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The flight from Cuzco to Lima wasn´t too bad-the senery from the plane was fab. We could see the mountain ranges up in the clouds. We arrived in Cuzco quite early on Friday morning (2nd Nov). We asked the taxi driver to take us to a part of the town called San Blas, but, you guessed it...he said it was full! Instead he took us to a hostel that he owned, the rooms were pretty grim and had a funny air of cat wee so we said no and asked him to take us closer to town. He took us to a hotel called Quri Inti which is a five minute walk from the Plaza de Armas in the town center.
After we had checked in and dumped our bags we went for a walk up to San Blas, i wanted to see if the taxi driver was telling the truth or just bringing in business for a hostel he worked with! Cuzco is really pretty with most of the small cobbled side streets centered around the Plaza. The walk up the hill to San Blas was fairly hard, we are at an altitude of 3,200m.a.s.l here and you can definately feel the lack of oxygen! We checked out a few different hostels and funnily enoungh the all had spaces, but the prices were similar to what we were paying so we just decided to stay put. We spent the afternoon looking at all the little shops selling local peruvian crafts and clothing. We also had to visit the office of the tour group we were doing the Inca Trail with to get a briefing and pay the rest of the money.
The next day i wasn´t feeling well at all, had blocked nose etc and a chronic headache. I didn´t know if it was altitude sickness or just a headache...On Sunday morning i felt a little better so we explored Cuzco a little more. There are people everywhere here trying to sell you anything. If you walk into a shop and look at something, they´ll pull the whole lot out and explain that it comes in many different colours and its always "a special price for you senorita!" At one point a group of kids came up to us on the street, dressed in traditional clothing and asked if we would take a photo. One sole each they said so Neil passed me three soles and i stood with them while he took a picture. When i went to give them the money the younger girl pointed to the older girl so i gave it to her, before i knew it she was off down the street with her lamb and the other two kids were left looking at me. Stupidly we gave the little boy two soles and then he did one leaving the little girl pleading with us for more money saying that they were´nt family so she had no money! We tried to get rid of her but she followed us and was really persistant so i gave her another sole and she disappeared. So we ended up paying double for the photo, but it was only 1 pound and the kids were cute if not a little cheeky!
Later on in the evening my headache returned and i ended up being sick which hasn´t happened for a long time! We were just hoping that i felt better in the morning as we were starting The Inca Trail.
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