Christmas in Cuzco

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We were glad we had already booked onto the Christmas meal at the Wild Rover, as when we returned from Machu Picchu there was already a waiting list of around 20 people. On Christmas morning we slept in until about 11 as we were exhausted from the previous day. We showered and headed into the Irish bar connected to our hostel to have some breakfast and skype our families. As we were waiting for our food to arrive we saw some familiar faces poking around the reception area. It was the couple that we had met at Machu Picchu and we were really glad to see them. They had been staying at another hotel and we had invited them to come and drink with us for Christmas. Unfortunately they were unable to book onto the Christmas meal, and the hostel was fully booked so they couldn't check in either. They sat and chatted with us until our dinner at 3, which was really nice. Mark is originally from the UK, and Michelle from New Zealand. They met in New Zealand and moved to Australia together. As they told us about their life of adventure in Noosa, including fishing, downhill biking, surfing and the sun, Luke's eyes grew wide with jealousy. They were such a nice couple and we were really happy to have met them. We are hoping to go and visit them when we go to Australia.

At around 3 it was time for lunch. Lines of tables had been set up in the courtyard of the hostel like in Harry Potter. We were served a starter of mushroom soup, then turkey and stuffing and roast ham dinner and piles of mash and veggies, followed by bread pudding with custard. It was actually quite good considering there were so many people to be fed (around 70) and it was reasonably priced at around £12.50 each.
In South America there seem to be no smoking restrictions operating in the hostel bars. It seems that 90% of travellers smoke, and one thing that really annoys us is they have no regard whatsoever for non-smokers, even when you are eating. One girl sat next to us puffing away over Christmas dinner with ash practically falling on our plates. This has been the same in most of the places that we have been staying.
After dinner we were headed back to the bar to chill out for a bit. Our friends had headed out for a curry at an Indian restaurant that we had been to the night before the Sacred Valley tour. It was run by a Bangladeshi man who seemed to have lived in every continent, and had even resided in the UK for a while. So why Cuzco, we thought. Anyway so this man had told us he worked in software or something, and that we could make free calls back to the UK if we visited him in the day. We realised he must have a dodgy line or something, and this was confirmed by a worker in our hostel who informed us that he was the only man with access to the sports channels showing the cricket, in the whole or Cuzco. Pretty impressive.

Michelle and Mark had been watching the cricket with their Indian Christmas dinner. They returned to our hostel at about 8pm where we began to drink- cocktails for the girls and beers for the boys. By about 12.30 the atmosphere became intolerably kiddie disco, and reached the pinnacle when a young couple (we know the guy was 18 as we recognised him from our dorm back in Mancora from last time we were in Peru) snogged on the dancefloor and there was a lot of oohing and ahhing and camera flashing.
We decided to head out to get more drinks somewhere else, but on the way to the plaza we wanted to see if the Indian restaurant was showing the cricket. It was closed but we weren't deterred, despite the security at the restaurant complex. We banged on the glass doors and were actually quite surprised when the jolly face popped his head round the door. He invited us in with welcome arms, and set up his projector screen to show the cricket in large on the wall. He opened the fridge and we cracked open some beers, and he offered us a curry. Well how could we turn that down? He cooked us one chicken and one lamb dish with rice and spicy popadoms exactly the same as the ones at Spicewoods. A private curry party was definitely a nice way to end the night, however, as it approached 2.30am we became increasingly aware that we had to be at the airport at 4.45am, and we still hadn't gone to bed. We decided to call it a night and said our goodbyes and promised to meet up in Oz.

Our flight back to Lima was scheduled for 7.45am, but Taca Airlines issues an advisory to arrive at the airport 3 hours before- even though it was only a domestic flight. We decided to take our chances and cut it fine, spending an extra hour in bed. We arrived to the airport at 6am and had no problems checking in. What a load of rubbish. We had still only had like 2 hours of sleep and were exhausted, and were not holding our breath for our flight to be on time. Obviously it wasn't so we managed to get a good 3 hours sleep on the benches in the airport. We always wondered who the weird people were sleeping in the airports- now we are them. We were in the air by around 11 and it was an hour and a half flight. It only cost 158 USD for the two of us to fly, and it was so worth not having to take a 22 hour bus ride.

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