Peru - Lima to Cusco

We arrived late in the evening in Lima, tired after travelling for a whole day. We were very excited to be in a new country. Lima was good, we spent most of our time eating because the city isn't very exciting, and there's not too much to do in the way of tourism and it is quite run down in parts. We stayed in a nice area of town called Miraflores, it was nice by Lima's standards and we wanted to stay somewhere safe cos Lima can be dangerous - we actually walked around quite a bit though during day and night and didn´t have any problems. We went down to the coast which was cool and discovered a great place to eat (Cafe Cafe) and ordered our first ceviche – this is a south american dish which consists of raw sea food marinated in lime. It's absolutely amazing.

We also ordered pisco sours – pisco is a Peruvian spirit and pisco sours are officially my new favourite cocktail, quite like margueritas. After a couple of those (happy ´hour´ lasts all day here) we bounced into a taxi and headed for the centre of town to the San Francisco monastry and the catacombs. The catacombs were cool, they had arranged all the bones and skulls into patterns, a little creepy actually, but worth seeing. We then went for a coffee which turned out to be the worst coffee ever (in many places here they give you a pot of concentrated 'coffee juice' which you add to water – just tastes of sweet hot water.

We then went to the famous statue of Mother of South America – apparently when the statue was commissioned by the Spanish they wanted a ring of flames over her head (llamas) in Spanish, however the Peruvian sculptor interpreted it incorrectly and she was given a llama on her head instead. Quite funny. The people are nice in Peru, they all look different from each other which is interesting - some look Indian, others Asian and others more like the Spanish - it´s a real mix.
In the evening, because the ceviche was so good the first time round we decided to eat it again and ended up in one of the best fish restaurants we've ever been to (Al fresco) – as you can probably tell, Lima was a bit of a drain on the backpacker budget. Lima was nice but in the end just a stopover for our next destination – Cusco.

After an emergency landing and a second stab at flying to Cusco - 30 mins into the journey we saw white snow-capped mountains ahead of us and about 10 minutes later we decended into Cusco, a mountain city about 3,500 metres high. Cusco literally takes your breath away... we have had to spend two days here to acclimatise to the altitude which is seriously draining, walking up a small hill can leave you gasping for breath and as Cusco is built up the sides of a valley there are quite a few hills to climb! The city is beautiful, with huge churches, little craft shops everywhere, people with llamas on the streets (baby llamas are soooo cute, just like lambs) and narrow cobbled streets. Cusco is the main 'gateway' to Machu Picchu so there are a lot of tourists here (American, French, German and English mainly) and about the same amount of people trying to sell you stuff on the streets. It gets very annoying when you have to say 'no gracias' to the persistant offers of a massage, tour, restaurant or photo with a llama.
The food here is really good, very international as there are so many tourists, but you can eat almost anything including certain Peruvian specialities such as 'cuy' which is guinea pig and alpaca if you want, and of course you can drink pisco nearly everywhere.

Since we've been here we've been organising ourselves for our trek to Machu Picchu, we've been to the local market to buy waterproofs and fleeces, visited local crafts stalls for hats and gloves and we've been resting to acclimatise to the altitude. Last night we ended up in a rock bar where the most awesome band ever were playing, it was such fun, they were playing hits from the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Beetles etc – was really cool. Al made friends with the lead guitarist and helped him mend his guitar so we're 'in there' with the cool kids in Cusco. Unfortunately our night out did nothing to help us acclimatise and this morning was a bit of a struggle.

I'm going to hand over to Al now who is writing on our trek over the next few days. I'm sure it'll epic! Hasta Luego.


Message from Al:

Dearest reader,our bags are packed, our alarm is set for 4:15 am and we are ready to engage in our next adventure into the unknown. We'll fall off the radar for the next 5 days as our journey takes us to altitudes of 4,500 meters, freezing temperatures of minus ten degrees and mosquito infested jungles. Until then, enjoy your warm beds, clean bathrooms and nice food and please spare a thought for us as we sleep amongst tarantulas, pee next to snakes and are forced to eat donkey sausages or grilled guinea pig dumplings. May the comforts of the first world be with you.