P-p-p-pick up a Puno

Here we are in La Paz then! Bolivia! A good 2 weeks after our final day of the Salkantay Trek and we’ve just about recovered. Our descent from Aguas Calientes was fairly uneventful, once again more beautiful vistas of mountains, rivers, and Incan ruins all seen from the train back to Ollantaytambo. The following day team TWC met up for a final team to visit Cusco’s newly opened cat café. It’s a really sweet place where you can sit and enjoy a sandwich and a coffee surrounded by kittens and older pussy cats, you can even adopt them if you’re so inclined. It definitely helped to fill the foster kitty shaped holes in our lives and was an excellent way to soothe our ever-aching muscles. Having spent a good 4 hours playing with the moggies and with the place getting a little busy, we headed off as a group to find some dinner at the excellent Maikhana Indian buffet – all you can eat for 15 soles, woohoo! – before saying our final goodbyes and with promises to see each other again in another life.

Off we trotted to join the Bolivia Hop bus which would carry us the delightfully arduous 9-hour journey to Puno. The bus is about as comfortable as you could reasonably make it, reclining around 150° with a blanket provided and somewhat ample legroom, depending on whether you ask me or Dave. Unfortunately, being anything over around 5’7 puts you at a distinct disadvantage over here. Dave often finds himself to be too tall for beds, doorways, and public transport (female privilege strikes again!) and there have been choice words expressed on more than a few occasions when his head has met with various South American doorframes. After a bumpy overnight journey during which I managed to get some shut-eye and Dave, with what might just be the worst superpower ever, once again stayed up all night due to his inability to sleep on anything that moves. Arriving in Puno at around 5am we were dropped at a hostel where we could at least charge our phone and use their wifi to entertain ourselves while we waited to check in to our AirBnB at around 1pm. Puno is an odd little town that sits on the shore of Lake Titicaca, a short drive from the Bolivian border. Its main attractions include a large condor statue that sits a princely 700 steps above the city, the Uros floating reed islands, and a surprisingly well stocked supermarket. In our sleep deprived state, we had somewhat neglected to realise that our arrival into the city had coincided perfectly with Carnival, a festival celebrating the final week before lent. Celebrations in the larger cities range from throwing paint around to chucking water balloons at each other and in rural communities they’ll take it in turns to whack a tree until it gets chopped down – you know, normal celebratory type stuff. Puno however celebrates Carnival in a much more traditional sense, with marching bands at 5am and a little van that drives around playing an out of tune, out of time jingle, and selling juice to revellers. It was at this point that my body decided that the best thing to do would be to come down with a cold. Thanks body. As a result of this our time in Puno was decidedly uneventful, luckily our AirBnB had a big smart TV with Netflix so that was my time in Puno, being woken up every morning bright and early by marching bands, music in the streets, random air-raid sirens, oh and the random train which goes through the middle of town so has to beep to alert people to get off the tracks. Wonderful. Luckily Dr Dave was on hand to cater to my every whim and walk up and down the 6 flights of stairs to our apartment fetching various cold medicines as well as breakfast, lunch & dinner. Luckily (or not as the case may be), our journey back up to Lima will take us back through Puno so we can take the time to do all the touristy stuff we missed out on, on the way back. Phew!

bdr

After 3 days spent miserably bed bound, it was time to head to Copacabana and our first step into Bolivia! After reading horror stories about dodgy police offers, muggings, and general ineptitude, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the border crossing went smoothly. We hopped off the bus with our bag, received our exit stamp from the Peruvian side then climbed the short hill and went under the white arch marking the border between Peru and Bolivia. We were greeted by the Bolivia Hop bus guide and filled out a form before heading to Bolivian customs where the form was briefly glanced at and then added to a pile with all the others. We were then swiftly waived through and that was that! Not wanting to add myself to any sort of list, I’ll just say that if you were that way inclined, you could probably make your way through without encountering any sort of border official at all, thus avoiding any visa fees, should your country need to pay them. ANYWAY.

Our Bolivia Hop bus this side was a single storey affair, unlike our double decker beauty in Peru but as our final leg was only around 20 minutes this wasn’t terribly inconvenient. Copacabana accompanies Puno in the “odd little town” gang and seems to exist solely to provide overpriced mediocre food to tourists as well as tours to the Isla del Sol which is currently embroiled in somewhat of a local civil war between the North of the island and the South of the island. It doesn’t seem to be anything to be concerned about, it just means if you want to go to the opposite end to the one you’re currently on, it’s a bit of a pickle. Copacabana also sits on Lake Titicaca and the lake front looks like some sort of dystopian Blackpool with grubby swan pedalos and kayaks littered about the place, surrounded by more common litter such as Inca Kola bottles and random less buoyant plastic shapes. Its saving grace was our beautiful beautiful hotel. The view over the bay and the town with the lake is breath-taking and it is surrounded with alpaca filled gardens, deckchairs and hammocks. Our room left a little to be desired with a skylight that dripped sporadically during one of the region’s many thunderstorms but at only £20 a night we couldn’t really complain. There really isn’t enough in Copacabana to spend 4 nights there but gosh darn it we did! Still suffering the after effects of the cold and with the 3821m altitude not helping, most of our time was spent lounging around in the gardens, eating too much food, reading, and catching up on podcasts – almost as if we were on holiday! The baby alpaca frolicking around also provided ample entertainment. In an effort to feel mildly active and not let all that trekking go to waste, we trotted off on a little jaunt to the headland, about a 3 hour round trip away from the touristy town centre but sadly not the litter. While us Westerners sit in our little circle jerk feeling smug about buying metal straws and canvas bags, Bolivians are over here not giving a **** (insert word that Grandma definitely wouldn’t approve of here)! We’ve seen people chucking rubbish out their car windows and just dropping litter on the floor, it’s really quite sad and my Spanish isn’t good enough nor is my sense of superiority strong enough to interject. Poor planet. I imagine like most developing nations, they’ll get there eventually. In the supermarkets there are signs encouraging you to use re-usable bags so we live in hope and along the coast (Is it called a coast when it’s a lake?) there is some sort of eco-village with signs warning people not to litter, they’ve also collected a lot of litter and repurposed it into buildings which were quite cool as well. Most importantly however we ran into a little dog half way along the path who was swiftly named John Locke which definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve been re-watching LOST. He followed us to the headland and I shared a cereal bar with him before he trotted off back to the eco-village on our return journey. The following morning we had a huge great hail storm which made everything turn white which was pretty cool. The storms in general in Copacabana were some of the biggest we had seen so far, our dinner every evening was accompanied by flashes from across the bay.

I started to feel a bit more human on our last day but not quite enough to climb the big old hill just up the road so we hung around in the gardens while we waited for our bus to La Paz, around 4 hours away. There was a beautiful ginger cat who kept us company so it wasn’t a particularly arduous wait. As with Puno, we’ll be heading back through Copacabana on our way back up to Lima so we can stay in the lovely hotel again (but in a nicer room this time) and do all the touristy things then! The bus ride to La Paz is worthy of its own post so I’ll sign off for now, we’re doing Death Road tomorrow! 😀

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.

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!