Day 293 - Arequipa, Perú

The bus journey to Cusco was horrible, it started by being an hour late and then crawled along through some very unsavoury districts, picking up various dodgy looking characters on the way. I'm sure everything was perfectly safe but all advice recieved says not to travel on these buses at night and it was getting darker by the minute. As we approached Cusco at around midnight, I heard someone 'Psssssting' me and asking me something in Spanish that I didn't at first understand, but once I'd got my brain into gear I realised he was just asking if we wanted to stay at his hotel. This was the shape of things to come in Cusco, you can't walk down the road for more than 20m without being asked if you want to buy something, take a tour somewhere or have a massage. I soon became sick of my own voice everytime I politely said 'no gracias'. I got less and less polite as the week wore on.

Having said all that I really fell in love with Cusco pretty quickly. After being driven through some pretty awful Peruvian towns on the way it was a lovely surprise to see how well maintained and pretty Cusco is. The whole city sprawls out between various mountains and the buildings have a very Meditteranean look to them with their terracotta pan-tiled roofs and narrow balconies overlooking the various plazas around town.

There's loads to do here too if you have plenty of time and money as it is more expensive than I though it would be. I went into the cathedral on our first day here and was blown away by it. It is stunning. Rich waited outside as he'd seen it last time he was here and didn't want to pay another 25 Soles to get in. It is actually three churches next to one another but all knocked through to create three distinctly different spaces under the same roof. Everywhere was choc-full of religious art which was extremely blingy, but my favourite was the huge rendition of The Last Supper painted by a Peruvian artist. Instead of the Paschal Lamb adorning the table of Señor Jesus and his disciples, there was a roasted guinea pig lying on a silver platter with it's little crispy feet sticking up in the air presumably pointing to heaven. So Peruvian!

There is a lot of dodgy currency circulating around Perú so we had to be pretty careful when accepting change from people, making sure we closely check each note. In another church on The Plaza de las Armes we paid our entrance fee and the bloke behind the counter tried passing a fake note onto us as part of our change! He knew damn well, too as he just laughed and glanced sideways to his frizzy-haired counterpart in the booth with him. This from the Catholic church, too!!

Seeing the holy cooked guinea pig earlier in the day must've struck an adventurous chord with me. That evening I decided to try the local delicacy for myself, thinking that it would be served jointed like a rabbit and dressed up a little. How wrong I was. It was basically the whole side of one of the little animals, complete with head and huge teeth, roasted and plated up with a couple of potatoes and stuffed chillis. It was gruesome. The skin was like a charred rubber chicken and I couldn't even cut it with the steak knife provided. I was told that the easiest way to eat it is to pick the thing up and tear chunks off with my teeth. In order to do this I had to rip off the head so I didn't skewer my cheek on it's spiteful rodent incisors. It tasted pretty awful too, it was cooked with 'special traditional herbs' that tasted more like week old grass clippings. I wish I hadn't been so adventurous and I think Rich did too as he couldn't finish his steak and had a decidely queasy grimmace adorning his face.

We went to Machu Picchu the next day by train which was a four hour journey from Cusco including the transfers either side of the three hour train ride. It was worth it though. The whole site is breathtaking; as you wander around these ancient ruins with huge, tree covered mountains surrounding the whole site you really get a good impression of how the town was at the height of it's occupation. The craftsmanship of the buildings is staggering and it is mind-boggling to imagine how they dragged the huge building blocks around high up on the side of a mountain. Each massive boulder was polished with crushed granite to give a perfect finish and each one in turn fits perfectly to the next one. The way they used the sun and the moon as solar calendars was also very ingenious.

We spent the day after Machu Picchu wandering around town trying to make use of out Boletos Turisticos or Tourist Tickets. These things cost about 23 quid each and last for ten days giving you access to various sites in and around Cusco. It would be quite good value if you could visit all the sites but they're so spaced out you'd have to be a pretty efficient sight-seer to manage them all while the ticket is still valid. Before we did anything though we trapsed around the numerous so-called 'English' establishments looking for a proper English breakfast. We were both sick to death of starting the day with jam and bread and hankered after something a little more substantial. Our search was proving pretty futile though because although these places made bold claims about serving a traditional English brekkie, most of them didn't open until 12:00. Useless. We eventually found our sausage and bacon salvation at a place called The Cross Keys, though we were the only punters in there and I wasn't convinced the two confused looking woman had any idea what constitutes a full English breakfast. They proved us wrong though and delivered the said eggs, bacon (sort of), sausage (singular), mushrooms, beans and toast. It was actually pretty good too and set us up until our evening meal. After breaking fast, we made it to Saqsaywamán (pronounced Sexy Woman) and Qenqo (pronounced Kenco) but much of the two sites was roped off so you couldn't actually see the most interesting bits. Very annoying.

That evening we went back to The Cross Keys for dinner. I opted for a chicken curry (no surprise there!) and it was just like one of those Vesta affairs from the 70s, complete with shrivelled sultanas. Rich chose a chilli con carne and when faced with a choice of chips, rice or tortilla chips he laughingly said to the waitress 'tortillas, as long it's not just a bag of Doritos from behind the bar'. Guess what? He got a bag of Doritos from behind the bar and a very soupy looking bowl of meat of dubious origin. The food in this town lets it down somewhat.

We were booked on a tour to the mysterious sounding Sacred Valley the next day. At last, we had the opportunity to use more of our Boletos Turisticos. The first stop was a photo opportunity with some very obliging alpacas and a trio of traditionally dressed locals. It looked like grandmother, mother and daughter taking the herd to market but made a nice picture. Second stop was Pisac, another set of Inca ruins set high up on a mountain. Clearly our guide couldn't be bothered to take us to the top to see the most interesting part, claiming that we wouldn't have time. Shame as there would have been great view. After a stop at the market, where the guide seemed to know most of the traders, we headed towards the middle of nowhere where we were unceremoniously dumped off the bus to obtain lunch. Luckily we'd taken our own as we know what these tours are like, but the others staggered out of the only restaurant in town at the thought of paying $25 and went without. One Argentinean bloke survived on a bit of old sugar cane he found in his bag.

After lunch we went to Ollantaytambo which is yet another set of Inca ruins. This one was very impressive though, especially the head carved into the side of a mountain where, on the summer solstice, the sun is in exactly the right position to light up his nose.

We thought we'd try another restaurant that evening, in fact one of the girls on our tour recommended it to us. We placed our order and after some considerable time Rich's food came. I'd ordered an Alpaca kebab but the bloke decided to bring me a trout kebab instead. After telling him it wasn't what I'd ordered he went downstairs to the kitchen, trout in hand, and I heard a bit of a to-do between him and the chef. Five minutes later he returned the skewered trout to me and assured me it was alpaca. I tasted it. Definitely trout. Down it went again, back to the kitchen and 20 minutes later I had an alpaca kebab. Rich, of course, had finished his food by this time so it was yet another disjointed meal - just like all those we had in Asia.

Now we're in Arequipa and have only one week left of our grand tour. We'll be home on May 1st and I can't wait. Some things I'm looking forward to are:

• Being able to flush used toilet paper.
• Pubs.
• Walking down a street full of finished buildings.
• Not having to say 'No thank you' every five minutes to hawkers.
• Not living out of a rucksack.
• Not worrying after every meal that you'll end up with a dodgy tummy.

The list goes on, but I'll spare you.