Leaving Cusco

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Leaving Cusco

Our last day in Cusco was marked by a gathering of some of the volunteers as we all went for lunch at not the most obvious choice, a club by night, but set in this amazing building with huge high ceilings and seating on the dance floor! We all ate well for a 10 sole (2pound 50 set menu) then as those who were at school that week set off it began to pour. It did not stop. We tied up the last few things, said goodbye to our landlady, headed to the school to say goodbye to the kids and all the other volunteers then headed to the bus station by taxi. All in the rain. We had a conversationwith the taxi drvier, in Spanish,about our timein Cusco and he called us Cusquenans due to our length of time there!

We were heading towards Ica and had booked ourselves on a coach a few days preious after much deliberation. The journey was said to be around 17 hours, which could be considerably longer depending on the number of landslides we were to encounter, so careful choice of bus company was important and we had to decide whether to pay the extra 10 pounds for bigger seats in cama. In the end we got semi cama for 40 pounds but seats at the front at the top of a double decker bus. Our bus left slightly late and then, stopped half way on the ascent for some petrol. We were then served lomo saltado and jelly which was actually quite good. The road winded its way out of Cusco making it difficult for me to even watch an episdoe of Shameless on Sam’s player as I felt sick! I instead concentrated on the view out of the front window and it wasn’t too long before we stopped.

As we made our way through the hills the size of landslide seemed to increase. It had been raining everyday for at least a week before we left Cusco so this was inevitable. Each time the driver would keep his engine running whilst as an army of men, including passengers from the seats on the ground floor to a few extra men that seemed to work for the company solely for this purpose. It started with a few large boulders, then a huge tree that the bus had to drive over, to whole rivers taking up the road. The driver seeemd to be quite experienced in this type of driving. At around 3am we stopped still, engines were turned off and there was a still line of trafffic, buses and lorries that continued into the darkness. The men got out to investigate. 15 minuted later on their return the driver started up his engines and drove on the left hand side of the road passing all these stationery vehicles, which went on for a good few minutes, then we got to the site. The road had been completely washed away and there were diggers at the side of the road that had recently finished clearing the road. We drove straight through the river and continued.
I then got some sleep and the next time I woke up we were descending down from the hills towards the desert. The scenery was amazing. After being served a collection of bread and cake for breakfast we then stopped a few hours later at 11am in Nazca. We all got off the bus and were met by sweltering heat. There seemed to be no air conditioning on the bus so for the next 2 hours to Ica we had a steady sweat on.

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