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Published: December 22nd 2005
My bad luck with transport continued, no your not re-reading the Nazca entry. I left Nazca on the 1am Cruz Del Sur coach to Cusco, it departed nearer 2am. Woke up at 6am to find the coach had broken down somewhere on an Andean Mountain road and I’m also starting to feel the altitude. The locals decide to sit it out on the next bend in the road! I whipped out the GPS to find our location, to my disappointment distance traveled in the 4odd hours was 78miles! distance to go 185miles. shit. Replacement bus finally arrives at 11am, they then decide to torture me by playing videos of the latest and greatest Julio Iglesias wannabes for the next few hours. The views of the Andean mountains valleys and sheer drops did make up for some of it though. A simple 14 hour trip turned into a 22 hour nightmare.
CUSCO, Peru
*Height Above Sea Level : 3421m
*Miles From Luton : 6395
I spent the next week at a language school in Cusco trying to get to grips with the Espanol. I’ll start by saying it made me realise why previous attempts at learning another language have failed,
firstly I’m just not very good at it and secondly I can never be bothered to do the homework.
That said I had a great time at the school and I’m now stringing sentences together and actually understanding peoples replies. Also made some top friends, big hello to Kim and Nick! we spent the mornings learning and the afternoons exploring Cusco. An added bonus was the majority of the people at the school where girls!
It took a couple of days to get over the effects of living at altitude and to make things worse the school was located on top of a hill. The walk back after a few drinks was usually fairly slow! Cusco is a lively place, full of good restaurants which you can eat a 3 course meal for 10soles (two quid). Plenty of bars and clubs offering free drinks, Salsa lessons, all the latest films and I even found a dartboard to play a few arrows!
I’m now drinking loads of Coca leaf tea its fecking fantastic, you can’t beat a coca hit first thing in the morning or even the afternoon. Chewing the leafs is pritty good too, they don’t taste
too good but it does give a very very mild coke hit. I can see why the locals enjoy the Coca leaf so much!
The weather has taken me by surprise I packed for a South American summer but at this altitude its not so. The mornings are baking hot, it then rains at 3 on the dot and gets very cold in the evenings!
If your wondering what’s big in Cusco I can tell you its Alpaca, if your not eating it your wearing it, see pic the of me in my lovely new jumper!
The only downside to my stay in Cusco was having my camera stolen in the main plaza. This did throw up a few interesting side effects. Chatting to a few of the locals kids I know now which market stalls sell stolen cameras, no luck in getting mine though. Also got to see how the local police station works, as you’d expect its a little different. Security isn’t so important you can just wander round freely, the gun cabinet is an old wardrobe.
Now I’ve had something important stolen it feels like I’m a proper backpacking traveler! Luckily I was
able to buy a new camera in Cusco and am now back in business.
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Roger Fowler
non-member comment
Just read your journals
Thanks for the e-mail. Will be viewing your journals with interest in future, they look good as does the super new jumper! Hope you weren't sick on the germans.