Trekking in Peru

Joey is from Gozo but lives in Astoria, New York. He has set up a blog to chronicle his travels in Peru. In this piece, he writes about the first of 4 days of his Inca trail trekking:

..The trail is about 37km long at an altitude which at one time exceeds 4000 meters (over 13,000 feet ) above sea level. I was picked up from the hotel by our tour guide leader Casiano ,we got on the bus which there were already the porters on it and 4 others guys who were part of the group ,we drove around Cusco to pick up the last 2 members of the group as we headed towards to Piskacucho also known as KM82 , the drive was about 90 minutes long . Before we continued to KM82 we stopped for breakfast at Ollayantambo. As we got to Piskacucho we passed through park control booth to show our ID and had our passport self stamped as a souvenir of the Machu Pichu Inca trail.

The weather was great sunny and dry and no patch of cloud. It was already around 10:00 AM when we crossed the Vilcanota River bridge at 2720m/8923ft In my group we were 7 people which we got on very well. After an hour walking we stopped for short break to have our snack , everyday during the 4 days we were giving a snack, hot breakfast , hot lunch and hot dinner also we had tea time break as well...On this first day we saw a view of the Inca site Fortress (Huillca Raccay) and Inca site Llactapata ( Patallacta) . We also saw the beautiful snow-capped peak of 'W'akay Willca' (5860m/19225ft).

We arrived at our campsite for the night at a green valley near the small village of Wayllabamba (3000m/9842ft) around 5:30 PM ,where we had our tea break and later had dinner . By 9:00 PM we were all in our tent because to morrow we had to get up early around 4:30AM...

Joey's Malta photos. This link comes via Nokkli in Malta who has a tennis blog here