We felt cheated. Having climbed to over 4,000m and crossed mountain passes, slept in rarefied thin air and battled with the strange dreams that altitude brings, as the temperatures plummeted beyond the tents. Having dealt with blisters, muscle cramps and, in the case of one of our number, altitude sickness. Having washed in ice laden streams, braved toilets from hell and stoked the fires of the Anglo/French divide we felt that it would have been nice for them to hold off the tourist buses for just long enough for us to at least get a decent photograph.

We could have done without the streams of sweet smelling coiffured tourists huffing and puffing their way up the 10 minute slope to our vantage point. Nevertheless it was beautiful and stunning that such an edifice could have been built here amongst the peaks, scraping the underbelly of the gods. For both of us the journey held more magic than the city itself and as we watched dawn flood the streets of this now dead city we were saddened that our journey was over, our pilgrimage completed.

Having watched dawn we began descending the switchbacks into the city and were rewarded with a view that bordered on the sublime and looked up the skirts of holiness. At first I wasn't sure that what I was seeing was real, and then everything fell into focus..

"I don't believe it.... Madchen... I can see a PU...........BBBBbbb!"

The last word was slightly garbled though as, in my exuberance, I managed to somehow trip; my ankle caved in and the ground rushed up rather quickly in effort to be my very special friend. Fifteen minutes later most of the swearing had stopped, my vision was coming back and the wisest of the concerned onlookers had retreated to safer distances. Feck, my whole leg hurt. I knew it was bad enough that I couldn't risk taking my boot off as we still had several hours walking to do and so instead took to limping heavily on a walking pole and trying not to slow the group down too much.

We wandered the city for awhile trying to imagine what life must have been like here in this most tranquil of places. We grimaced as we walked past guides quoting supposition as fact and smiled wryly at the Catholic rhetoric of others holding court to groups of enraptured audiences. No, we never did see the puma's shadow on the rock, the reflection of condors in the (possibly) mirror pools or 'feel' the power hidden in the stonework. We did see what was once a beautiful and magnificent city, a city that almost certainly could never be built today. One whose founding people are now scattered and fractured, perhaps the greatest testament to their faith and skill, now inhabited only by tourists and proprietary llamas.