Peru Part 2!!!!

Back to Peru for Machu Picchu! (Yes, I'm aware that's a shockingly bad rhyme)
And so began another chicken bus ride- this time from La Paz to Cusco (via Copacabana and Puno).. And at this point, I will need to add a couple of extra ways to tell you have unwittingly booked a chicken bus:
* When you ask the woman at the booking office if the bus is cama, or semi-cama (classes of bus in SAm: cama= awesome reclining seats, semi-cama= half recline), she wont meet your gaze and responds "ah, semi-cama".
* After transferring buses 3 times and being stranded in Puno for hours, the bus finally arrives- and there is poo on the floor of it! Human? Animal? Who knows! But it makes for a cold old trip to Cusco with the windows open!

Right, so obviously due to the delays, I didn't arrive at Cusco until around 2.30 (instead of 10.30pm, only 4 hours late). So following a great sleep, I set to exploring the city- and it is gorgeous! One of the most beautiful in South America! There are gorgeous old buildings and plazas around every corner! And also the most optimistic hawkers around every corner! "Art students" selling their paintings, people trying to con you into a massage, people selling jumpers/socks/jewellery/dolls/you name it, and people trying to get you to book a tour with their company! I was contemplating making a recording of "no, gracias" to save myself some energy! These hawkers were relentless, and eternally cheerful! After turning a particular "art student" down for the 3rd time in the one day (he just happened to be everywhere I went), he responded with "maybe later?"! Unbelievably optimistic! (Although as an aside, I DID buy one of that bloke's paintings on my last day in Cusco- it seemed only fair!)

I was also sucked into doing a few of tours, but I figure that it was easier than doing it myself, PLUS I had a bus driver named Nestor!! (Long story, the reference was just for Jakie)- one to the Inca sites around Cusco, one to the Sacred Valley, and one to Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu was left until last, and getting picked up at 4.40am was a bit of a rude shock!! But it was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO worth it! The train line isn't fully fixed, so there is a bit of bus-ing in between stations, but the train itself has glass panels in it's ceiling, so you can make the most of the view! Awesome! And after mastering the stairs at the site itself, the view is truly spectacular! The ruins are in pretty good nick considering how many tourists go there (and how many do the wrong thing by climbing all over everything). But once the inital flood of tour groups from the morning was over, it was quite calm in the afternoon, and it allowed me to take some top photos! (Hopefully these will make it home ok!) The Sacred Valley was gorgeous, but Machu Picchu was spectacular! One of the best days of my whole trip! I was lucky in that my tour guide happened to have grown up in the region, knows A LOT about Inca history, and has even written a book about Machu Picchu and the Incas. It meant that he was able to answer any question and tell you so much about the place- fabulous!

So despite the fact that I spent the best part of a week in Cusco, I think I have pretty much summed things up succinctly!

Next stop- Chile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!