Tourists everywhere, lots of people and the english language. Cusco Is a very largely populated tourist town. In the whole five and a half weeks we've been in Peru, there hasn't been so many white people. The towns in peru seem to come alive at night but in Cusco everything seemed to shut down around ten. I get the feeling that the local people don't like the tourists because the locals weren't as nice as everyone in all the other cities we've been to. All in all the city was still very beautiful. Cusco has a lot of walls and parts of buildings left over from the Inca period. The main reason we went to Cusco was to aclimate ourselves before hiking the Inca trail.
The Inca trail to Machu Picchu was long, steep and rough on our knees. Day one- five hours of mostly up hill to our first camp site. We had four porters, a cook and our guide. The porters were so fast. We'd wake up every morning around five forty, pack our things, eat breakfast and leave. Our porters would leave roughly an hour after us and pass us within the first hour of hiking. They were carrying no more then twenty five kilos, we were carrying around six to ten kilos. The second day, by far, was the hardest. Not only was the hike up hard but the climb back down was just as hard if not harder. Our guide told us that some guy tried to count the stairs going down. Not counting the small little bumps but the actual stairs, the guy counted about 3,000 stairs. Knees were aching and legs were throbbing by the end of that day. If i counted right we hiked seven hours that day up to an elevation of 4,215m. When you're hiking up that high the elevation really gets to you but the back pack doesn't help much either. The third day was the longest day for sure probably eight to nine hours. It was the easiest though because we'd gotten the highest pass over with and most of the climb was small ups and downs. Going down always meant we had to hike back up. The last hour of the third day was the worst i think. Zig-zag all the way down to the camp down hill. Tim some how was with the other two people in our group and they made it to camp first. I trailed behind three girls in another group. We were all dying. Mom and Jeff stopped to take pictures so i lost them a while back. That camp was the best cause there were nice bath rooms, well comparatively, and a place to buy drinks and snacks and there was a restaurant. The last day we got up extra early, around three forty. We had breakfast and then headed off to the sun gate. Our hike to Machu Picchu on the last day was about three or four hours long. At the sun gate we were supposed to see all of Machu Picchu exactly how you'd see it in all the pictures on post cards or on the internet but, of course, it was foggy. So we headed in to Machu Picchu itself. By the time we got there around eight the sun was shining and it was hot sun too. Machu Picchu was a whole lot bigger then i was expecting it to be. In all the pictures it doesn't look that big because the pictures are from far away but once you get there, there's a bunch of hidden buildings and rows and rows of them. Approximately 300 people lived there at one point we were told. With the size of the place i expected there to be way more Quechua people there. The Quechua people were the common people who lived in that time. The only people who were called Incas were the kings. I don't understand how all those people could walk that trail all the time. We even walked on a modified trail for a while because the old one went for another day and went way up some more mountains. Personally, I was dying anyways so any longer and I wouldn't have survived. Even though it was tough if you ever get around to it i recommend hiking the Inca trail. The pain was worth it.
After our trek we took a bus over night to Ayacucho. That was the worst bus ride we had the entire time in Peru. Originally there was to be a girl who worked on the bus between us, but instead there was a guy. This guy was probably around late 70's to early 80's, smelled like he hadn't taken a shower in two weeks and possibly pooped his pants, Jeff and I are pretty sure he was drunk and we know for a fact that he wasn't all in his right mind anyways. First of all the man started to fall asleep right as he sat down but he was sleeping on me. The lady that worked on the bus walked around to pick up tickets had to wake him up, he didn't have a ticket. He was given three bags just in case he threw up and told where the bathroom was like six times. As the bus got going he'd wake up every ten mins and move around. Four hours in he slid way down in his chair, by the middle of the bus ride he was asleep in the isle half way under that seats. I'm pretty sure he was hitting the bottom of my chair for about an hour strait before he fell asleep again. This man was crazy and made sleeping very, very, very hard. It's a good laugh now though.
Ayacucho was very nice. There was a three day or four day festival for their halloween. We went to a fair and hung out in town for four days. Halloween night was a lot of fun because Mom and Jeff went a bought five bags of candy and I watched as kids and parents rushed them and crowded them for any candy at all. You'd see the same kid four or five times in one night cause they knew we had candy and we don't look much like the local people so we were easy to pick out. It was so cute to see all of the kids dressed up. My favorite was a baby dressed up as Zoro. Time was short there though.
Time was short in Peru completely. Peru was a very beautiful country, the people were always happy and nice. Six weeks wasn't long enough but now we're on our way to New Zealand. It's hard to believe that we're already on our second part of our trip. One month in New Zealand will be a lot of fun though but also a tight budget. I'm very excited.

-Jess