Pregnant With An Inkan Prince

This month has been a mix of emotions. Speeding through Bolivia in a week to make it to Peru in time to meet my beautiful friend emma and kick off my time in peru, in the "navel of the world" cuzco. It started with my dream job, of becoming a moto-taxi. I rented a 400cc honda for two days, first stop cuzco airport, where i stood alongside all the taxi drivers, with my sign up "EMMA POOS - bienvenido cuzco". Emma arrived with her two bags and a suitcase, which added to an interesting ride back to the hostel, seeing as though i was only just comfortable with a one person load on the back. after getting lost (but pretending i knew where i was) we made it to LOKI. our new home. This hostel is one of the best ive seen, it used to be a big old catholic monastry, looking over the city with a panoramic view. Cuzco has a high turnover of travellers, the locals (mostly inka descendants) and those expats that fall in love and never leave. The crazy mix seems to add to its charm. So the second day on the bike, we rode around the sacred valley visiting the inka ruins. although my favourite part wasnt the stops, it was the road! best ride ive ever done, winding through the valley, smooth roads and great scenery. coming home on sunset, we rode ontop of a small mountain, covered in farms of all different shades of green and brown, and surrounded by the snow capped mountains. i was glad to have my best friend next to me, feeling that our plans have succeeded and that the contract we wrote up sitting in the marlborough bar in newtown two years ago to travel together, had not gone to waste. next stop was the inka trail. we joined our organised tucan group, and had a great leader who was the peruvian version of eddie murphy. the trek was awesome and something i will never forget. eddie murphy giving a good insight to the history and culture of the inkas, and visiting the ruins along the way. after two days of trekking emma fell sick to the altitude. she described it as the worst day of her life. that was until the third day. after a big night of being sick outside in a freezing valley, she wasnt in good shape for the two Pass's we had to climb. so me, eddie and eloy took turns in piggy backing her up the mountain. good mountaineer training i thought. and the four of us being good company for each other our spirits were lifted and by the end of it we were all dancing to bob marley and shakira music coming from the speackers on eddies pack. it was mothers day, i had my phone with me and said to eddie i wish that i could call mum today. suprisingly he knew a 'special' spot. and at the top of the second pass, he got me to stand on the corner of this one rock, and there i had reception, so ontop of a valley surrounded by clouds, i called mum to tell her happy mothers day! late in the arvo i sped off ahead, and in a dilerious state, my imagination got carried away. starting at some ruins at the top of a hill, i came down a huge flight of inka stairs in a jungle. machu picchu was the around the corner of the next mountain, and scheduled for the next morning. i stood on a rock and wished i was back in the inka times. (imagination now)... suddenly these two inka men ran up the stairs and stopped suddenly in front of me. they poked me to see if i was real. to them they thought i was the daughter of the sun god, who had sent me to them. they talked quechua, and so my little spanish made no difference. one of them ran up to the ruins i had just left and with some strange instrument made a calling out across the valley. a group of inkas came down and whisked me away to machu picchu (high society). at the time i thought i was going to be a sacrifice or killed. but then when we arrived at the great city on top of the sacred mountain, surrounded by a crowd, i realised they thought i was an inkan princess! haha. ME, of all people, dressed in my xavier rudd tshirt, khaki pants and joggers! so i became a local to machu picchu, i had a room in one of the huts, they gave me a baby llama, who i named freddy (mecury), i made them listen to my xavier music until the batteries went flat, and i fell in love with the inkan prince, che. i learned quechua, and had a great lifestyle in this special world. me and che got permission from the priest to live together, and then i became pregnant! and this is when i thought of home. so pregnant with an inkan prince, i decided to go back to the rock that changed my world, i wished to go back to my time, and then suddenly there i was. so after living a year in the lost inka city, (imagination stops here) i trekked down to camp and found emma. told her everything that happened and how much i missed her. she was a little worried and thought that i had had too much coca leaves :)... the next morning we were up at 4am and waiting at the front of the line to trek up to the sungate. i bolted up the hill and got to the top first and spent 5minutes overlooking machu picchu by myself. the ruins which i felt so familiar with... was surreal and later with the group, watched sunrise from standing on the top fields. after our tour we sat inside one of the square stone houses, and relaxed our dilerious heads, and watching people get chased by llamas. the train ride out of aguas calientes was almost as beautiful as our trek, and we made it back to cuzco in one piece. and now, we are heading back to bolivia for 3weeks, and on return to peru, i will be working here again for one-two months. i plan on being relatively fluent in spanish before i head up to north peru. so anyone planning on visiting their sister/daughter/friend who lives in cuzco, you have a host! love always, tj.