A good friend of mine runs an adventure travel (or multi-sport) operation out of Vancouver called BikeHike Adventures. When I told her I was going to travel independently in Peru for a couple of weeks, she told me that one of the best ways to see the landscape, meet the local people and get some exercise at the same time is to either bike or hike! I didn’t have time to do the full Inca Trail (which you can hike) but I did have time to do some biking! So early this morning a young fellow came to the hotel and asked if I was ‘ready to go mountain biking’?

I packed up my things once again and was off fairly early for a visit to the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and the very same valley that has been carved over the millennia by the raging Urubamba River. The Urubamba is one of Peru’s most famous whitewater rafting rivers … but at this time of year (the wet season) the water is a rich coffee brown, loaded with silt, and the river’s volume is so high that it is virtually un-runnable by even rafts!

And so the journey begins. At the moment I am in Ollantaytambo, Peru. The sky is dark and the town is quiet except for the occasional kaboom from the firecrackers (very large ones I might add) that are being lit in anticipation of a big celebration tomorrow. My Spanish is not very good so I don’t quite understand what the celebration is all about but the town was abuzz this afternoon so I think something big is up!