What got me through was the GAP Adventure group we had was totally totally awesome! Great bunch of people and we had a great time :) Thanks guys! We were pretty supportive of one another on and off the trail and got along pretty good. We had Canadians (6), Austrailans (3), Irish (2) and Americans (3) in the group.
For a quick summary ... as I was MIA from the blogging...
Jan 14th, 2009
Helen stayed up all night as we had to all meet downstairs at by 3:30 am for our 5:30 am flight to Cusco. I managed to shut my eyes for about 30 min - an hour though not a very good one. We met Tammy and Migel on the bus and found out that they were from Edmonton too! What a coincidence! We didn't find out about it until we were at the airport waiting for our flight. My stomach continued to be a nusance and had to manage what I ate and took some pills so that I would be well before the hike.
The flight did not take long ... less than an hour. We had a long wait though when we had to pick up our luggage. We were only allowed one carryon each so each of us had to check in our bags .. except for Scott who explained to us how he managed to get everything he needed packed nicely into a one bag including a stove! Crazy! Perhaps one day I will be able to do that but seriously not in a small backpack like that!
Once we arrived in Cusco, we were picked up by our host and went to our hotel, signed some papers, paid for our rental equipment and met more people on our tour (Margaret and Liam from Ireland). We debated over and over about renting the polls ... do we need it? One or Two? It went on for a good majority of the time. As for the weather, it was pretty cool in Cusco which was a bit of a surprise to us. I wish I had more sweaters instead of just my one LuLuLemon one which still treated me pretty good since it does dry pretty quick. We headed out to the Plaza to get some gear like mitts and toques and the like. It was so interesting to see the kids who try to sell you stuff know so much English! One cute little girl asked Eva where she was from. When she answered Canada, the little girl said, "Ottawa is the capital of Canada!" and continued to have a smooth conversation with all of us all the while trying to convince us to buy a finger puppet ... which I got suckered into since it was only One Soles and she was just the cutest little thing ... Eva tried to haggle a hug in there too to our surprise as everyone who knows her knows that she is sooooo germaphobic! LOL
More on the kids of Cusco ... we saw a little girl with this black cute baby alpaca and decided to have a photo taken with her... of course this will cost us One Sole which was fine as it was something we didn't want to miss so we each took one with her ... her mother (or so we thought!) joined in all the photos. We didn't know until we all had a turn and paid the little girl that she just popped into the pics! She wanted to be paid but we felt that it deceiving; we just paid One Sole instead cause we felt sorry for her. We found that everywhere you went and took photos of locals who happen to be within the direction, their hands stick out automatically to ask for money. I understand that this is their way to earn a living in a tourist city but it's hard to see how children will become dependant on tourists like us for a simple thing like a photo ... maybe cause I believe that when you take a photo...that photo is taking the culture and people of the country and city...things like this are debatable but perhaps another day :)Anyways, we did last minute before we headed out to the GAP briefing find a little shop in an alley and found what we needed for our Inca hike. We tested more of our haggling skills and spanish for numbers ... we are starting to get a hang of it :)
So in the GAP briefing , we finally met everyone. I think we were all pretty quiet at first except for Scott who loves to talk and we had a good laugh about his note taking and what he may have wrote to try to remember each person's name ... Jorge, our guide, was pretty descriptive about what we would do on our trip which was nice to hear and I actually got excited about it and couldn't wait. And when I saw that there were toilets on our campsites I was so relieved! Then again, the bushes would have been much cleaner!
After the briefing, we were sent on our way to pack the duffle with about 5lbs worth of stuff the porters will carry and our day packs and the main packs that we will leave behind in the hotel storage. The storage is safe as I put some of my electronics in there including my laptop and it is all well and accounted for! And man...the porters are amazing ... these guys can carry so much on their backs and go up and down the trail like it's no one's business ... and some with sandals! I think though that they should have better equipment like packs and shoes if they want to help do their job better as they were just carrying big duffle bag with no back support at all!
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