Party time with the Incas

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We arrived in Cusco in the morning, catching a cab from the airport. By this point I had realised that the padlock on my backpack was well and truly broken and there would be a few issues of accessing clothes. So our little cab driver (by the way, they´re all very little over here) kindly found me somewhere to break my padlock in a middle of a busy market street. We did have a few moments where we thought we might be victims of some kind of "con" so we kept watchful eyes on our backpacks. Luckily for us the little kind man really was lovely.

Arriving into Cusco, we met Amy (a friend from Santa Martha) and Nic (who I had met in Quito) as the four of us pretty much had the same plans over the next week. We spent our first night exploring the tourist hangouts in Cusco and yes, we did find an Irish pub!

Now for the educational part! Cusco is in the South East of Peru. Taking a liking to high altitude places, it´s placed at 3300m and even walking a small hill feels like an effort. It was also named as a World Heritage Site in 1983 (great year) by UNESCO and is known as the historic capital of the Inca Empire. Weirdly, I just found out it has a partnership with Krakow too!

We happened to be in Cusco for the yearly celebration of Inti Raymi - a religious ceremony that means festival of the sun. It´s basically a huge excuse for the locals to party constantly and get very drunk on the streets. On our second day, we stood in the main square along with 1000s of others to watch the locals dress up in amazing, colourful costumers and reinact a ceremony which including dancing and processions. My favourite was a guy dressed up as a deer. He superbly acted an animal sacrifice!

Most people know Cusco as a gateway to Macchu Picchu and the Inka trail. Not being booked in advance enough for the Inca trail, we took the cheat´s way and booked a two day tour with a strange man who wouldn´t stop staying "hasta.............long pause............Cusco." It turns out he got even stranger but I´ll come to that later. That evening, most importantly, we found out the news of Michael Jackson. At least I´ll always have a story about where I was!

Anyway, we started our tour at 8am the next day. First visiting Pisac, our first Inca site. It was set in beautiful countryside and our tour guide taught us all about the traditions, the crop methods and how rocks were split. It even had working water channels. Wow, I hear you say! No really, it was cool.

We stopped at a little shop for Coca tea (good for altitude) and also saw the world´s biggest guineas pigs and after Pisac, we stopped in another town, Ollantaytambo, another Inca site. Because Mr "Hasta Cusco" had messed up our train tickets (he had forgotten to purchase our tickets the previous morning) we didn´t have a lot of time here so instead, we caught our train to Agua Calientes, a few hours away.

The next morning we were up at 4.30am in order to catch sunrise at Macchu Picchu. We stood in a very exciting queue to buy our bus tickets, caught our bus and then drove up to the Macchu Picchu site, through huge amazing mountains and lots of clouds. A little Jurrasic Park like!

Arriving, we climbed a steep set of steps and arrived in a maze like path until the ruins finally revealed themselves. Wow! (and you really do have to wait for photos for this). We chose a spot and watched sunrise and then spent the next 7 hours walking around the site, learning about the different buildings, walking to an Inca drawbridge and getting as many amazing photos as possible. It was a spectacular day in a spectacular place.

Tired from walking up and down steps all day we left Agua Calientes in the evening, boarding our train back to Ollantaytambo where Mr "hasta Cusco" had told us we would be picked up and taken all the way "hasta.................. Cusco." The fact that he really did reiterate his point many a times, we didn´t think we´d have any issues. But after 20 mins of waiting we realised nobody was coming. So instead, we rang him and jumped in a colectivo, of course, hasta Cusco. We then managed to get into a dispute with the colectivo driver and a very drunk Mr "hasta Cusco" who kept appearing at our hostel not really making any sense. We eventually asked the hostel lady to lock him out and we stayed hiding inside.

Getting back to the hostel we had a note from Nic saying our bus to Lake Titicaca was booked for the next day as the roads were open for just three days. Hurray, great news!

There have been a number of road blocks in Peru set up by local protestors - lots of politics to do with oil companies and governments. They shut the roads off to everyone and we heard plenty of stories about travellers being stranded in the middle of nowhere, having to walk hours with their backpacks to the next town. Luckily for us, we were on one of the buses for the next day!

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