Machu Picchu

Finally got round to setting up a blog. I'll write a catch-up post sometime but for now, here's a few pictures from the highlight so far...

All the Machu Picchu pictures are online here.

We wimped out of any climbing and got the bus up at around 7am. It was a magical (and slightly scary) drive up through mountains wreathed in cloud. We were lucky with our timing - it had been raining - but the sun came out as we reached the top - and, yes, it's pretty magnificent.

The main drawback was the hordes of other tourists (how dare they). We left our group pretty soon (the guide seemed intent on telling us at length about his utopian take on Inca society) and as we were there ahead of the daytrippers we managed a fairly peaceful self-guided tour.

Our only mistake of the day was walking down instead of taking the bus - the views from the bus on the way up were spectacular but they more or less disappeared on the footpath - still, at least we didn't walk up!