19 August: Cusco to Huacahuasi

We started our trek today with a very early wake-up and then drove thru to Lares, with a quick stop in Calca to pick up some stuff at a Market. They made us buy stuff to give the local kids as we walked, which turned out to be a very surreal experience, with the kids all expecting stuff and grabbing at us once we'd given one something. And there was certainly no concept of giving one of them an entire packet and them sharing it out. I think if we'd known how it was going to be, we wouldn't have bought anything for them. I am not about creating a culture of expectancy and begging.

As we left Calca, we passed some Incan Ruins that had apparently only been discovered about a month ago as they started widening the road. We stopped at Lares for lunch. There were some more hot-springs, but none of our group swam. There are 5 of us from our group doing the Lares Trek (the American couple are doing the Inca Trail), so we have joined up with half of another Intrepid group (the other half of their group is doing the Inca Trail with the couple). We were joking how it was like the tribal merger in Survivor - haha.



After lunch we started our hike. The afternoon's hike wasn't bad at all. We kinda just seemed to be hiking along the river, past Llama's and Alpaca's (people's farmland) and houses. We reached our camp site at about 4pm. Our camp site was in a village, on the land of one of our (headless?) horsemen. Can you believe 2 of the local kids were throwing rocks at @UselessRob and I because we had nothing more to give them! Our tents and everything were all already set up and we all sat down and had some tea and popcorn. And beers, there were local women and children at our camp site selling them. The Ageing Aunt & I went to bed early after dinner because it was quite chilly. Clouds came over during dinner and we couldn't even enjoy a beautiful starry sky!

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