We wake up on Sunday in our hotel, potter to breakfast, swap contact details with our fellow walkers, and station ourselves in a quiet coffee bar for the morning. When it's barely twelve we make our way to a pub in town, much pricier and more western than we normally frequent - and take great pleasure in ordering a huge pizza and an equally huge, and very rich slice of chocolate cake for each. I even have a beer. It's perfect decadence for M, having walked for four days, and for me, having done no such thing but with the niggling memory that I have not, in fact completed the Inca trail, still biting at the back of my mind and requiring chocolate to quash it.
And that's it. It's all we want to do and all we are capable of.
On Monday we are rather more refreshed. We have some errands to do in town, checking routes to go to animal sanctuaries out of town, checking dates and details of various upcoming Peruvian festivals, dropping in at the theatre to find out about the free orchestra performances over the next few days, and buying cheese.
Of course it wasn't really supposed to be cheese.
"I should take things easy," I had announced the previous night after the chocolate fest, "my stomach is still a little bit queasy so it should be soup for me at lunch, not one of the huge cheap lunch menus that involves salad, soup, main and dessert. And in the evening we should maybe have vegetable sticks with avocado, not the usual cheese and bread."
We stroll through the market, where you can buy vegetables.
"Ooooh!" I say, "shall we get sone cheese?"
Then we go to our favourite vegan restaurant to buy bread. And I notice the lunch menu.
We eat soup, salad, vegan chorizo with lentils and banana yogurt dessert, with more bread.
Then we go to have a taster set of Pisco Sours at the Museo De Pisco.
Well this is Peru, home of Pisco. It's a drink of which everyone is hugely proud. How could we not educate ourselves on this drink?
I suspect we are still giving ourselves extra indulgence, milking the Inca trail for all it's worth.
Either way, the Pisco experience genuinely is an education. We learn, from a man who is clearly passionate about his specialism, that pisco is made like brandy, from crushed grapes, then distilled. There are over 500 different pisco makers across Peru, all of them tending to be small and specialised, rather than vast and mechanised.
We try four piscos neat to understand the spirit a traditional pisco sour is made from. The first is a single grape pisco, made with less aromatic grapes. Its a clear liquid which tastes very clean, but also very sharp and alcoholic. It's mostly used in cocktails or to make infusions.
The second is also a single grape, but a more aromatic one. It happens to be my favourite. It is softer and more complex than the first, but doesn't sacrifice that purity of taste. (I know I sound like a wine buff. You can send me the quails eggs and caviar later).
The third is made of a combination of different grapes, and tastes like a thicker, slightly creamier version along the same lines as the second. I like this one too, though the mix of flavours have begun to take away its fire.
The fourth is composed of a mixture of grapes but has been distilled differently, with more residual sugar. Its much thicker and sweeter than the others, but for me has list that defining cleanness, so I am less taken by it. I voice this and our host beams at me. I suspect I may have evinced the correct opinion.
I rather undo my apparent knowledgeable persona by commenting that pisco reminds me of sake. Given that sake is a rice wine and much less strong, it us not an obvious comparator. I try to explain it is the sense of cleanliness and purity which makes me associate the two. I am not sure that my argument convinces anybody.
We round off our small tasters of beat spirit with the famous pisco sour cocktail, pisco mixed with lemon juice and sugar, and with egg white to give it texture and foam. My pisco sour is made with pisco infused with basil, and M's with thyme. They are lovely cocktails. This, as a good friend would say, is certainly 'glampacking'.
We underline this by retiring home to eat cheese.
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