We landed in Cuzco where we were met by minibus and a crazy guy taking our pictures as we walked across the tarmac with our bags. We headed to our hotel, the Hotel Marina where we was introduced to Ally, our guide for the trip.

After our introduction to the group and a brief walkaround Cuzco taking in the sprawling plaza’s and the inca sun temple at Coricancha . We spent the evening carefully packing our duffel bags to be within the 6kg allowed, so not to overload our porters who would be carrying them along the trail.

We left the luxury of the hotel to jump on the mini bus where we met our second tour guide Enrique (kekay) and to head for a our first stop. We arrived in an Andean Mountain town to be greeted by some friendly llama and to see how various goods are woven and to compare the thread used including wool from sheep, llama and alpaca.

One of the group, Nina, got to try her hand at weaving one of the local products after first being dressed up to look like a local. Upon leaving the town Ally told us that G.A.P. help support the village by employing people as porters and by bringing us to see them.

Our next stop was Pisac a peruvian village which is still used today for markets. Whilst there we were given some history of The Temple of the Sun, an example of the Inca brickwork where all the stones are fitted very tightly interlocking with one another and to lean inwards in such a way that no fixing material was required, it is was because of this construction the walls have survived earthquakes in the past. The Temple of the Sun was used by the Incas during solstice which could be observed from key windows in the temple. We also saw all the terraces (steps) in the valley formed by the Incas, they were used for agricultural purposes on flat land instead of on the steep sides of the valley.

After Pisac, we stopped for a view of Sacsayhuaman from a distance to see the size of the area, unfortunately due to the restricted time we had on the tour we didn’t get to go up and close to see the ruins and we head off for our next stop.

After an exhausting morning we stopped at a local spot for a buffet lunch, music to the Goonies ears, we certainly like our buffets however we had to refrain from getting `buffet full` as we had a hike to do later that afternoon.

On the way to the next set of ruins it was decided unanmously to leave walking around the ruins until the next morning leaving us time for the buffet to settle down and to avoid the crowds.

We arrived in Ollantaytambo, a small local town with cobble roads and lots of small local shops. Which Mike later made us of to purchase himself a conservative new hat. Later in the evening our group had to keep with tradition and give ourselves a name, Ally left us with a decision on what our group should be called, after extensive discussions and negotations Pozzie’s seemed like a good choice as we were a mixture of Pomms and Ozzies.

The following day before we left for Kilometre 82 we visited the ruins in Ollantaytambo we missed the day before, it was very wise decision of Ally’s as we were the only ones there that morning which made the views that little bit more spectacular.

From there we left for Kilometer 82, the start of the Inca Trail.