Today we booked ourselves on one of the hotels eco tours to learn more about the wildlife of the area and to see the orchids. One of the things I had really been looking forward to was seeing humming birds which we actually achieved on our very first day in Peru when they were feeding outside of our hotel in Lima. However, here in Machu Picchu Pueblo (or Agua Calientes) there are so many species and they are everywhere. Special feeders have been set up around the grounds of our hotel which contain either a sugar solution or in one case the local alcoholic drink - pisco sour! If you sit quietly, within a few minutes the humming birds arrive, often fighting with each other in mid air over who gets to feed there. It was a very good trip and we learnt a lot including how to make blow darts to kill things and how good guinea pig ‘poo’ is for fertilizer (our guide was born in the Amazon)!
In the afternoon we walked into town which is only 5-minutes away but feels like a world away from our calm oasis of a hotel. It turns out that the bites we have are from some very virulent sand flies (or no-see-ums as they are called) that are specific to Mach Picchu. For some reason I seem to have had quite a bad reaction and as I type this my elbow has swollen to twice the size and our proper medical kit containing the antihistamine tablets is safely stowed in our suitcases which are somewhere in Cusco!!
My photo for today is not the best of shots of a humming bird as it was some distance away and rather low light in the shade of the valley but I like the green and red combo of colours.
