¡Hola! from Cusco in Peru

Its been over a week now since I left Rio and am pleased to report all is well. I spent the last day in Rio at the modern art museum and downtown in the centre. The following morning I flew back to Sao Paulo and then straight to Lima and then onto Cusco. Never done 3 flights in one day before!

I guess one of the most obvious elements of this trip is that locals would often try to rip us off. But in Cusco its quite ridiculous. You can´t walk for more than two minutes before some Peruvian tries to sell you their paintings, post cards, ornaments, clothes etc. And then theres the ´tourist´ menus at most restaurants which attempt to sell meals for double or even triple what the locals pay. So everything becomes a blag or a haggle and we have rarely paid for anything that was originally asked. Becomes quite a fun game after a while! But slightly tedious when you know very little Spanish. The other real bonuses will be finding out more easily what the locals get up to. For example a girl that Dave met took us all to the local club we were previously warned not to go to on our own, called ´Las Vegas´. We were the only ´gringos´in there which made it slightly daunting. The locals are either slightly aggressive or were just weirdly over friendly. That includes a lot of women after prostitution or a british passport!

So here I am, sitting in a Spanish school, after another 4 hours of Spanish lessons this morning. We´re having 20 hours in all this week and I´m already quite proficient at present tense nouns, adjectives and general sentence construction, so this time next week, we should be able to at least exchange simple conversations with the locals....

Dave had arrived in Peru and had pretty bad altitude sickness, which Tom and I were lucky enough to escape the worst of. Cusco is over 3000m above sea level so theres alot less oxygen around with effects different people in different ways, until we all eventually get used to it. So Dave and Tom did the 4 day Inca Trail to Machu Pichu and we met up in Cusco on the Thursday evening. I then discovered Tom had an accident on Weds night and had a badly swollen ankle. Perhaps I´m slighlty sadistic but it was nice to know I wasn´t the only one going through difficulties! So we went out, as you can probably imagine, on the beers on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. A weekend of excess for sure. During saturday afternoon Tom and I caught a few taxi´s to visit some architectural sites just outside Cusco.

It seems the grass is always greener in this case, but accomodation has constantly been an issue. If you spend a few hours looking around hotels and hostels, you can generally find a private room for the same cost as two people would pay in a hostel dorm. In the private room you get to sleep whenever you want, but you don´t get to meet anyone else. In the hostel dorm (although we haven´t actually done it yet) sleeping is much more difficult but you get to meet loads of people. A few nights ago we bumped into a couple of English girls who were far more experienced at travelling than us. They had become used to staying in the cheapest dorms and travelling on 20+ hour coaches to reach the next destination. It was quite an eye-opener talking to them so I think we need to start looking at more dorms because meeting new people (who can speak decent english) really helps to break up the quieter moments of spending almost all my time with only one person.

Today I´ve been walking around the central market. Its quite amazing how all the food is sold. Meat (including skinned Alpaca heads!) are displayed on the counters all day with no refrigeration whatsoever - its generally about 22oC in the day here!!

I plan on visiting Machu Picchu on Saturday which involves a 4 hour each-way train ride. And then.... I´m probably going to do an 8 day tour of the amazon jungle - Manu Reserve to be exact. This will involve bus journeys, lodges, trails, tents and boat rides along the Manu River- which is eventually a tributary of the Amazon river. There are various levels but you don´t get to the centre unless you go for a week. I´ve always wanted to do this and have pretty much been sold on wikipedias description of árguably the highest concentration of biodiversity on earth.´ Dave´s altitude sickness seems to have picked up again in the last few days so he´s keen to get back down to sea level. I may be going solo on this one! Along with a few other tourists of course. So don´t expect to hear from me for a while!