should be in time for when the masses from the trains show up!!! How infuriating is that?? And by this time the train hordes had shown up - at one point we overheard a lady asking her guide how they’d managed to cart all this soil up the steep mountain!!! The place was now just over-run with massive tour groups and frankly wall to wall with annoying people. We decided that enough was enough, we’d seen the place in the tranquillity of the early morning, and we’d been all the way round it, and to stay while it was rapidly turning into a circus would just spoil it. We said our goodbyes and headed off down the trail to the bottom of the valley.

We’d only been walking for around five minutes when we came across an old Peruvian woman selling bottles of water at proper prices and slices of delicious homemade chocolate cake!! We couldn’t resist stopping, not just for the cake, but also to

support this kind of thing. We chatted to her for a while as much as our Spanish would allow, and she told us that the people who ran Machu Picchu were really bad as they wouldn’t let any local people in to sell handicrafts or food and drink, and that the local people didn’t benefit from having one of the world’s top tourist destinations on their doorstep. Just the conclusion we’d come to earlier. We felt so sorry for her, especially as she was charging almost the same price as down in the valley to sell bottles of water which she lugged up a two thousand foot mountain every morning!! What a way to have to make a meagre living!! The people who run this place really do have a lot to answer for!!

The god knows how many steps on the way down took a real toll on our knees and we were very glad to reach the bottom, where we found a little riverside café and stopped in for some cold drinks before