I´ve had a request for some more landscape shots. Well, brace yourselves, because having just spent two and a bit days in some of the most ridiculous landscapes I´ve seen, I have ammunition. All the standard words like "breathtaking", "awe-inspiring" and, my personal favourite, "flabbergasting" begin to lose meaning when your jaw drops around every bend in the road and turn in the trail. So rather than try to blather on describing it, I´ll let the photos do the talking.

As a warm-up, this one is about three quarters of the way up the hill above a town called Pisaq, the first stop we made in the Valle Sagrado (Sacred Valle), a narrow valley dotted with Incan ruins through which the Vilcanota river (a.k.a. Willcamayu, or River of Tears in the poetic Quechuan language of the Incas), eventually making it to the foot of the famous Macchu Picchu. You can see the town and a part of the trail we took from it at the bottom left of the shot; more about that in a moment.