Day 9; Friday April 9, 2010

We were up at 6 a.m. and headed down for breakfast in the hotel, another fine meal. We walked through the village and bought a few souvenirs at the market. We walked up to the hot springs but didn’t go in because we were short on time. As we were walking back down the hill Linda stepped in a hole and twisted her ankle, nothing serious, but ironic considering the amount of walking we had done. We met up with Ayul around 10 a.m. and headed for the train station which was going to take us back to Kilometer 82 where we would get a van ride back to Ollantaytambo. The train ride was quite pleasant. It followed the Urubamba River, and you could still see the damage that was caused by the flooding from January. Some sections of the tracks were still under repair. We arrived at Kilometer 82 and got on the van to head back to Ollantaytambo were we would pick up our luggage and met our next driver who was going to take us back to Cusco. The drive was about 3-4 hours long. We stopped several times along the way to sightsee. We were both tired so we were not as enthusiastic during this part of the trip. We arrived back at our hotel in Cusco at around 3:30 p.m. and checked in. This was a sad time because we had to say goodbye to Ayul because he was not going to be seeing us off tomorrow. Over the last 9 days we shared many conversations, meals and laughs with Ayul, I feel that we grew to know Ayul as a friend. He was and OUTSTANDING guide throughout our adventure. After a short time in our room, we went down to the main square for dinner and to purchase a few more souvenirs. It started to rain so we headed back to our room for the night.