Where to begin....

Here´s some background. The Peruvian Government have announced a very controversial plan to sell part of the Amazon Rainforest to a multinational company. When some local Indigineous people protested in Northern Peru, they were shot dead by the police!! People are not happy and as we are now discovering, Cusco and it´s surrounding areas is a very politically active place.

To protest against the government, a blockade of all roads leading to Cusco from the South has been in place for a number of days. We discovered when we returned to Arequipa on Tuesday that we would be unable to board a direct overnight bus to Cusco as we had planned. After a day of frustrating yo-yoing between travel agents, we eventually were booked on an overnight bus to Puno (out of our way) and then onwards to Cusco.

And so the Magical Mystery Bus Trip began!

We arrived in freezing temperatures to Puno at 4am, slept for a couple of hours and then boarded our bus to Puno (not with the company who we originally booked with, but with a local bus! Only eight travellers, the rest locals). Now to put a bit of a picture of the bus, we were surrounded by a very large woman who as Mal said was Eating for Peru constantly, her annoying toddler son, and an old woman who stuffed the entire contents of her house (!) behind Nat´s seat and her unbelievably awful granddaughter who constantly made jokes about Gringo´s and had the bus laughing at all the travellers expense at times. Peruvians don´t pay for their children to have seats, so both these annoying kids constantly sat/slept/invaded our personal space, one being behind us and the other in front!

Four and a half hours into the trip, we came upon a road block and the driver took a left turn up a steep windy mountain track (see pictures). You couldn´t see the road out the window, only the steep slope below, as it was so narrow....very nerve wracking! Suddenly the bus stopped and we were all told to get out and climb to the top of a hill (we were already at an altitude of over 4200m) as the bus couldn´t travel with so much weight. Breathing whilst walking up a further (approx) 300m was tough with the air so thin!

After three hours of painfully slow (but beautiful countryside views) we came upon a town roadblock with massive stones, logs and an angry mob of locals.

Three hours later, after a town meeting and much pleading by the locals on our bus, we were allowed to pass! Throughout the three hour wait, we were constantly getting mixed messages........we´re stuck here for the night, get out and walk for 35 minutes and we´ll be picked up by another bus, we need more support at the meeting - everyone out to help, no - travellers don´t go out and help-it might make it worse, we could pay to pass, we can leave in two hours time etc etc!

After allowing us through, we drove another 30 minutes to a bridge which was back on the main road. It had been completely sabbotaged and was extremely dangerous to even walk across (often down to one plank of wood to walk on). No traffic could pass this bridge. We were instructed to take all our belongings and walk across the bridge, by this stage it was pitch dark and 10pm at night! The guy in front of Nat, lost a bucket full of his belongings, as the bag it was in broke as he walked along the plank and plunged straight into the river below!

Another bus was waiting on the other side and after all our fellow travellers had arrived (together with crates of LIVE chickens which had been part of the luggage!) we spent a further 30 minutes trying to manouevere past the many other trucks/buses/cars that were stranded on that side of the river.

It was then a quick 80 minute trip to Cusco and we arrived 15 hours after leaving Puno (this trip would normally take around seven hours), just before midnight.

All part of the travel experience and once again, we were lucky to have a good supply of choc chip biscuits, apples and muesli bars to keep us going as we made no stops for food the entire trip!

It was all worth it thou, as Cusco is a beautiful city and we will soon book our trip to Macchu Piccu.

The internesting post script to the story is that we have to travel back down to Puno after our Cusco/Macchu Piccu experience, so we hope things are sorted out within the next week or two!!

We just thought this trip deserved its own blog!

Love Mal and Nat