At Last, Choquequirao

The morning after the horseback tour I actually set out on the trek. Naturally, the Australian couple who were allegedly sick, turned out to be an American couple who wasn´t even in Cuzco yet at the time we were originally supposed to go. This was well expected, and therefore not a big deal for me. The trek is considered hard by local standard, but this is mainly due to the fact that most trek around the area are quite easy. It featured a very long downhill descent followed by a very long uphill climb, in order to get to the site, and then backtracking the same path.

I was a bit unsure of how impressive the site will be, after having visited Machu Picchu, but I wasn´t disappointed in the least. Though the site is not completely excavated (yet?), it is very easy to fill in the blanks, and to see that it is HUGE.

This is just a small portion of it:

Some of the site is quite unusual when compared to other Inca ruins, like the big two storey houses, and the images combined in some terraces (other Inca architecture is very "clean"):

And up close:

Another surprise that the agency thought I might enjoy, was the fact that the American couple had planned to do the trek in 5 days, while I was planning on only 4. This meant that the campsite for the 3rd day was kind of far from the finish point, and consequently, I had to start the walking the next day at 4am, and made it to my destination after 6 straight hours of walking half of the downhill and all of the uphill. At least I arrived back in Cuzco quite early.

((I just realised this stupid computer won´t let me space the paragraphs, which explains why the previous post seems quite compressed as well. Maybe I´ll be able to fix it on a different occasion.))