Think of the tackiest, touristy place you know of, roll it together with an almost ski chalet village theme, and you might just have touched on Aquas Calientes.

Located at the base of the mountains, under Macchu Picchu, its a town grown out of opportunity and necessity, and certainly not by design. Growth, not in an impressive way by any stretch of the imagination. You can therefore only imagine what spending New Years Eve here was like…

Yellow is obviously the colour of choice for the local celebrations, and that was everywhere. As was the enticing free “pisco sour” drinks (local favourite) to get you in the door. But the ongoing push to get you into restaurants, bars, etc does wear a little thin, especially given we had not talked to other humans for the previous 4 days, except for Care Bear and the Porters. The other key celebratory tool used are fire crackers, and sure enough, they fired up at midnight in a big, and rather loud way! Thought the lid of the La Cabana Hotel was going to lift off at one point.

Anyway, this morning we head back to Cuzco to start the next leg of this adventure… Puno, Lake Titicaca; Bolivia and Copacabana. Exotic sounding isn´t it…stay tuned!