Inca trails (by Joe)

Mention `the Inca Trail` to keen walkers and most will think of the trail leading up to the ruins of the Inca city of Machu Pichu, near Cusco in Peru. But of course this is just the most famous of the many Inca trails which run for thousands of kilometres through the Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Bolivian Andes.

Many of the trails are being restored and are increasingly popular with tourists keen to hike in remote areas of the Andes. The restoration work seems a good initiative - not good solely for the heritage aspects, but because the trails bring tourists and a few bucks to otherwise remote and unvisited communities miles from the road network.

Happy to give our support and feeling the need for some significant activity, we took a three-day guided hike from near La Paz (4km high in the Bolivian Andes) down to the village of Coroico, some 80km away (and 2.5km below).

The weather may have been far from perfect for the views (top), but there was still much to appreciate.

We enjoyed the company of our excellent guide, Pascual (above left, with family which lives in a village on the trail); the rough living and camping on the trail; the locals we met along the way (right - the lady claims she is 108 ... and who is to argue?!); the way the environment and plants turned from temperate to sub-tropical as we descended; and the wildlife, which included condor sightings and evidence of bears actually on the trail (... which gives an interesting twist to the rhetorical question, `do bears shit in the woods?` - as clearly, given a choice, they prefer to shit on paths).

Anyway, we felt good for the high-altitude activity and were awed throughout by the sheer scale of the dense jungle-valley and rainforest which lay all around us.

Here are some pics:

... and finally, the view back up the valley from the comfort of our hotel at the bottom:

Joe