And onto the much raved about Cusco

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Today we travelled to Cuzco. The place everyone raves about. It's our last public bus trip which is nice but in saying that I have also been so impressed by the comfort level of them. Hate to say it but undeniably better then plane travel. Andreas was able to secure us a bus with wider seats in a 2-1 configuration. Most of the group was seated downstairs with 5 of us upstairs. I was in a 1 seater.



There was 1 stop on the way to use public toilets and a few ladies were there with alpacas so I got my token alpaca photo.



We arrived in Cuzco 330pm and met Andreas 4pm to go for a quick orientation walk. First he took us to the chocolate museum where we got to sample chocolate tea, 5 different chocolates and chocolate alcohol. Next he took us to the market and for a quick walk through and he pointed out some of the churches that we may like to visit ourselves.



We had some free time before we had to meet Andreas and as we hadn't had lunch and dinner was going to be quite late so Matt Kel Catrin Jodie Ash and myself went to try out Big Macs Peru style. Ok but Australia MacDonalds still kicks arse. I have heard a lof of people rave about the McDonalds pancakes in Cusco however – which I didn't get a chance to try.



We met Andreas 650 and walked to the G adventures office and were split into our groups of Inca trail and Lares trekkers for our briefings. We met our guide Joel who is also going to be our guide for sacred valley tour tomorrow. Basically he briefed us day by day on the Inca trail what to expect and gave us a bit of a scare about how far we would be walking. He seems pretty cool though and had done it over 130 times. Next we went downstairs to hire equipment. The lares trek people were picking up more to join them on their tour however we just had the 9 of is on Inca trial. As Sylvia and I both booked private rooms Joel actually said that we could all have single tents or share. Jodi and I decided to share as figured it would be warmer at night. But it was nice they gave us the option.



A lot of people choose not to go to dinner tonight which I think Andreas seemed a bit disappointed about. I went out but don't really need to because of Mcdonalds. He took us to what we are assuming is a nice restaurant as the menu was pricey compared to what we've been going to so far.



At our table they had shot glasses set out and ended up teaching us how to make pisco sours. They said 6 ice cubes, 4 if blending not shaking and we had to shake it for 3 minutes then serve. It was pretty good.



I was tossing up a soup or a beef salad. My instinct told me soup but I went with the beef salad. Almost fatal mistake. It was a raw beef salad. Have you ever seen that Mr Bean episode were he gets the raw meat and hides it everywhere. I became that person. I am open to trying new things so I did have a few bites but it's not a taste or texture I can acquire and getting sick before Inca trail wasn't high on my list of things I wanted to do. I also didn't want to offend anyone or make the waiters feel bad about my bad choices in life. Therefore I stole a napkin from the bread basket, put half of my dinner inside it, stuffed it in my pocket, went to the bathroom and disposed of it in the bin and pretended I was full. Lucky for McDonalds prior or I would have been a hungry girl. You live you learn. Should have gotten the soup.



Came back and tried to sort out my Inca trail bags to try make sure I am under 6 kg. Stressed and it's going to become a morning job.

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