Lares, Cuzco, Peru Tuesday, June 23, 2015
We departed Ollantaytambo this morning by van and took a 3:30 hour ride along a single lane windy road though the valleys to the Lares township where the first day of our three day hike on the Lares Trek began.

The Lares Trek is a scenic, less touristic route to hike through the Andes and its one day shorter than the Inca Trail which we wanted to do but couldn't get on, however the Lares Trek is higher in elevation so while it would have been nice to do the Inca Trail, we can at least we say we have gone higher that others have (approximately 4800m).
We hiked for about 4km along the way meeting a few children who we handed fruit too, it must be a common thug as they would see us coming and come to see us.
We arrived at our first stop where we would have lunch, it wasn't fully ready when we first arrived, so some of us all went down to the river and sat down and just enjoyed the view. Lunch wasn't a packed lunch today which is what some of us were expecting, this was a 2 course meal with drink, prepared by chefs. It was funny looking at them in their chef outfits, they kind of looked like they were on "Master Chef" as the logos looks very similar. Soup for lunch followed by a very nice meal of trout.
After lunch we continued on for another 5km ascending 632m (altitude of 3872m) to our first campsite at a Planeterra supported campsite in Cuncani.
At this point I was starting to feel a little sick, thinking it was just altitude sickness I took some painkillers and altitude sickness tablets before taking a little nap before dinner. Dinner came out and was soup of the entree followed by something else, but as I still wasn't feeling too flash I ducked off to be for an early night as we have to be up at 5am for tomorrow's trek.