have gadgets like smartphones, laptops etc. It‟s certainly not a bad way to travel and it‟s definitely something that I‟ll do in the future.) We were advised to enjoy cheap eats such as cerviche and empanadas, which are delicious snacks much like a Cornish pasty: small pastries filled with meats and vegetables, cheap and moreishly tasty parcels of food available nearly everywhere in Peru. Empanadas, along with sopa verduras (Andean vegetable soup), would become the staples of my diet; cheap, nutritious and, most importantly, delicious. Some people were concerned about the hygiene of these street foods, but you can‟t think about these things; you‟re going to contract travellers‟ diarrhoea at some point, best to get it over with early in your trip and try to build up some immunity. However, for all this traveller braggadocio, I did draw the line at one thing: cuy, a roasted guinea pig, which, as a member of the rodent family, is essentially a rat. I saw an example just sweating on a grill in the sunshine. It must have been teeming with bacteria and no amount of Imodium would have been enough!

To help bond with our fellow Inca Trail travellers, we of course went for a few beers. That afternoon, we watched the sun go down over the Plaza de Armas, with its massive cathedral to our right, from the balcony of a building at least 500 years old, with an ice-cold longneck bottle of one of the most famous Peruvian beers, Cusquena. It doesn‟t taste that great; a little bit like a Budweiser (a bland American lager), but it was absolutely perfect in that setting. I‟ll remember that afternoon for a long time as a fine, beautiful moment as one of many to come.

We went back to the hotel for another meeting with Jose; this time he was noticeably warmer and a bond began to grow between him and our group of thirteen. That night, we went, as a group, to a restaurant and enjoyed an average pizza with increasingly good company; the group was diverse, cultured, friendly and keen to see a bit of the world: I knew that this was going to be a great trip.