But the tour won't leave the day we choose to go for it, we have to wait a little. We then decide to visit Bahia Sagrada with a big bus tour and spend a whole day laughing at the guide's jokes... they're good, but his english prononciation beeing what it is, nobody understands what he says, except Jess and I! We are bussed around to markets of different town, like all we see, but don't have money to buy anything... Nonetheless, we get to compare the prices from different stalls and confirm that their stuff is expensive!
We go to really good ruins in about 5 different neighborhood and except for Jessica feeling like she's going to faint (She forgot the camera!), all goes really well. We see some really cool stuff, like huge carvings in the rock wall across the valley from us. There are also explanations of the temple of the water and the sun, the rock work and how they carried all of them so far away (7km for 50metric tons rocks!!!). We enjoy ourselves all day and come back at about 8pm. Bed time! We'll now find out if we leave the next day for Salkantay...
No we don't, it would be more expensive, so why not go on a horse tour the next day? So we choose to do exactly that. We are expecting 5 beautiful hours on a strong tall horse, at times stopping by some ruins close by... Well, 1hour is looking at the first ruins without a guide... we have no money on us, once again, and the guides aren't free! Then we walk to where the horses are kept... Poor beast, I wonder if they are the size of poneys... We get on them and after being joined by a couple from Lima, get started on a trek the horses obviously know better than us! We try to ask our horses to go where the arriero says, but I, at least, am wasting my time... the horse chooses the way it wants to go! And the arriero says not to worry... So I and the rest get guided by the horses to various "unexplained" sites... once again, the guides don't work for free! All that time, we are going slower than walking speed and the arriero casually follows behind. The day passes uneventfully and Jess and I decide we don't want to ever do horsebadk riding in the area again.
We walk back home even thaugh we thought we'd get a ride back to the hostel. It's reasonably close to the central plaza and soon we're home. All is set, now we know we leave the next morning at 4:30am to Mollepata, the beginning of our trek. At that point, we don't know how many of us there will be in the group... Turns out we are 10, including 1 mexican girls who won't be with us more than 2 days. 2 English guys, 3 Swiss girls, 1 Canadian and 1 Brezilien and us make up the group who will stick together the whole way.
We have lunch just before a pampa, flat area, and the rest of the day's trail is almost without incline.
- We come across cows ready to fight for who knows what... sorry, we don't leave a tip, and they stop!!! -
Happy to be ahead of the group, we find shelter in the tents set up for the group.
We have time to dry and change before the rest of our group shows up. We even save ourselves a little hail storm!
Tea and dinner warm everyone up, and then it's sleep time. Wake up at 5:30am, we should leave by 6:30 or so... Hard to get up, but it's beautiful out and a tent service of tea gets all of us out of our tents.
Breakfast is quite good and we soon get on our way. It should be the hardest day today... 5hours of steep climbing to a 4600m pass, then 2 more hours until lunch and 3 to our end of the day camp. The group is in shape. In 3 hours, most of us are at the top of the pass. 
It is beautiful up there, the clouds come and go and we get some amazing pictures of Salkantay. What a magnificent mountain. It's name means impossible. Just a few years ago, 2 german guys tried to climb it and perished in an avalanche... I don't know if it was ever conquered. We offer our gifts to the mountain, rocks we carried since the beginning of the day, and enjoy a peaceful time at the pass. Jess and I think Xavier Rudd deserves to be sung in such circumstances and Jess thinks of asking around if anyone might know who he is. I love her! The Canadian guy has 3 songs of him on his MP3 player and is wanting to let us listen to him... I am so full of emotion I even cry.
Poor Rob, he doesn't realize it's for that very moment that he was moved from the Inca Trail to our Salkantay trail... In any case, thank you for offering that moment to Jess and I. We'll never forget it.
We walk down to lunch area, take a nap and wait for the food to be ready.
- Real life, says Jessica -Tent service of tea, once again, but it's a little later. At our speed, we don't need to leave so early anymore. Our walk is quite easy, up and down for a little while, but nothing we can't do! We pass an old hot spring site (now covered by a landslide) and walk to a little town, La Playa. There, I see an impressive landslide site only 2 weeks old... Ouch, I wouldn't have wanted to be there! The ground droped 1m at least and a huge section of the road doesn't exist anymore. A house being built has ruined foundations and anotherone has lost its half in the slide...
We take a truck to Santa Theresa, about an hour drive away, and there are so many of us, it's hard to all fit in the truck.
People have to watch out for branches and it's quite funny. We go through passionfruit, coffee and palta plantations on our way, and eventually arrive to town. There are hot springs in the valley bellow and we all go for a nice hot bath. 
Marcelo is the only one to leave almost right away, he says he's used to hot weather and cold water... no need for both! He's from Brazil, what to expect! 2 hours later, we head back to town, once again in a truck overloaded with people, this time tourists. We go to our dinner hut, which will soon turn in a noisy bar until 4:30am (at that point our patience was running out!), and have a late snack. We're told breakfast is at 8am, but I am the only one up at that time. The guide and the rest of the crew were drinking all night! We learn later that Walter found out a couple he knows well died the day before or so, that would explain his behavior...
After breakfast... (we ran out of bread and both myself and one of the crew went to buy some!) we took a cable car to the other side of the river, pretty cool! and walked slowly to Hydroelectrica, an electric plant in the Machu Picchu region.
- Good idea on the hat Jess! Looks good. -
- "Machu Picchu... Wow, they really make it look better on pictures!" says Ian! -
- It used to be the road, until a couple of days ago... so we drag all the gear to the next town! -
- This waterfall just comes from under the road, cool hein! -
It starts getting exciting that we made it there. Our goal is even visible in a short period of time... just around lunch time, we can see some windows in a building at the top of the mountain ahead of us. That's Machu Picchu, and we are thrilled. I can even look through Jade's binoculars and get a reasonable view. 
- The new trend this season!!! -
We have 7 or 8km until Aguas Caliente, where we'll spend the night. Well, it's all on train tracks! Not very pleasant, but we walk in tunnels and it's very scary to hear a "maintenance car" approching! Jess and I get our best cardio so far just by jumping out of the way... We finally arrive in Aguas Caliente, not a place for me, but it's got a hostel waiting for us! Meeting point 7pm for dinner. All of us will get a nice hot shower before dinner... Yeah right!
I must have been dreaming! We meet at the agreed time, after a bit of internet action, and decide on a 4:30am start to our day... We get served a fantastic meal and the food just doesn't stop comming! We all stay for a while and then, it's bed time again. Got to leave the hostel a 4:15am, have breakfast (on a full stomac!) minutes later, and leave for Machu Picchu after tipping the cooks and saying goodbey.
It's 5:20 when we start walking towards the mountain... We want to make it to the sunrise and before the tourists. It takes me 1 hour to get from town to the top of Machu Picchu, actually a little too far! It's 8km away (but I guess the trail is shorter) but straight up, steeper than grouse grind. The climb itself took about 35-40min to Jess and I. We rock!!! I was very proud of our capacity to push ahead, we are acclimatized now, and strong as ever. It really feels good.
We had a short guided tour of the ruins and saw some wicked stuff. For instance, there is a rock that is actually a topographic map of the region, all the important peaks are sculpted in it. I couldn't believe it!
We then left our guide until lunch time and went up Waynapicchu, a peak 1hour up from Machu Picchu. It took about half that time and gave fantastic views. Jess managed to prohibid herself from seeing anything, she dropped her glasses into a crevasse way down there... I went down with my battery needing headlamp and tried to find them, but it's another guy who spotted them for me and lent me his battery filled headlamp (the same!) to recuperate them. Thank you. This task fulfilled, I refused to give the glasses back to Jess for a time! The sweat finally dried from her face and I gave them back.
We spent a bit of time up at the top, took some more pictures, and let others do the same. It's very small up there. We walked down to Machu Picchu, and to Aguas Caliente. We grabbed our bags, went to meet up with the group and together left to a restaurant somewhere close to where we came from! A bit of bargaining later, Jess and I got a menu each, with a little drink and some garlic bread. I bought a litre of wine to go with my meal (at s/10) and we ate too much once again! We had just drank a litre of chocolate milk, it might have to do with that!
The train left at 4:30pm, and we all got to sit together. It was a nice ride in which Jess and I discovered amazing music. We wrote it all down and it's gonna play in my cafe! 1.5hr later, we swiched to a bus taking us to Cuzco. It lasted the same amount of time, and that was it. Back "home" to a city we don't know, and we wont see our group again.. a little sad. But we've got e-mail addresses at least.
What an amazing adventure. We didn't do the Inca Trail, but we got the exclusivity of a wilderness and the "intimacy" of a relatively small group (the inca trail groups were of 14 people by times!)
Talk to you soon.
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