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Well the first thing about Cusco is the altitude. Cusco sits 3300m above sea level - thats 10,800 foot, comparable to some of the skydives in New Zealand. On the plane from Lima the hills weren't that far down in fact you could see them poking through some of the clouds we were flying over and landing was very brief as there wasn't too much ground to lower through. It was a very pleasant flight in fact, the first 20 minutes of ascent allowed us to get some pretty decent views over all the hill, we then served a sandwich and a drink in the middle 20 minutes and then a very brief landing - took less than an hour. Upon arrival there were oxygen tanks available for anyone having trouble breathing at the altitude. We did not. In fact I felt fine, this altitude sickness nonsense was clearly all hearsay. A Peruvian pipe band played in baggage reclaim as we waited for our bags, which we enjoyed and reminded me slightly of the episode in South Park where they spring up everywhere and the boys start a band of their own.
Anyways a short taxi ride took us to our hostel, our home for the coming 2 weeks or thereabouts - Loki, party hostel of Cusco. Alas it turns out we did not so much have a reservation so much as we had been put on the waiting list (its a desirable place to stay). The reservation system at Loki is a bit random once you're checked in you can stay as long as you like until you're ready to leave, but means that really a reservation can never be honoured as they never know how many beds will be available that day until people have decided whether or not to check out. Not wanting to risk not having somewhere to sleep for that night we took a more expensive room that had no waiting list for it for the day under the promise that we would obviously be at the top of any list for the next day for the cheap dorm rooms.
Some nice Canadians in this smaller room then told us about the "water problem" seemingly Cusco has a water problem, which basically means each establishment has to collect and hold its own water, the hostel had massive tanks in the back. But because Loki is so big water was only available between 6 and 8am, 11am and 1pm, and 9 and 11pm. Thats showers, hand basins and toilets. Outside of these hours there was no water at all. Lucy then walked in on one of them having a shower as he'd not thought to lock the door given the small size of the room and the fact he was obviously he was in there. Lucy was a tad embarrassed.
Checked in and hungry we decided to go off in search of food and headed to a legendary establishment among Cusco travellers known as Jacks Cafe. The food was awesome. I had a burger and Lucy a casserole and the meat was so SO tender. Very tasty. Alongside it I had a nice pink lemonade, one of my favourite drinks, but which you never get in the UK. We then had a wander about town saw the Plaza des Armas, a nice big monastry called the Temple of Coricancha, which once used to be totally covered in gold before the ruins were flattened by the Spanish and did some llama spotting, taking in a good photo opportunity with some baby llamas before heading back to the hostel for some drinks at the bar and some sleep.
The next morning I felt like utter s*** and I'd only had like 2 beers! And it was my birthday! Officially old at 22. All in all the morning was not starting well. But on the way up for breakfast who did we bump into, but Nathan - yay! We weren't expecting him to show up until the afternoon or so, but he'd actually been waiting for a while for us to wake up. He said he'd been tempted to go in and drag us out of bed, given how I felt I'm glad he didn't. I also met his friend Steph for the first time (Lucy had met her through Biology) and she seemed really nice, real easy to get along with. We had breakfast and some much need orange juice and Nathan and Steph checked in and a nap after their bus from Puno, whilst Lucy and I went to see the people at Llama Path (the Inca Trail company) to pay off the rest of our tour and tell them we wanted to rent a sleeping bag and walking sticks. That bit of work out the way we then had a wander down to San Pedro market, the largest in Cusco, where Lucy utterly raped them of all llama products - a hat, a pair of gloves, a pair of socks, 2 hoodies! They were loving her.
We then had a bit of a nap before intending to get utterly hammered for my birthday, but the altitude hated me and I'd had about a shots worth of my beer before I had to run to be sick. I was not impressed and I kept being sick even when there was nothing left. It was s*** but standard for any birthday of mine - spiked drink and asked to leave in 2007, toncilitus 2008, altititude sickness 2009. I left the rest of them to get hammered and go clubbing. I opted for bed. Sad, but necessary.
The next day I felt good, well not good but significantly better than I had the day before. The other guys however felt awful. Steph on serveral occasions made reference to her wanting to die and spent most of the day in bed. Apparently they'd been dancing on the bar at some point the evening before ... For those of us in the world of the living the water problem got worse and we lost the middle lunchtime shift ie the one everyone uses since the morning one is at a blatantly stupid hour in the morning. We hang about the hostel for the day, I read and watch films, whilst gettin frustrated with south america's internet speed and have a nice lasagne for dinner.
The 5th me, Steph and Lucy go shopping in town and end up migrating towards the market again where the girls bought a ridiculous amount of earings and haggle them from their reasonable prices to criminally abusive prices - ending on 2 soles a pair (about 50p). They're all very pretty tho, if not largely of the blue spectrum in Lucy's case. We make another attempt at going out that evening and I once again fail to keep anything alcoholic down throwing up a vodka orange within 5 minutes of drinking it. The guys once again go out and get utterly hammered.
They spent the majority of the next day sleeping as they had the past post drinking night and watched slash sang along with the Lion King. We had beef stronganoff for dinner and then went to bed.
The following day feeling like we'd done a distinct lack of anything on account of being drunk/hungover/sick Lucy and I went to the travel agents nextdoor and booked some horse riding for that afternoon and paragliding for the following day - we were going to be good tourists damn it! Not just piss our travels down the drain.
So off we went horseriding. We started up a ridiculously steep rocky hill, the instructor who spoke next to no english (standard) didn't seem particularly bothered with my lack of having ever rid a horse and wasn't particularly useful and employed a very much sink or swim attitude. Reacking the top of this rocky path and crossing a car filled road we then came to a nice grassy path to follow to The Temple of the Moon that he attempted to badly explain to us. He then asked what we interpretted to mean did we want to walk or take the horses to the second temple. Having paid to go horseriding we said we'd take the horses. Turns out he was asking whether we wanted to walk to the second temple or turn around and head back with the horses. Again this would be an example of where their using hand actions would help. Half way back to the farm we realised what he had clearly been trying to communicate to us, but by this point it was too late to turn back.
He asked us repeatedly if we wanted to gallop and told him repeatedly we had no interest in gallopping as I would almost certainly fall off, hell trotting had been hard enough. However, we were given no choice when a bunch of dogs decided to abrk and bite at the horses sending them racing away, Lucy and I screaming down the path. It is frankly a miraclet that I did not fall off, on several occassions I was sure I was going to and wondered what exactly would happen if I did given that my shoes were quite firmly attached to the stirrups. Anyways I didn not, nor did Lucy, I am quite of the opinion that it was possibly the instructors doing that we went this way in order to force us to gallop as he also made no attempt to help us stop or slow down.
The steep rocky path was definately more difficult on the way down than it had been going up as the horses kept slipping all over the place. By the time we dismounted my right leg was almost dead from being held in a stupid position for almost 2 hours. And god if my ass wasn't sore from the trotting.
Back at the hostel we spent the evening watching movies - 'Snatch', 'Gladiator' and 'Thank You For Not Smoking.'
The next day was paragliding, we were picked up and whisked away to the sacred valley and waited for a rather long time for the paragliding tandem to show up. When he finally arrived he claimed he was late due to the religious holiday which was causing disruption to the bus timetable. I can only imagine the effect of actual easter or christmas given the holiday he was refering to was Ash Wednesday.
There was a lot of waiting involved as we had to wait for a lot of things to be right, the weather, the wind direction and speed etc etc. Lucy was going first and was kitted out in the harness and attached to the tandem who in turn had hooked himself up to the parachute. Lucy at this point announced that she had been under the impression that paragliding was infact handgliding - god knows what she thought the "para" bit stood for. After about 10/15 minutes of sitting on the grass all kitted out and ready to go. The instructor determined the conditions were right. Had lucy stand and run off the edge of the cliff.
The instructor who had previously been speaking bad broken english however descended into full blown spanish and telling her to walk slow, then run, then remain standing and not sit whilst in the air in spanish and not english - very useful for one who does not speak a word of the language.
I sat at a comfortable distance from the edge of the cliff (2m) taking photos and videos of Lucy's floating until she was too small to discern from passing bugs. The taxi driver then had me quickly (and much more quickly that I was capable of running up the side at this altitude) back into the taxi to go into the valley and pick them both up.
On this ride down I came to the decision I was not going to paraglide. If not for all the ridiculous waiting for good conditions, then the waiting all harnessed up and his ability to forget all english ... and the fact we were jumping off a cliff. I told the instructor when we picked him up and he was good about it. I didn't expect my money back, but he returned it minus the amount I owed the taxi driver which I obviously had used so was pretty happy with that. It was probably for the best anyway aside from the fact I would have shat myself it already getting on in the afternoon (having had to do so much waiting around) and we had expected to be back around 12pm. More importantly as a result we had thought we had ample time to go into town and pick up the jackets, waterproofs, torches and other parafanalia required for the inca trail the next day. Taking into account how long it could have taken for me to do the whole thing we might not have gotten back in time and given the fact we were gonna be getting picked up at 5am the next day we would have been quite quite f***ed.
As it was we weren't and managed to get into town and pick up all the things we needed at a pretty reasonable price 3 soles to rent a torch, 15 for the fleece, 15 to buy a pretty decent waterproof poncho. We went to Jacks for a last good meal (not knowing how much we were gonna be eating for the next few days) and this time I sampled the casserole that Lucy had had the other day - totally melt in your mouth beef, VERY tasty, high praise for someone who generally is not a fan of the humble english casserole.
We packed our bags for the trek, checked out of the hostel and booked beds for our return (these however were guaranteed - honestly their reseration system makes no sense!) We said our goodbyes to Nathan and Steph and then went to bed. Knowing it wouldn't be long before we had to get up and get going for the Inca Trail.
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