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We thought we had experienced some horrendous bus journeys on the trip so far but the bus journey from Puno to Cusco was by far the worst yet. You might remember from the previous blog that we were getting the bus from La Paz to Puno. Well we arrived in Puno and we left as soon as we got there - the best way to describe it - a concrete jungle. When we were on the bus to Puno we ended up seeing the three Swedes again who told us they were getting another bus straight to Cusco that day. We found the guy who was selling the bus tickets and we were shown outside to wait for our bus. Around ten minutes later a bus pulls up to our platform which we had seen just a few minutes earlier being loaded up in the back with live chickens. Surely this wasn't our bus........ it was.
Everybody gets on the boiling hot bus cautiously. People start complaining about the heat and how there was no toilet like we had been promised and two girls look like they might cry. The bus driver ignores everybody and sets off onto our long
journey to Cusco. After an hour or so into the journey me and Jon feel like crying ourselves, the driver was going stupidly fast, overtaking three lorries at a time on bends and taking corners as if he was Michael Schumacher. Even the Chickens were clucking their heads off. At one point me and Jon were gripping each others hands so tight for about four hours and he told me afterwards that he actually prayed that we would make it to Cusco alive...and thankfully we did. Even if it was two hours late! We can laugh about it now!!!!
After the eventful and long bus journey we arrived in Cusco at around
12am. We jumped in a taxi and made our way to a hostel that the Swedes had told us about to see if they had any beds available as we hadn't had chance to book anything with it being such a last minute decision. We got to Kokopelli hostel and luckily they had a four bed dorm left which we took along with two German girls from our bus. I had a quick shower and we all went straight to bed. The comfiest beds we had slept
in so far on the trip and the bed quilts were just like home!
The next morning we went upstairs for our scrambled egg breakfast. It was pretty tasty - whether that was due to us not eating since La Paz or not I'm not sure. After breakfast we went to explore Cusco's cobbled streets and squares. We then went to the market where there were about a dozen middle-aged ladies all with their own fresh juice stalls. As soon as they saw me and Jon they were all shouting and cheering for us to come to their stall and holding out their menus that all offer the same juice at the same prices. It was madness! We went to the first lady who tried to grab our attention and me and Jon both had a mixed fruit juice. It consisted of fresh orange, mango, pineapple and banana and was delisioso! She made up a jug so we got three glasses each which left us feeling full to the brim with juice afterwards - worth it though as we hadn't had any fruit for a while.
Later in the afternoon we decided to go out for some lunch
but knew we had to choose wisely after our dodgy tummies in La Paz. We both fancied some home comforts so headed to an English pub called Cross Keys. When we got in there I noticed they sold Henry Westons cider which got me pretty excited and ordered it without even asking how much it was. It turned out to be £5 which was pretty expensive - like most of Cusco actually - whoooopsie. Jon had fish and chips and I had buffalo chicken wings and they were both exactly what we needed. On the night we went to a restaurant recommended by the Swedes called Greens Organic and tried our first plate of ceviche. Ceviche is generally a dish served up of raw fish, marinated in lime, chilli and onions served cold. The ceviche we had was served with trout, mango and salad and was really tasty. Jon then had Alpaca for his main and I had trout again - this time it was cooked though. The Alpaca was so tender and juicy. Yummy!
The day after we moved hostels to where our German friend Norman and kiwi pal Devon were staying. We had always planned on doing
that but I was pretty glad we were moving hostels as one of the guys in our room from Kokopelli kept us awake most the night with his screams of "OH GOD!!!!" before letting off extremely loud farts and having to run back and forth to the toilet most the night. The room smelt like hell and I was having to sleep with a T-shirt over my face so I wasn't sick myself. I felt sorry for him though as it turned out he had a parasite in his stomach and I think he might of actually messed himself in the night. The hostel we moved to was called Eco Packers which had a really nice court yard where you could play table tennis and had a tv room with a really nice log fire. We were in an eight bed dorm and the beds were really comfy again.
After unpacking our stuff we went to sort out our flights with LAN to Mancora as we were desperate for some beach time. We booked the flights and then realised we should really be sorting out our trip to Machu Picchu. As we're not big hikers, we weren't too fussed
on paying $500 to do the Inca Trail so looked into other options instead. We found out you could do a different package called Inca Jungle. It sounded really exciting as you could do rafting, biking and zip lining but due to all our dodgy broken bones and metal work we changed our mind and thought we should go for a safer option. In the end we booked it all ourselves independently. We booked our return train tickets from Ollantaytambo (an hour and 20 minute drive away from Cusco) to Aguas Calientes - the town at the foot of Machu Picchu. We now had to make our own way from Cusco to Ollantaytambo by mini bus, buy our Machu Picchu entrance ticket from Aguas Calientes tourist office for $50 each and book into a hostel.
The last thing we had to do was rent some walking boots and a rucksack that were the right size for Machu Picchu. The walking boots Jon had to have were hilarious and he was really not happy about having to wear them. The boots were black and looked similar to Dr Martins and really looked fetching with his black Adidas tracksuit bottoms. We
also realised that the rucksack we rented when we got back to the hostel absolutely reeked of stale sweat but it was too late by then to go back to the shop so Jon ended up hand washing the straps with soap but it didn't really make a difference. We were just going to have to pong for the day!
That night we stayed at the hostel and had a BBQ and played a few games of table tennis which I was awful at and most people in the hostel were laughing at me. By
11pm we called it a night as we were up early in the morning to start our adventure to Machu Picchu.
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