bonnie & clyde

Together with our 2 French friends we met in beautiful Cuzco, we decided not to follow all the travel agencies who organise overpriced tours to Machu Picchu, but to make our own adventure...
The first day we already went halfway to the great ruins of Ollantaytambo, and on the way we stopped in some other impressive ruins in Chinchero. There we met some local students on the bus, who were studying tourism and wanted to practice being a guide, good for us, we got a free guided visit of the ruins! We were lucky that the local population was celebrating a religious event at the time, so we could observe their dances and local clothing.
We slept at Ollantaytambo, here we got a good tip from the woman at the hostal about how to pass the control in order to be able to walk to Machu Picchu ourselves. We got up at 4 in the morning, took a minibus up to km 82, where the driver dropped us after passing the checkpoint, where we could start our walk!
The woman at the hostal told us it was only 4 hours walking, so full of energy we took off! It was only after asking several other locals on our way, that we realised the walk would be a lot longer... we arrived at about 6 in the evening, making it an 11 hours walk! That explains why we did not meet a single tourist on our way... I don't have to tell you that we were exhausted when we arrived! Nevertheless, it was a really beautiful walk and we passed some impressive ruins. Actually, at some moments we could see the Inca Trail at the other side of the rails, so we felt as if we were doing our own (free) Inca Trail!
But we got up again at 4 the next day in order to be the first at Machu Picchu (which was a bit too optimistic, we weren't the only ones with that idea...) We hiked again for 1,5 hours, but this time climbing stairs, so we arrived, again, exhausted, but very excited at Machu Picchu!!! But the hiking was still not finished, because we had to climb another mountain in order to get the greatest view of Machu Picchu, which was actually the hardest climbing of all, it was sooo steep, some people did not make it to the top, but we did! It was gorgeous!!! See pictures at my facebook! The ruins are so big that we stayed there all day, the weather was great, we could see the snowed mountain tops at the back, and there weren't that many tourists as we had expected, so it was perfect!
We took the train back to Cuzco that same evening, and stayed there the following day, visiting some interesting museums about the Inca culture, we can't get enough of it!
In the evening, we took a night bus, 21 hours driving, and arrived broken at Lima. If you don't want to buy shoes, there is no reason to stop in Lima...
So tomorrow we are heading to Trujillo, the beach, mmm

Copacabana is a nice little town, but not that special. There are a lot of Gringo (tourist) bars and agency's to visit Isla del Sol. Which we went to visit for one day; it is really beautiful but we had expected a bit more maybe... nevertheless, it was a nice daytrip, we visited some ruins and did a walk through the whole Island. The next day we went to Puno, where there is not much to do or see, except for the Floating Islands, which is quite special! Everything is built of a kind of reed, the houses, the boats, upto the Island itself, which is attached with strings to some higher Islands surrounding it, so that it doesn't float away! There is a little school on one of the Islands, the people move by boats from Island to Island, the men go fishing during the day, we were just wondering how they wash...
At the moment we are at Cuzco, which is a gorgeous town, lots of things to do, but a bit too touristy! We visited some Inca ruins today, very interesting! We met our French friends from the jungle again, with whom we will go to Machu Picchu this week!