White Chocolate presents: Nicholas Cage. Part 1.

It’s just ticked past 9am on our first morning at our latest stop; an AirBnB in central Puno located just off a street filled with nothing but party shops… oh, and an army training centre. Katy sadly has picked up a cold and is bed-ridden and I’ve just got back from the shops to acquire paracetamol and other goodies for her. We’ve both been up since 5am. We were awoken by the usual cacophony of fireworks and car horns. However, Puno added a small group of men dancing to very loud music in the street, a marching band, and a van that sells mystery juice that plays an out-of-time, out-of-key 15 second audio loop that sounds like it’s been lifted from an early 90’s children’s toy, to the mix. Still, it wasn’t all bad, the early start allowed us the opportunity to see the gorgeous sunrise over Lake Titicaca from our 6^th floor apartment. But anyway, once again I’m getting ahead of myself. Enough about Puno for now.

It’s been an uneventful week, with the exception of climbing a mountain, trekking through the jungle for 5 days and visiting Machu Picchu, it’s been somewhat unremarkable. So don’t expect this to be a long post. I jest, of course, it’s been an incredible week. We’ve been pushed hard, seen amazing things, shared incredible moments, and met wonderful people and it’s an experience that will be with us for the rest of our lives. To be honest I’m not sure where to begin, other than to say that after everything we’ve been through this last week our 6^th floor apartment feels more like a 60^th floor one.

The evening before our trek started we went to the offices of the tour operator ‘Salkantay Trekking’ for a briefing, an opportunity to meet our fellow trekkers and our guide for the next 5 days, a warm, cheerful and informative man named Amoroso (whose name, as helpfully pointed out by one of our fellow trekkers, literally translates as ‘Love Bear’, a name to which Amoroso was somewhat ambivalent). After an in depth discussion of the trek and what to bring (not that we had time to buy anything we didn’t have by now anyway) and signing away our ability to hold them accountable for anything stupid we might do to ourselves, we were loaded up with duffle bags to pack for the trek and sent on our way, being instructed to be ready for collection from outside our flat at 4am the following day. Goody!

The following morning, bleary eyed, disorientated and ignoring the endless stream of Taxis waving, flashing and beeping at us, we boarded the bus at what turned out to be a Peruvian 4am to be whisked away to our trek. Heading west out of Cusco the drive was a refreshingly pleasant one, Amoroso provided us each with a blanket and we were treated to a great view of the sunrise flooding over the mountains and into the valleys, with Salkantay Mountain looming in the distance as we meandered towards it. About 2 and half hours after departing Cusco we stopped at a small bare-bones concrete and brickwork restaurant in the middle of a corn field overlooking the valley we had just ascended for a much-anticipated breakfast.

This was the first real opportunity we had to get to know our fellow trekkers. As these were the people who were going to be waiting for us to catch up for most of the rest of the trek, it was very important to get off on the right foot! According to Amoroso, Salkantay Trekking always try and put similar people together into groups with a maximum number of 10 for each trek. The principle divider between groups is language, but after that they organise by factors they think will best allow people to have a positive experience; so there will sometimes be 10 single men, 10 single women, younger groups, older groups, student groups and family groups. According to Amoroso family groups are the worst as you can never make the all happy at the same time. In our case, we’d been grouped with 4 other English-speaking couples* in the mid-20’s to early 30’s, all of whom were noticeable fitter than we were, being much more seasoned travellers than us. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a tick-box for ‘slow and plodding travel noobs’ on the sign-up sheet. Our group consisted of two pairs of Americans; Joe and Ashley from Arkansas and Webb and Tyler from Colorado, and two pairs of Canadians; Madeline and Julian from near Toronto and Marley and Brandon from British Colombia.

*Don’t worry Webb & Tyler, I’ll get to that.

Stomachs filled and acquaintances made, we jumped back on the bus reaching our drop off point for the start of the trek around forty minutes later. Once the bus was unloaded, the mules were saddled up and the hiking poles were assigned, we set off on our way. There had been no going back for some time now I suppose, but now there really was no going back!

Our first hike, a sort of ‘baby’s first hike’ was three hours in all, taking us up-hill for about an hour and then following a water course (in to which I dropped my hiking pole, first fail to me!) for a couple of hours, arriving at our base camp for the first night shortly after midday. Our homes for the night were ‘sky-domes’ each shaped like a large igloo with clear glass allowing for a glorious view of the night sky (weather depending) and an unnecessarily small doorway. After offloading our belongings into our sky domes, we went to the on-site cafeteria for a lunch which was way better than any of us were expecting. Each group of 10 trekkers has, along with its own guide, its own cook, porter and horseman, all of whom make the trek with us ensuring our belongings arrive safely at our next destination and that we get a good hearty meal when we arrive, and boy are they hearty!

Stomachs refilled and all of us very pleasantly satisfied with the quality and quantity of our meal, we gathered our poles and ponchos (a flurry of showers meant this loathsome but annoyingly functional piece of cheap plastic was called for) for our afternoon’s activity, a trek up to Humantay Lake about 2km to the north and 300m further up the mountainside. Unlike Baby’s First Hike where we stuck together as a group, the steep and relentless ascent to Humantay very much sorted the wheat from the chaff as Webb and Tyler sailed up off the hill and Katy and I began to drop back with everybody else strung out between us. There was no rush though, and more than anything we didn’t want to overdo it today with the 22km hike over Salkantay the following day. For a little while Marley hung back with us for moral support, and to inquire as to our thoughts on Brexit, before chasing up to Brandon again as he had their water.

A small side story here dear readers: When we went to Greece a few years ago, a matter of weeks before the EU referendum, the locals and other holiday makers we would get chatting to would, upon finding out that we were English, invariably want to know our opinion on Brexit. With this experience in mind and with Brexit imminent (possibly) I was expecting similar during our time in South America. Maybe not from locals, but certainly from other travellers. Anticipating this I had prepared answers to the question, serious answers for when I felt like discussing it and asinine answers for when I didn’t (I intend to claim that the UK voted Brexit to annoy the French (Unless I happened to be talking to French people, in which case I would say it was to really annoy the French)) But no, 5 weeks in to our time in South America and not once had we been asked about Brexit. Not, that was, until we were hauling ourselves up a mountainside sweating profusely and barely able to catch our breath.

An hour and a half after setting off up Humantay we bumped in to Tyler on her way back down. ‘You guys are so close, it’s just around the corner’ she said encouragingly, although our time in South America had quickly ingrained in us a scepticism of unqualified adjectives such as ‘close’. Fortunately however, ‘close’ turned out to be true, which is good because otherwise Tyler and I would have been having words that evening. We rounded the corner and followed the stream flowing out from the Lake and saw the rest of our group standing on a bank overlooking the water.

The view was absolutely worth the climb, Humantay lake is a vibrant, almost glowing turquoise glacial lake formed in a long thin valley just below the snow-line. The sides of the valley are steep, with lush green vegetation lower down towards the lake and thinning off higher-up giving way to grey and black rock then the brilliant white of the snow-cap. The day we were there was overcast and so the snow-caps disappear into the cloud layer, adding an almost ethereal sense that the mountain could go on for ever. The valley edges are tallest towards the mountain end of the lake and so a near perfect V is formed with the streams running off the glaciers above trickling down the middle to join the lake. A young couple took the opportunity to get engaged shortly before our arrival, and who can blame them? Not many places trump this in the ‘oh yes darling well we got engaged at X’ game. After about 30 minutes of taking in the sights we decided to head back down, ending up in a conversation with a guy from Sao Paulo called Lucas who runs a balloon factory! We’ve decided if Brexit really goes south, we’ll go and work for him.

That evening, over another splendid meal we did that cliché thing that Brits, Canadians, Americans and all other Anglosphere residents always do when they first go to know each other and compared notes on linguistic differences, before moving on to the light-hearted subjects of gun culture and political polarisation (spelled with an ‘s’ guys, not a ZEEEEEEE). Amoroso joined us for dinner to inform us that we would be heading off at about 6:00 the following morning, so we’d need to be up at 4:30 to get breakfast and get our stuff together. He would, at least, be bringing us Coca tea first thing, so it wasn’t all bad. With a long day ahead of us we decided to get an early night and headed to bed about 7:15 to enjoy some of Julian’s 90s disco music from the neighbouring sky-dome. As night set in the temperature dropped quickly, and so Amoroso also supplied each of us with liners to go inside our sleeping bags. Tucked up cosy and warm in our glass igloo we waited for the power to be turned out around the site so we could see the stars only to realise that the condensation building up would prevent that anyway. At one-point Katy was forced outside by nature’s call and got a view of the stars uninterrupted by steamed up sky dome and said it was absolutely breath-taking. I very nearly got up to take a look, but by then I was sleepy and very snug and warm in my multiple layers. Besides, the stars have been there for millions of years, they’re not going anywhere.

Day 2 then. According to nearly every blog, article and tour operator the hardest day of the whole Trek. 22km in total, peaking at 4630m. Using the previously established BMI (British Mountain index) metric from earlier in this blog; that’s 1 Ben Nevis and 3 Snowdons (plus a handful of London buses to make up the final few meters). The initial climb up to Salkantay pass entails a 7.5k hike with a 700m gain in elevation, before descending nearly 1800m over the remaining 14.5km down to the next base camp. After breakfast and loading up on snacks for the day ahead, we left base camp just after 6am for our estimated 4-hour hike to Salkantay Pass. The initial 3^rd of the climb was a steady ascent following well-travelled farm tracks and for a good while Katy and I kept pace with the pack. The sun hadn’t yet got above the mountainsides and the cloud hung low drizzling on us with just about enough intensity to necessitate the loathsome ponchos.

About a 3^rd of the way up the angle of ascent began to increase and the terrain become more gruelling, intersected by mountain streams with makeshift bridges traversing them. Webb and Tyler flipped on some sort of afterburners and went off into the sunrise whilst Katy and I resumed our usual role, forming a rear-guard action. I thought we might claim we were watching for Pumas sneaking up from behind and therefor we were serving a useful purpose, but I doubt that would have flown.

Still, we slowly and steadily made our way up, beginning now to get overtaken by the mules and porters carrying our belongings, as well as those who had opted to pay 130 soles to ride a mule (in this context, referred to as ‘taking an Uber’) up the to the pass. That felt good! Sure, we were slow, but by Jove we were doing it undo our own steam! We could claim a moral victory if nothing else! Amoroso, with the nimbleness and elegance of a mountain goat flicked back and forth between checking up on us and ensuring the rest of the group didn’t get so far ahead as to take a wrong turn. As we got to about 2/3rds distance the rain stopped and the cloud began to lift allowing us to take off the blasted Ponchos. Even with cloud cover still present, at these altitudes the thinner atmosphere makes it deceptively easy to burn, so we stopped to slap on some cream and remove a couple of layers of clothing. As cold as it was at night, now that the Sun was up and burning off the cloud layer it was warming quickly.

3 hours in and with about a kilometre to go, the clouds started to break enough that we could see the peak of Salkantay mountain (summit height of 6271m, or BMI: 3BN+2S+14LB) mistaking it at first for a strange cloud formation. We caught up with Amoroso at a small plateau with the sun now fully out and giving us a great view of the trail behind us. ‘About 40 minutes to go he said’ as we passed a sign indicating that we were only 200 meters shy of the pass’s altitude. It was from this point onwards though that the altitude really started to kick in. As much as we were now comfortable with Cusco’s altitude of 3,400m (BMI: 1BN+2S), this extra 1,400m (BMI…oh whatever) was really taking its toll. Barely making 10 steps at a time before having to stop to catch our breath, the final few hundred meters were very hard going.

But, with minutes to spare, we made it in under 4 hours, arriving at the pass shortly after 10am. Excitement overtook exhaustion and we got a round of high-fives from our speedier fellow trekkers, none of whom seemed to be bothered by having to wait for us in this kind of location and best of all Alberto, one of the porters, had a cup of Coca tea waiting for us on arrival. Perfect.

Salkantay pass is between the peaks of Salkantay and Humantay, and whilst the cloud had broken for a while a new bank was rolling in and it started to mist up pretty quickly, so sadly we didn’t get the best of views from the pass. Before it clouded over too much though, we were able to see enough of the peak to see the frequent avalanches and rockslides tumbling from the mountainside, the roars of the great movements of earth and ice echoing between the adjacent peaks. Several group pictures, coca tea and arguably the most well-deserved Twix of all time later we were ready to make our descent west off the pass and down towards our rendezvous with the chef for some Lunch.

The descent was uneventful, with the thickening cloud and the returning rain (BOOOO Poncho) there wasn’t a great deal to see. It was just a long, tedious and honestly rather painful descent. When engaging in a trek like this one always looks at the ascents knowing they’ll be a challenging undertaking, but the descents are often overlooked. I genuinely found the descent tougher than the ascent; the constant impacting on the knees, the rocks moving under foot causing the feet to land at awkward angles and the consistent need to look down and focus on each and every step.

After a few hours we made it to a small rest stop for a very much needed lunch break. Following lunch the descent continued for a further 4 hours, although the changing terrain made things a little easier. Where higher-up the descent was over narrow rocky paths through thin grassland and boulders, the lower altitude brought warmer temperatures and the lush, rich vegetation of the cloud forests. The flora slowly grew around us, the calls of the local fauna become more frequent and varied and the mountain streams ensured we had numerous compulsory foot baths along the way.

Weary and battered from the trek, and with night beginning to draw in we staggered in to our camp for the evening escorted by Amoroso in his helpfully fluorescent Green Poncho. It had been a hell of a trek, but we had made it! Day 2, the hardest day, was done, and we’d managed it without the use of an Uber! Our accommodation for the night was ‘Andean Huts’ which consisted of a thatched roof over a metal frame with plywood sides and, again, an unnecessarily small door (I’m thinking shares in Peruvian Chiropractic services would be a sound investment). Still, they had beds in them, and right now that was the only thing occupying my mind. After a short dinner exhaustion took over me and I headed for bed whilst Katy took the opportunity to have a shower. Before going to sleep Amoroso had some good news for us! As the following day was considerably less arduous, we could afford to have a bit of a lie in, only need to get up at 5:30 the next day.

Considerably less arduous

Yes, those were the words I needed to hear, and I felt asleep with those words still echoing around my mind.

Considerably less arduous…

Considerably less… Well yes, I’m sure you can see where this is going… but that will have to wait for part 2.

Why do they have a dance called sauce?

Well hello again to our several readers! I’m sorry that we haven’t been keeping you up to date with our adventures more frequently, but we’ve just been too busy this week! Actually, that’s a lie, we’ve mainly been lounging around.

About 3 weeks ago, probably still suffering the slight mental impairment that comes with Altitude sickness and certainly under the influence of some form of liquid intoxicant, we decided it would be a good idea to book ourselves onto the Salkantay trek, a 5 day, 45-mile trek through the mountains peaking at 4,580 meters, with the final day bringing us to Machu Picchu. The decision to commit ourselves to this trek came about whilst we were still at Pisco and Soul, trying to work out the most cost-effective way to visit the Incan Citadel. As Peru’s premier tourist attraction and owing to its remote location, visiting Machu Picchu is very expensive. Furthermore, in order to help preserve the ruins, access to Machu Picchu is limited and there are only so many tourist entries allowed each day, serving only to hike the price even higher.

Trying to find a 1- or 2-day trip for a reasonable price was a minefield; Cusco is absolutely jam packed with tour operators attempting to cash in on the lucrative tourist trade, and whilst many of them will offer a great service, there are plenty of rogue traders out there. Reading online, you can get some great deals, if you’re lucky, but many of these businesses have review pages riddled with horror stories of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere or tour buses not turning up or not having the right tickets for the right days etc.

1-day round trips from reputable tour operators out of Cusco are expensive, starting from about £200 each. These also give you only a short time at Machu Picchu itself; the bulk of the time being taken up by the bus ride to Ollantaytambo (probably with another driver with a death wish; since our experience in Moray and Maras, we’ve concluded that tourist minivan drivers are the Peruvian equivalent of BMW drivers), the train to Aguas Calientes, and then another bus ride to Machu Picchu.

2-day trips are equally costly. Going with one of these we were looking at the best part of £600 for both of us. We looked at doing it off our own backs; using a local bus to get to Ollantaytambo, buying our own train tickets, booking ourselves in to a hostel near Machu Picchu and then hiking to the top of the mountain (skipping the short bus ride to the top which, alone, is £15 each. If there’s one thing the Peruvians know how to do, it’s exploit a captive market). However, mainly due to the cost of train ticket (see previous brackets) this worked out more expensive that going with a tour operator.

A half-day spent trawling the internet and getting ever more frustrated and exasperated, we decided to go to the other extreme. If we’re doing Machu Picchu, we’re doing it properly! Hence doing the Salkantay trek, costing about £800 for both of us after applying an early season offer. As this includes 5 days food and 4 nights accommodation, per day it works out at a much better price. I don’t know why I’m justifying this to you, we’re doing it now and you can’t stop us! Or maybe I’m still trying to sell myself on the idea…

All we had to do now was kill some time; during the height of the rainy season in February the trek doesn’t run, starting again for the new season in March. Knowing we were going somewhat over budget with our Salkantay expenditure, we booked ourselves an AirBnB with a small kitchen, allowing us to self-cater for the 11 nights to take us through from checking out of Intro hostel to the start of the trek on March 1^st. The AirBnB we found is a lovely little roof-top flat near the city centre, with views of the mountains to the north and west and the tower of Santo Domingo church peeking up over the rooftops from a few blocks away. The large balcony has a covered area with sofas, table and chairs, kitchen sink, cooker and a very plush washing machine which sings a happy tune to itself when it’s finished a load. The large bedroom with one of the comfiest beds we’ve ever encountered joins off the side wall and the bathroom off the backwall, thus creating the only real downside with this flat; when you want to visit the loo in the middle of the night you have to go outside. Brrrrrr. Still, of all the places we’ve stayed in Peru so far, this has hands-down been our favourite.

So, for the last week or so we’ve been spending a lot of time here, relaxing on the balcony, listening to the music from the salsa classes below (and wondering why they have a style of dance called ‘sauce’), reading, playing cards, befriending the local wildlife (we have a regular visitor, a small bird that Katy has named Paco, who eats all our crumbs), being bemused by the Peruvians obsession with setting off fireworks in the middle of the day, enjoying the sun and then quickly ducking under the cover of the corrugated roof as soon as a storm rolls in. We’ve averaged about a storm a day for the last week, they roll in quickly off the mountains and can come from any direction. 10 minutes after wind, rain and flashes of lighting, it’s straight back to glorious sunshine again. The rapidly changing and unpredictable weather makes us feel right at home (As if to engage in a game of one-upmanship though, as I’m writing this a hail storm has rolled in).

Our only two major excursions in the last week have been a trip to Cusco Park on the hillside near Sacsayhuaman, and to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary out on the road to Pisac. Cusco Park is a kind of outdoor museum, with farm animals, a straw hut for demonstrating traditional textile production, a short bridge constructed in the Inca style with grass rope, an aquarium, a series of small buildings with various pre and post-Hispanic artefacts and a separate series of buildings with dioramas of the Inca ruins from the surrounding area. Our guide around the site was a young Peruvian man who didn’t speak a word of English. He came running over to us within about 5 minutes of our entering and, without checking that we spoke Spanish, promptly led us around starting with the huts full of dioramas. Owing to the language barrier we didn’t catch his name, but he was the spitting image of Pedro Sanchez from Napoleon Dynamite, so for the purpose of this blog he will now be referred to as Pedro. Vote for Pedro!

Although he gave us the entire tour in Spanish, we were, more often than not, able to follow the gist of what Pedro was saying. In no small part because a lot of what he was saying was stuff that we already knew: Cusco is shaped like a Puma, the Inca’s built EAT’s, they developed over 2/3/4000 varieties of potatoes (depending on who you ask) and corn, the cabinet full of money, coca leaves and bottles of alcohol are offerings to Pachamama. You know, the usual. #justIncanthings. Pedro concluded our tour with a climb to their adventure play area where we had the opportunity to go zip-lining between the trees. We didn’t partake.

It being the off-season, the park was very quiet and the small workshops around the site where presumably there would be demonstrations of wool dying and weaving were mostly unstaffed, but even so, we got the best part of 2 hours out of it and understood at least some f the things we were told. It’s a pleasant site with a lot of potential to be a really good tourist attraction and at £10 for both of us including a tip for Pedro, it was worth our while.

Our other adventure took us to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary, about a 25-minute drive north of Cusco. The only way to reach Cochahuasi was to take a tour on one of the many open-top tourist buses that Katy swore from the moment she saw them that she would most definitely not be getting on. Alas, this was the only way to do it, and it turned out to be a rather pleasant way to see the city. The tour guide, a cheerful and animated guy called Peter met us in the main square before rounding up a load of other tourists for the trip and walking us up to our bus. After a 30 minute pootle around Cusco enjoying the view from the top deck, the bus took us up past Sacsayhuaman and out along the road to Cochahuasi. Peter gave us a running commentary of the sites we were seeing, stringing together the sites with a little history of the city. Of the 20 or so people on the tour, we were the only non-Spanish speakers, but to his credit, Peter spoke great English, never skipped anything, and always ensured we were as well informed as everyone else on the tour. The driving was also very good. Well, it wasn’t terrifying anyway.

Arriving at Cochahuasi our group was split in 2 with Peter taking the Spanish speakers, and a member of the Sanctuary staff, Melissa, taking Katy and I for essentially a private tour of the sanctuary. The site isn’t huge, but the enclosures are suitably large for the animals they keep, and they aren’t overcrowded. All the animals at the site are rescues and some of them come with really tragic stories of cruelty and neglect, such as a Puma that was rescued from a nightclub in Lima where it was used as entertainment, and an aviary full of macaws rescued from smugglers trying to ship them to Europe out of Lima Airport. Where possible, the animals are released back in to the wild, but some are sadly too conditioned to captivity or permanently injured to be released.

In total there’s probably around 80 or so animals on site, ranging from Llamas, Alpacas and Vicunas to Condors, Pumas and Spectacled bears (yes, that’s the bear that Paddington is). Melissa was very knowledgeable, and she walked us around the site for about 40 minutes. The staff are clearly very caring, and the animals are well kept and cared for. Perhaps the most impressive part of the site is the large Condor enclosure which stretches from the opposite cliff face up to the near-end of the site by the road, with the visitor path straight through the middle of the enclosure. Having these huge birds swoop overhead as the staff feed them is an unforgettable experience. It’s just a shame the site is overall quite small, simply for no other reason that that more space would allow them to care for more animals, you can’t help but think that they are forced to turn animals in need away for lack of space.

Just as we finished our tour and got back on the bus the heavens opened, leading me to discover another thing in Peru that wasn’t designed with people taller than 5 foot 6 in mind, as the whole tour group squeezed itself onto the lower deck on the bus. On the return leg of our tour we stopped at a small hut overlooking Cusco where we were given traditional blessings by a Shaman. This allowed Peter to show off another of his talents as he translated from Quechua to Spanish and English on the fly. The Shaman was from a very remote community in Northern Peru largely uninfluenced by the outside world and still very committed to the Quechua religion, folklore and way of life. Whilst this was very much a show put on for the tourist, it was a charming if brief insight in to the ancient customs of this part of the world.

Our final stop was another trip to Cristo Blanco, perhaps serving to underline the fact that we really had done everything Cusco has to offer now. We finished up back in Cusco about 45 minutes later that scheduled, for which Peter was unnecessarily apologetic. All in all, this was a very enjoyable day and, as the trip had cost us just £12.50 for both of us, one of the best values for money days we’d had!

We have ventured out a few times other than that however, mainly whenever I started to get a bit of cabin-fever, we made another trek up to Cristo Blanco to get some practice in before our hike, this time choosing the longer, but considerably less steep, route up via Sacsayhuaman. We had a tasty meal at a vegetarian restaurant with the most disinterested server we’ve ever encountered. We’ve also made numerous trips to the local bakery which does absolutely fantastic pastries and seems to be permanently frequented by every French tourist in Cusco, and we went for an excursion to the market to buy essentials for the trek. For our final proper night in Cusco we went to an Indian Buffet restaurant around the corner from the main square. Sitting on the balcony overlooking Avenida El Sol and enjoying a beer, the incessant beeping of the traffic and the incomprehensible whistles and glow-stick assisted gesticulations of the traffic police, we decided that we had thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cusco.

Salkantay Trek next, so we’re going to be off the grid for a few days, we’ll be sure to do another update as soon as possible afterwards though, so watch this space.

Buses, birthdays, Basil Fawlty

When one decides to a visit a foreign country, there are certain aspects that you know won’t be the same as back home. The food is different, the culture is different, the tea is different, and if you really fancy a Dairy Milk at 2am you can’t just pop to Sainsbury’s. These are all things for which you feel perfectly prepared. After all, if it wasn’t such a different way of life, there would be no point in going to experience it. Up until this point, this attitude has served us well. We’ve tried alpaca which is delicious and very low in fat and cholesterol, we’ve embraced coca tea as part of our daily routine, we’ve tuned into the Peruvian mindset and felt our shoulders descend from somewhere up in the stratosphere back to a more stress-free position. Inevitably however, Murphy’s Law will kick in at some point and you will find yourself very much wishing you were tucked up in your jimjams with a nice cup of Yorkshire Tea and a Custard Cream watching Call the Midwife (fear not dear reader, the fact that I am writing this now is testament to us having survived what it is to come!)

Having had a jolly good time on our Sacred Valley tour the previous day, we decided to visit some more of Cusco’s ancient offerings with the same tour company. This time we were headed to the ruins of Moray (oh yes, more experimental agricultural terraces!) and the salt mines at Maras. We were told to be ready by 8:20 and were looking forward to a bit of a lie in given that the day before, we were the first to be picked up. The same woman greeted us as she had done the day before and warmly welcomed us with a big smile as she ticked our names off her list. She told us the bus was running a bit late so we stood around and chatted with her for a while. We talked about where we were from and what Peruvian food we’d tried. It was raining for which she apologised and we said it was fine and that it rains in England all the time. When we say this to Peruvian people they seem to take it quite literally but I suppose that comes from the fact that they only have two seasons here. Oh well, at least if they ever make it to the UK they might be pleasantly surprised to see that big yellow hot thing in the sky, I forget its name. The bus ended up being about 40 minutes late but we didn’t mind too much, if the previous day was anything to go by we’d be off out having a lovely time in no time at all.

(EDIT: before going any further, I just wanted to say that after writing this blog post, we contacted our tour company and have since been offered a full refund. 10/10 customer service. Anyway, back to the story…)

As we boarded the bus we found that it was full. There were no seats. This isn’t like a city bus where standing isn’t a problem, it’s essentially my old Argos van converted into a minibus, standing is not an option. Dave was quickly directed to sit in the front next to the tour guide and the driver and the guide told a woman and her 6/7 year old daughter to move up so I could sit next to them, placing the girl on her lap. Not exactly the height of comfort but it was a short drive and we were determined to remain positive! Not long to go until the fabulous sites and tours commence. And so off we went.

I pause here for a moment dear reader to explain that driving in Peru and driving in the UK are two entirely different skills. In Peru, your horn is to be used more often than it is not, for example, to beep at tourists to notify them that your taxi is available, to beep at other cars for not pulling away 0.00001 seconds after the traffic light turns green, to beep at someone you know, to beep at someone you don’t know, to beep at people not crossing the road quickly enough, to beep at people crossing the road too quickly…. I think you catch my drift. Another difference is their seemingly cavalier attitude towards things like stop signs, warning signs, speed limits or indeed anything else that tells our Peruvian cousins that they MUST or SHOULD do something. Their healthy disdain for authority reaches as far as driving and is something one embraces early on. We thought we’d finally sussed it and that the mildly overeager driving style of our minibus driver the previous day was to be expected. Har har we chortled, that was a bit hairy but we never felt unsafe.

Our driver on the second day however seemed to have been bearing a grudge that Formula 1 hasn’t really taken off in Peru in the same way that it has in other countries and saw fit to take this out on poor unsuspecting tourists. Eek. As a child, my family and I often went skiing so I’m quite used to mountain road driving, with its sharp turns and sheer drops. I’ve also seen my fair share of broken barriers and buses half hanging off the side of the mountain, to know that roads like this are not to be messed with. Our driver seemingly had other ideas and was determined to drive as fast around these tights corners as possible, leaving us helpless tourists clinging on for dear life and desperately hoping nothing was coming the other way, as he once again took the racing line around a blind hairpin bend. I couldn’t even bury my head into Dave’s shoulder because he was up the front, presumably a lot more terrified than I was because he could see exactly how fast the driver was going and see when he answered his mobile phone as we were bombing along as well. We stopped briefly at another one of the “this is how we make alpaca stuff” workshops which was in English this time so that was at least one positive. There was also a nice kitten that we said hello to and also, rather morbidly, under the stove/fire they were keeping guinea pigs. There were even baby ones. I thought I might be able to try guinea pig while I’m here but memories of my pet Rodney from when I was a child came flooding back and now I’m not so sure. I’ll probably do what I did with Alpaca and get Dave to order it and then try a little bit, pretending it’s chicken. After trying and failing to take a picture of a hummingbird we jumped back onto the Terrifying Transport™ and on we went, hiding our eyes and praying to the flying spaghetti monster. We arrived at Moray in one piece and were quickly ferried off the bus by Eddie our tour guide. Eddie didn’t really speak very much English. His descriptions and explanations were a lot longer in Spanish than they were in English and because he did the Spanish bit first, we were left with very little time to explore. He seemed very eager to get us round Moray as quickly as possible and kept repeating “take a picture then back to the bus!”. Poor Eddie, we felt a bit sorry for him. Why they’d decided to put someone who didn’t really speak much English onto an English tour is beyond me but there we go. After our whistle stop tour around Moray (which, by the way, is actually quite impressive, I learned more from the Wikipedia article than I did from our tour though…), we were herded back into the Abominable Autobus™ and on to our next stop.

With promises from our tour guide of chocolate at our next destination, it was almost enough to forget about the awful driving. Who am I kidding, no it wasn’t, it was bloody awful. And our next stop really wasn’t much better. We exited the Terrifying Train™(ok I’m running out of these now…) to find that we’d been shipped to a tourist trap in the middle of nowhere. There were at least 10 other coaches full of people crammed inside this shop which sold everything from snacks to coffee to the generic tourist crap you can buy anywhere in Cusco for ¼ of the price. We had some tiny morsels of chocolate thrown at us (which to be fair, were quite nice), at which point Dave and I looked at each other and decided the best course of action was to spend absolutely no money here and go and stand outside, at least then we would get to spend some actual time together. Alas, this was short lived and we were once again herded back onto the Awful Automobile™. Dear reader, I am not a good flyer. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I get very nervous at the prospect of being on a plane. However, during our journey down into the Maras salt mines, I can honestly say that I would rather have been on a plane or indeed anywhere else at that point in time. I once again feared for my life as we descended. At least we’ll be on the inside on the way back up I thought. The salt mines are found down inside a quarry like valley and have been there since before the Incas. In and of themselves they were quite impressive. They’re all the same depth and are fed by one salt stream via a series of aqueducts down the hillside. They’re then plugged to stop the water flowing in and left to let the water evaporate. Each pit is owned by one family and there are a series of small shops at the top before you walk down selling salt from the mines, as well as the usual tourist toot to which we have become accustomed. We were given more time at the Salineras than we needed to be perfectly honest, I’d much rather have spent more time going round Moray but it wasn’t too long before we were once again herded back on to the bus, making our way back to Cusco.

I can honestly say that the best part of the tour was when we got off the bus at the end. We went and sat on some steps near the square where we had been dropped off and reflected upon how it could be possible that we were still in one piece. We think what had happened was that we’d been lumped in with another tour group, hence the lack of speaking English and the lack of any semblance of non-terrifying driving. Upon further research this seems to be quite common but it was such a diversion from the day before that it didn’t really seem fair. After our adrenaline levels had returned to normal, off we went to find some lunch, stumbling upon a tiny little café which promised sandwiches and a drink for 10 soles – wonderful. A bumbling old Peruvian chap (think Basil Fawlty but shorter and darker skinned) came out and took our orders and we were served two tuna sandwiches as well as a glass of Chicha Morada for me and a “cappuccino” (with almond?!) for Davelar. Chicha Morada is a soft drink made from purple corn which I have absolutely fallen in love with. It’s sweet and tastes nothing like anything we have back in the UK. We should have saved ourselves some money and just bought loads of that instead of fearing for our lives for half the day but you live and you learn. It was only a matter of time before something went a little bit pear-shaped and as we’ve both managed to avoid the dreaded Traveller’s Stomach so far, I suppose it was only fair that we shoulder some of the poor tourist experiences. Ho hum. It wasn’t quite how we expected to spend our 6 year anniversary but it’s certainly made for a good story and besides, tomorrow was my birthday!

Having realised a little while ago that we would be spending my birthday in Cusco, I already knew that I wanted to go and stuff my face with chocolate and then go for a curry. So that’s exactly what we did. After a lovely lie in we once again trundled off to Jack’s Café for a MAHUSIVE veggie breakfast and Dave had the banana pancakes. Jack’s is overpriced compared to a lot of the Peruvian family run restaurants, where you can get a full meal for 10 soles, but by English prices it’s cheap as chips and when it gives you a little taste of home, it’s worth every penny. Breakfast consumed and with our chocolate making workshop not until 1:30, we headed back to the hostel for a quick video call with my parents. Dave had also secreted away some cards from the parents and Grandma which was really lovely and made me a bit homesick. The promise of impending chocolate however soon made everything better again. The ChocoMuseo is a chain of chocolate museums/shops/workshops that spans across South America and is doing very well for itself. Not only can you buy handmade chocolate and various silly trinkets but you can also take various workshop, which is exactly what we did! Our ‘guide’ Jeremy was a 23 year old Venezuelan refugee who had moved to Cusco 2 years prior, seemingly having seen which way the wind was blowing and getting out while he could. He told us his family was still there, apart from his sister who lives in Madrid and who he is desperate to go and join. In the meantime however, he works at the ChocoMuseo, showing tourists how chocolate is made, pretending to slice their wrists in order to show the traditional Mayan way of making hot chocolate (no, he really did do this to Dave, I was terrified) and putting up with two silly Brits making stupid jokes and making a big old mess. It was such a laugh and we had such a good time, they even brought me out a little brownie with a candle in it and sang happy birthday! Leaving with our bags full of chocolate, we slipped a healthy tip to Jeremy and shook his hand, wishing him all the best. It was quite a strange contrast as we’re obviously here just to have a good time and it’s easy to forget just how lucky we are to be here, experiencing all of this, and that really a bit of a dodgy bus driver is nothing compared to having to flee your home country.

After popping back to the hostel for a nap, off we ventured to Korma Sutra – Cusco’s highest rated curry house. We weren’t really sure what to expect, what with it being Peru, and India being quite literally on the other side of the world from here (actually, it’s somewhere in Vietnam which we’ve just decided we definitely have to go to). It definitely wasn’t quite up to UK standards but it was a damn sight closer to curry than we were expecting to find in this part of the world and it was still really yummy. A little tipsy and with the raining pitter pattering away, we wandered back to our little hostel with a few extra beers and settled in to catch up on Hell’s Kitchen. A jolly lovely birthday if I do say so myself. The events of the previous day were already starting to seem a little bit funny, and with the promise of moving into an AirBnb all to ourselves on the following Monday, the path forward seemed a lot brighter.

Visa welcomes you to Pisac. Cash only.

Blimey time moves fast. it’s only been 4 days since we moved up to Intro Hostel, but we’ve done so much in that time that I’m having to get cracking on this blog post now so that 1) this blog entry doesn’t get too long and 2) so that I don’t forget what we’ve done.

During our time at Pisco and Soul we pretty much covered all the bases as far as the tourist sites in Cusco go, so we decided to venture out of the city. Armed with our Tourist tickets, we ventured off to see the Inca ruins of Tambomachay and Puca Pucara about 5 miles North of Cusco. Our plan was to take the bus to Tambomachay, the furthest of the sites we planned to visit, and then walk back via Puca Pucara, Q’enqo and Sacsayhuaman (more-or-less pronounced ‘Sexy Woman’, but with a thick, inebriated, highland accent).

Our first task in this endeavour was to navigate the shambolic local bus system. We’d read numerous online blogs, asked Gonzalo at Pisco and Soul and asked the lady in the Tourist information centre where we got our tourist tickets from, but could not get a consensus on which bus to get or where to get it from. The crux of the issue is the bus ‘system’ (I’m using the word ‘system’ here as there isn’t a succinct word in English for a group of busses that drive around a city with no discernible route plan). Extensive online searches as well as perusing the pamphlets in the tourist information centre confirmed our suspicion; there is no map of the local bus routes! Furthermore, none of the bus stops say which buses stop there, there is no timetable – at all – and none the buses use numbers, instead each ‘route’ has a name which is displayed only on the front of the bus (most of the time) and a list of some of the destinations it serves written on the side (again, most of the time). The bus lines have names such as ‘Servico Rapido’ (You’d think the name translates in to English as ‘rapid service’ but there’s no evidence to support this) ‘Batman’ (no, really) ‘Satellite’ (Again, you’d think this would translate in to English as Satellite; implying an orbital service. Wrong!) ‘Tupac Amura’, ‘San Sebastian’ (which the name of is one of the districts of Cusco, so I guess that one at least makes sense) and ‘Servico El Zorro’ (En-garde!).

Perhaps the Incas should have thought to implement this public transport system before the Spanish invaded, they probably would have got so fed up trying to work out how to get around that they would have given up and gone home.

Anyway, somewhat exasperated at the unnecessary complexity of the whole thing, we asked the receptionist at our current hostel who told us that we needed a bus called ‘Senior Del Heurto’ from down by the University to take us to Tambomachay. This advice was different to anything told to us by anybody else, but whatever, we decided to throw caution to the wind and just do as he said. Worst case scenario, we end up in an unknown part of Cusco and have to get an Uber back.

We walked our way down to the university and after waiting about 10 minutes at the side of the road, there it was! Senior Del Heurto, and it even had ‘Tambomachay’ written on the side! We crammed ourselves into the over-subscribed bus, paying 25p each for the privilege (we were undercharged in fact, but we weren’t going to argue), and followed its meandering course through the suburbs of Cusco and up on to the road towards Tombamachay. The local buses are, it seems, a family affair; Husband driving, Wife collecting the fares and shouting out the names of the stops and jumping out to fill buckets with water from a road side stream (honestly, your guess is as good as ours) and two daughters squabbling on the front seat ensuring that the driver’s attention was suitably divided.

Just as we left Cusco, heading up the hill past Cristo Blanco from our previous excursion we found out why we had been undercharged; the road had been blocked by several fallen trees. The road in front of the blockage had been turned in to a make-shift Senior Del Heurto coach park and we were told that this is far as we could go and that we needed to get off (at least, that was our interpretation; the engine turned off, the wife yelled something in Spanish and all of our fellow passengers promptly disembarked).

Aside from an enterprising local who was offering horse rides up the hill, nobody was really doing anything about the blocked road, and it was apparent from the way the trees fell that this had been done deliberately (maybe by the aforementioned enterprising local? It’s unfair to point fingers I suppose, but he was doing very well out of the circumstances at hand). We stood around for a few minutes scratching our heads before deciding to carry on on foot to Tambomachay, which we reckoned to be about an hour’s walk up the road. We were out to get some decent walking in before our trek to Machu Picchu anyway, so why not make the most of the situation. Keep calm and carry on and all that!

Numerous others, both locals and tourists, had come to the same conclusion so there were quite a few of us spread out along the road. With no traffic coming past (it became apparent that there must have been a blockage further up the road as well as there was absolutely no traffic in either direction) the walk was a very serene and peaceful one, including walking through a small village called Huayllarcocha which gave us our first insight into life in Rural Peru, with deep-red mud clay brick single story houses, farm animals and small family run textile factories.

In every way, we’re a long way from Lima now.

A short descent down the road on the far side of Huayllarocha and we arrived at Tambomachay. Tambomachay features a series of Inca buildings set into the side of the hill with a series of waterfalls and streams cascading through them. The function of the site is not known, but the best guesses are that it was a spa resort for the Incan elites. Being Bathonians, the appeal of such a site was perhaps somewhat lost on us, and we found Tombomachay to be slightly underwhelming, especially as the description in the handy little map that accompanied out tourist tickets really bigged it up; accompanied as it was with photographs taken using the estate agent technique of making things appear larger than they actually are. No matter though, the secluded location in the valley provided a good opportunity to see some wildlife and take in the scenery, and the road closures had all but halted the steady flow of tourists. We therefore pretty much had the site to ourselves.

Heading back up the hill, our next stop was Puca Pucara (literally; Red Fortress), a hill fort constructed of deep red clay and stone across about 4 or 5 levels. It was built to guard the entrance to Cusco from the Sacred Valley pass. Puca Pucara is a more sizeable site than Tambomachay and offers great views across the valley and luckily the weather held back enough to allow us some good shots of the mountains to the north.

We began making our way back along the road to Q’enqo (yes, pronounced like the coffee) which was still seemingly closed at both ends, although a couple of locals with cars had evidently cottoned on to what had happened and appointed themselves local taxis for the day, driving backwards and forwards with cars full of tourists and offering us lifts with every pass, irrespective of how many times we declined their offer.

About 3 hours later, we again came across the spot where the fallen trees had blocked the road only to find that they had still not been cleared (The highways agency would never have stood for this!), although evidently someone had been along with a chainsaw to remove just enough of the fallen trees to allow the horses an easy pass from the adjoining side road, but had seemingly saw fit (hah! Saw! Get it?) to disappear again without clearing the main road. My suspicions of the enterprising local with the horse-riding business continued to grow.

Q’enqo itself is about a further 20 minutes’ walk down the road and overlooks Cusco from the northwest. The site is a ‘Huacas’ (Incan holy place) and is, like most Huacas in the Incan empire, built in to a natural rock formation that, in this case, looks like a miniature Uluru/Ayres Rock. It has a narrow but passable split down the middle and a short tunnel underneath out of which the Incas carved blocks used for the construction of ritual sites on the eastern side facing Cusco. Sadly, as with much of the historical legacy of the Incas, the exact purpose and meaning of the site is lost to history.

Our final stop, a further 20 minutes down the road, was Sacsayhuaman (strangely enough, whilst spellcheck is having a very hard time with all these Incan place names, it has no objection to Sacsayhuaman. It’s not in the dictionary, I think spellcheck has just given up). By far the largest of the Incan sites on our itinerary for the day, Sacsayhuaman (or, according to Wikipedia; Sacsahuaman, Saxahuaman, Saksaywaman, Saqsaywaman, Sasawaman, Saksawaman, Sacsahuayman, Sasaywaman or Saksaq Waman) features a 3 tier, zig-zagging wall of huge (no really, HUUUUGE) interlocking stones held together with gravity alone, along with occasional doorways and stairwells leading between the tiers. Across a large open space still used to this day for ritual festivals on the opposite hillside is a set of EAT’s (Experimental Agricultural Terraces. I won’t say much about these here, but they are going to feature very heavily for the foreseeable future of this blog).

By this time, we’d been walking for the best part of 5 hours and it was starting to rain and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely (it felt remarkably like Scotland for a time) so we decided to head back down into Cusco to get a well deserved milkshake and a sandwich from JC’s café, fast becoming our favourite haunt. Exhausted and barely able to communicate with each-other, let alone in Spanish to the waiting staff, we decided to go to the closest pizzeria to our Hostel. The more things change…

On to the following day then, and after our sizeable hike we decided to have a much more laid-back day and visit a couple of the art galleries in Cusco to which our Tourist Ticket gave us free entry. We started with the Museo de Arte Popular which is situated in the town hall. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a drove of riot police, various different stripes of municipal police, a handful of dignitaries and important looking people, journalists and camera crews. And one lone malcontent across the road who yelled at the assorted dignitaries and security forces for a good 20 minutes before the police finally had enough and escorted him elsewhere. Sufficed to say, we decided to skip this gallery and move on to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. Following our handy tourist map, we found ourselves in the middle of a municipal building that appeared to be a time warp to 1975, complete with pencil pushing desk clerks, massive rooms of folders, wooden panel railing along the stained creamy yellow walls and not a computer in sight. On the left as you entered was a floorplan of the building, on which nowhere could be found the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. ‘Well whatever’ we thought, deciding instead to go and sit in the square outside the townhall to watch the world go by whilst being offered the usual assortment of massages, tours to Machu Picchu, cigarettes, shoe shine, Llama keyrings, bracelets, mass-printed paintings, sunglasses, weird wooden pot things that make a clip clop sound, mystery juice and, of course, drugs. Later research online would tell us that we were in the right building, it’s in the basement and full of nativity scenes and pictures of Jesus, so we were understandably devastated that we missed out.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the pool (table) back at the hostel, making the most of our quiet day before retiring early to bed. We’d booked ourselves on to a full day tour of the Inca Sacred Valley which meant catching the bus from outside the hostel at the crack of the dawn for a 2-hour drive through the mountains to Pisac. The drive through the mountains was stunning; the weather was perfect, clear and sunny with a smattering of clouds clinging to the valley edges and mountain tops giving a fantastic sense of the scale of the vista in front of us. Pisac is a small town at the eastern edge of the Sacred Valley on the banks of the Urubamba river, the main water source for the flat valley base which was the breadbasket (specifically, the corn and potato basket) of the Cusco region.

The town itself is home to a small population with a burgeoning tourist industry and craft factories specialising in silverware and other jewellery. On the mountainside to the northeast of Pisac are the largely intact ruins of a massive network of EAT’s and a small village which housed the Incan agricultural workers, most of whom lived their whole lives on these slopes. The terraces are spread over nearly a kilometre of elevation, with a considerable variance of temperature and humidity between the lower and upper levels. The Incans used these terraces to experiment with growing corn and potatoes at different altitudes, developing thousands of varieties of each and massively increasing crop yield and resilience to adverse weather. This commitment to food stability was arguably the most important contributing factor to the immense size, wealth and power of their empire at its height.

The tour group was a real international bunch; Brazilians, Chinese, Spaniards (one wonders what it’s like being on holiday and every 5 minutes seeing something that your ancestors destroyed…oh wait, we’re British, we know exactly what that’s like), US Americans, Mexicans, Chileans and us plucky Brits. Our tour guide Freddie did a fantastic job juggling the bilingual needs of our group, ensuring we were all well informed as to what we were seeing, where we were going and how the day was to pan out. This actually worked out rather well; Freddie generally did the Spanish portion of the tour first, then repeated himself in English. As the group consisted of Spanish speakers from a lot of different countries, he spoke very slowly and very clearly in Spanish, and this allowed us to test our Spanish comprehension before he repeated himself in English, giving us and opportunity to ‘check our work’ so to speak. He also reassured us when we first set off that our driver had had only 10 crashes during his career, so we were in safe hands. Judging by the standards of Peruvian driving we have witnessed to date, there’s every chance this wasn’t hyperbole.

After a 20 minute or so talk about the site and its history, Freddie gave us a good 40-50 minutes to explore the ruins and take pictures before returning to the bus and heading down into Pisac town. Here we stopped for a brief demonstration of the silverware manufacturing process and the importance of certain jewels and gems and their supposed supernatural properties. A brief wander around the markets and we continued our way through the valley, following the meandering course of the river through the valley to the town of Urubamba at the heart of the Sacred Valley. Here we stopped for lunch at a secluded and remarkably up-market restaurant for a buffet lunch of freshly cooked Peruvian delicacies, all included as part of tour ticket. We were expecting a short stop at the side of the road for a quick bowl of soup and some rice at a rough-and-ready café -which would have been fine- so this lunch was a very pleasant and unexpected bonus.

After a pleasant 45-minute break for lunch and a walk around the grounds of the restaurant with llamas, Alpacas and Vicuna (the n should have a wiggle above it, but I can’t be bothered to work out how to do that) we continued on our way to our second major stop of the day at Ollantaytambo towards the western edge of the Sacred Valley. Like Pisac, Ollantaytambo features a set of EAT’s, about a third of the size of those at Pisac and facing east along the valley. At the top of the terraces are the remains of the Temple of the Sun and a passageway working its way through the cliffside connecting the two sets of terraces. The Temple of the Sun features impressive stonework made from huge stones that were quarried from the hillside opposite and transported via the Urubamba river. The Incas were able to redirect the river either side of a central island, allowing for the passage of the stones, before working them up the other side. Freddie took this moment to scoff at those who say that moving these big stones across the valley is evidence that Aliens must have built the Inca temples, adding that you should never underestimate Human ingenuity. Here here! Across the valley from the EAT’s are a series of open-fronted terraced caverns built into the side of the mountain. The Incas would use these caverns to dry corn and potatoes, storing them for up to a decade at a time, enabling them to keep their population fed through drought and crop failure.

We were again given a good amount of time to explore the ruins at our leisure before returning to the bottom of the terraces for a group photo, a brief visit to the water temple (like a mini Tambomachay) and an opportunity for Katy to befriend one of the local street dogs who joined us for the group photo and then followed us back to our bus, making Katy the happiest she had yet been during our whole trip.

As the sun lowered in the sky and our bus climbed its way out of the Sacred Valley back towards Cusco, the clouds mostly cleared and we were treated to fantastic views of the snow-capped peaks of the Andes in the distance, the acute angle of the sunlight highlighting the peaks and troughs with accented colours and contrast of the green vegetation, red soil and brilliant white glaciers above.

Our final stop for the day was the village of Chinchero where we were treated to a demonstration of traditional textile production by the Quechua, the native people of Peru. This was the only part of our tour that didn’t have an English translation, but again, the Spanish spoken was slow, clear and simple enough that we (ok, Katy) could follow the gist of what was being said. A shopping opportunity later we boarded the bus again for a short trip to another church (yawn) built on top of Inca ruins (boo) and then made the final hours drive back to Cusco, the setting sun providing a final few breath-taking views across the plateau Chinchero sits on.

We arrived back in Cusco just over an hour later, tired, but both of the opinion that this was the best day we had yet had during our time in Peru. The sites and sights were amazing, the guide was excellent, the history was fascinating and the whole day was paced perfectly; we were never bored, we were never on the bus for too long at a time and we also never felt rushed to keep with a schedule. All in all, this was £50 very well spent and, having already booked ourselves onto another tour the following day with the same company, we went to bed greatly looking forward to what the next day would hold.

But that’s a story for next time…

No one expects the Spanish Interruption!

We’ve been in Cusco for a week now and have changed locations from the quaint but quiet Pisko & Soul to the considerably more uphill Intro Hostel. It’s a larger hostel located in a quiet courtyard with rooms all around an open middle section with tables, a pool table, a very sad looking fire pit, a soggy hammock and what I can only loosely refer to as a “water feature”. It has rained a lot more over the past few days, but the weather is very changeable. This morning it chucked it down but now it’s perfectly pleasant as Dave and I sit on tiny stools, not really suited for sizeable bottoms, around what appears to be a giant empty cotton reel repurposed as a table. There’s a lot that’s been upcycled here, I suspect that during the high season it’s full of the type of people we’ve been doing our best to avoid. So far so good!

The day after our walking tour we decided that we’d better get into some sort of shape (other than round) if we’re going to be doing this 5 day trek up to Machu Picchu and taking the advice of our tour guide from the day before, decided to go and visit old JC on the hill. The Cristo Blanco (or Christophe Blanc as we took to calling him after our old landlord in France), was a gift from Christian Palestinians to the city of Cusco as a thank you for harbouring them safely during the end of World War 2. We’ve tried to find out a bit more about these Palestinians as it sounds like a really interesting slice of history, but local knowledge is patchy at best. Standing a somewhat measly 8 meters high (compared to Rio’s 30-meter-high Christ the Redeemer), JC sits atop Pukamoqo Hill which, according to the locals, contains soil samples from all 4 quarters of the ancient Inka Empire. The hike to the top involved several sets of very steep, somewhat crumbly steps up through the outskirts of Cusco, winding up through local houses, plants and at one point, a basketball court. I won’t pretend it was an easy climb, especially when we eventually got to the top and discovered that we’d come the “difficult” way up and if we’d in fact bothered to check the map, we’d have found a much gentler winding slope…but we did it! And the view from the top was breathtaking. The pictures do not do it justice. We sat at the top and enjoyed a Crunchy Nature Valley Bar ™ as we watched the planes land in the valley. Having caught our breath and taken our fill of the amazing landscape (not another bloody mountain!) we decided to take our leave of old Christophe and head down to Mr Eiffel’s market for a bit of gringo toot shopping.

Putting the dried baby llama foetus’ to one side for just a mo’ and ignoring the underwhelming architecture of the place, the San Pedro market is actually really cool. One of the first sections you come across is a long strip of white stools in front of fruit-laden cabinets, behind which stand very smiley happy Peruvian ladies waving menus at you, tempting you to come and enjoy a fruit juice/smoothie at their stall. We opted for a lady called Ana. The names of the women are written in big letters on top of the prices of the juices, once again we suspect shenanigans but have not yet been back to confirm whether they are actually their names, or they just put that so the gringos can see a nice Western name as they’re being fed mystery juice. Once again the portions were sizeable and the costs minimal. We paid 10 soles (about £2.50) for both drinks which were topped up not once, not twice, but three times by the lovely Ana during our visit. Feeling suitably refreshed, we continued on our way through the market, passing a rather hench woman hacking at a large piece of mystery meat. Needless to say we decided we would probably be eating elsewhere that evening. Having been only slightly ripped off (10 soles for a notebook and a snazzy yellow over the shoulder bag), we left the market and headed back to the hostel. Our dinner that evening of fried trout & pasta was served by Fidel Castro. It is also worth mentioning a particular quirk of Peruvian etiquette here, in so far as no matter who asks for the bill or indeed who pays for it, it is always placed in front of Dave. I’ve decided this means he has to pay for everything from now on. Free trip woohoo!

bty

Cusco, like many large cities, offers tourists the chance to save a bit of dosh and acquire a Boleto Touristico. This gives you access to some of the smaller (read, less well funded) museums in central Cusco, as well as the plethora of ruins at varying distances outside the town, for a reduced cost than buying individual tickets. Having acquired ours the previous day and having been woken up at 2am by a taxi who decided that 2am was the perfect time to be beeping and revving his engine right outside our window, we decided to take it easy and visit some of these little museums. Who knows, we might even learn something. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. Our first stop was the Museo Historico Regional, situated inside a Ministry of Culture building which follows the style of many of the buildings in the city, having a courtyard in the centre, with various rooms around the outside on two floors. The Museum follows no discernable timeline or narrative, starting with a massive, almost complete, fossil of a Glyptodont – SO COOL – before then moving on to various cabinets filled with ancient pottery and poorly translated English descriptions. Then it skips several hundred years to a small exhibition about Tupac Amaru II, a Peruvian hero during the Spanish ‘interruption’ in the 16^th Century. After this it’s just some Western style paintings of various Goddy Jesusy people. We’ve been told a few times by our various tour guides that art played an important part in the conversion of the indigenous Peruvians to Catholicism but we can’t really see why.

You can’t take pics inside the museum so here’s a picture of the Tourist Ticket Map 😀

Our second museum of the day was Qurikancha, which is entirely underground and sits underneath what once was the Inca Temple of the Sun (before the Spanish built a church on it). We were warmly welcomed by an indigenous Peruvian chap who shook both our hands and welcomed us to Peru. On the whole, Cusconians are exceptionally friendly and happy to help, though we’ve found they have a rather dry sense of humour. This is all very well and good when you’re compos mentis but when you’ve just carried a very large, very heavy bag up a very big hill only to be told by the chap on reception that he only speaks English when he’s forced to isn’t ideal. Anyway, I digress. Qurikancha very much follows the same theme of the first museum with what can only be described as an omnishambles of a collection of various bits of pottery, arrowheads and poorly translated signs. It only took us about 30 minutes to go round the whole thing. We began to suspect at this point that the tourist ticket is a very good way of getting unsuspecting Gringos to visit some of the less well funded museums but we didn’t mind too much as we’d spotted a lovely French style coffee shop where we decided to stop for lunch after visiting our third and final museum of the day: Monumento Inca Pachacutec. This tower in the middle of downtown Cusco consists of a museum as you go up the tower, as well as a viewing platform at the top, crowned with a huge statue of the Inca king Pachacutec/Pachacuti. He’s a bit of a symbol round here, like Tupac Amaru II, as he grew Cusco from a small hamlet to a great ruling empire and won quite a big battle against a local tribe that tried to invade Cusco. He is also the subject of a cracking song in the BBC series Horrible Histories but again I digress. Recent historians believe that Machu Picchu was built as a summer home for him but the evidence, like a lot of the history round here, is lacking *shakes fists angrily at the Spanish*. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time here as it was very rainy and we were hungry but it was definitely the best of the 3 museums we visited that day. We ate at Amaranto Anticuchos & Café that evening where Dave had beef & chicken skewers and I had the biggest portion of egg fried vegetable rice ever. We were pleasantly smug that the woman serving us spoke to us solely in Spanish and spoke to the American chap dining in front of us solely in English. I’ve actually been really surprised by how much of the Spanish I attempted to absorb before our trip has managed to stick. The say that once you learn one language it’s much easier to learn a second and that seems to be at least in some parts true, which is good because we’ve noticed people are a lot more smiley and willing to help when you at least only partially butcher their native language, rather than just assuming they speak English; which I suppose is true of everywhere in the world (apart from Paris where everyone is grumpy all the time).

Up early the following day and upon the recommendation of Gonzalo on reception we decided our itinerary for the day would include the Inca Museum and the Santo Domingo Church. Paying 10 soles each for the privilege, our first stop was the Inca Museum; located just off the main square where, as usual, we were steadily approached by people offering walking tours, massages, commercially reproduced paintings, trinkets, and various illicit substances. As you walk through the rooms coming off the central courtyard you are treated to explanations and examples of the various tribes that existed across Peru/Bolivia/Ecuador/Chile before they were united under the Inka Empire. This was great as alongside the museums from the previous day, we were able to start to piece together some sort of timeline from pre-history up to the modern day and as much of the information is repeated between the different museums, some of it finally started to stick – hoorah! The only minor downside to this museum is that by the end they have just given up on translating anything into English so you just sort of have to muddle through on your own. BUT this was more than made up for however by the fact that there are REAL LIFE ACTUAL MUMMIES. This was worth the ticket price alone. Mummies in Incan culture were treated as part of the family and during festive periods, people often brought their Mummy to visit other Mummies as they believed they liked to socialise in death as they had done in life. It’s quite sweet really and memories of visiting the British Museum as a kid came flooding back. Everything else paled in comparison to the Mummies really, even the giant mural of ol’ Tupac being quartered in the main square didn’t quite cut it. That’s what Cusco needs, a good horror/gruesome walking tour. Dave can attest to how many of those I’ve dragged him on in various places around Europe, including one in the middle of summer on a sweltering hot day in Edinburgh. ANYWAY. On to the Santo Domingo church.

Ah not quite, we had lunch at what has now become a firm favourite of ours: JC’s Café. It’s cheap by English standards and the portions, as we’ve come to find is quite the norm in Cusco, are huge. A plate of nachos and a tuna sandwich with ‘french friss’ later, we carried on to see some more stuff that the Spanish ruined.

The Santo Domingo church was built on top of the destroyed Inca Palace of the Sun and its foundations incorporate much of the original structure. When it was occupied by the Spanish, they painted over all the Inca stonework with Catholic murals and they also removed all the gold that covered many of the walls. Before we went inside, we were approached by a local woman named Diana who asked if we had a tour group. We did not have a tour group and so paid 40 soles for a private tour of the ruins/church. We could have gone round on our own with the audio guide but Diana’s English was really good and when the monthly average wage here is about 1400 soles (£350), it’s good to support locals when you can. Diana told us she was born in Cusco and had lived there her whole life, only leaving a few times to go to Arequipa which, she told us, has a whole bunch of volcanos, which is why property is cheap there. Honestly the photos do not do justice as to just how impressive this place is. The precision of the Incan architecture is breathtaking and the stones are massive! Diana pointed out one stone which had 14 different corners. We spent a good 2.5 hours going around the whole site which include a cracking view over Cusco and Qurikancha from the day before, as well as a very charming garden where we tried, once again in vain, to capture a picture of a hummingbird.

And that just about brings you up to date! Sunday was a write off as we had a rubbish night’s sleep so we used the VPN on the laptop to watch some stuff on BBC Iplayer (thanks Daddy!), went out for a burger (alpaca/quinoa), then came back to the hostel with a few beers and watched The Emperor’s New Groove. On Monday morning we said goodbye to Pisko & Soul and lugged our heavy rucksacks up to Intro Hostel where I’m writing this now. Over to you Davelar!