I got up early and caught a taxi to Lima Airport for a flight to Cusco. When I got to Cusco I saw a desk in the arrivals hall for “Hotel Monestario” which was written down on my itinerary as the place where I was staying. They had no record of me, which got me a bit worried. Luckily the guy there spoke English. After many unsuccessful phone calls, I went outside the airport to find my booked airport transfer waiting outside – seems that I was staying in a hotel with the same name but in a different town about an hour away in Urubamba in the Sacred Valley – oops.

Here I met Raul who told me all about how the Inca Trail was going to go. I learned that the porters who accompany us on the trip are only allowed to take 4kg of my stuff on the trail so I wouldn’t be able to take all the stuff I was planning to. I also learned that there are 11 porters looking after 7 of us that are doing the walk! New Zealanders aren’t used to that sort of attention if you ask me.

The rest of the people doing the Inca Trail were out on a sightseeing tour that I couldn’t join because I arrived too late into Cusco, so I waited for them in the hotel. They eventually turned up and I got to meet them. There was me, Ian and Richard, and four others who were a generation older, including Ian’s Dad. “Great”, I thought, “at least I won’t be the slowest one on the trip”.

We had a nice dinner together at the hotel but got an early sleep because we were leaving the hotel at 6:30am the next day. By this point my sore throat was going away a bit but sinus pain was coming on.