Learning to walk down hill

Any of you who have ever hiked with me know that I struggle to walk down hill.  Up hill, sure.  Down hill I become as slow as a toddler as I check my footing.  Well, today's Inca ruins were very much up and down hill (Claire has lots of pictures to share in her blog post), but my big achievement of the day is that Raul (our guide) taught me that on the Inca trail, they walk sort of sideways crisscrossing as they go and switching sides every 10 steps or so.  Now I can walk down hill like a pro, and it's much easier on your knees! (which is good, because we're headed for Machu Pichu tomorrow).

Today was full of things!  Many of which I am sure Claire will give you excellent details about- we saw ancient salt mines that are still being used (and wow I'm glad I wasn't the one driving down the curvy mountain road when we left there!), a giant agricultural basin with amazing steps, and an Inca temple.  We also took the train to the town of Aguas Calientes- a town that exists solely for tourists to sleep in the night before heading to Machu Pichu in the morning.

Now, I saw many amazing things today.  Beautiful, inspiring, mind-boggling things.  I learned much history as well, more than probably in years of school.  I hiked up and down and up and down at ridiculous altitudes.  However, what really baffled me today was the train ride!  We took a lovely high speed, 1.5 hour train ride.  Claire and I had seats a little ways away from each other, and I was sitting next to a Japanese tourist.  Once upon a time, I thought my sister took excessive numbers of pictures of mundane things, but she has nothing on this guy!  No joke, he spent half an hour staging a hundred pictures of his drink cup and snack.  This was challenging, because the train was moving, so when he let go, they would slide.  He was actually at it for so long that the woman handing out drinks (it's not a flight attendant on a train...), stopped by to help him!

So, that was baffling, but even more baffling was that every time the train stopped (which was often, there is one track with a few pull offs to let other trains pass, and there are lots of other trains), a man would literally jog past my window towards the front of the train.  It happened 6 or 7 times, and I think he was the same man every time- BUT WHERE WAS HE COMING FROM!?!?!

Anyway, the ruins today were amazing, and the train ride was beautiful and brought us to a distinctly more jungly climate.  Tonight we are in Aguas Calientes, a town with no cars (you can get here by train, helicopter, or walking) that exists just for tourists.  It's a bit much....BUT we had a delicious and much needed dinner (our tour guide failed to mention that we'd be skipping lunch to avoid crowds at one of the temples.  It was a great choice, but I was hungry.).  They have the most interesting trout here- it's pink like salmon, but not at all the same size and shape as salmon.  I had it with a garlic sauce tonight...yum, and a lovely avocado and papaya salad and some tasty flan.

There is so much more to tell, but we need to meet our guide at 5:30 tomorrow morning to see the sun rise in Machu Pichu, so I best be getting some sleep.

Yawn,
Emily