¡Hola!

Everyone must be getting very good at Spanish now after our updates.  We are currently in Cusco which is a fantastic town with a great main square, lots of fascinating little side streets, it´s own share of nearby Inca ruins as well as serving as the base for trips to Machu Picchu. We arrived at 6am Tuesday morning after our first night journey with Peru´s classiest bus network Cruz del Sur. They provided  good dinner, a movie in English, a toilet but no water to drink. You can´t have everything. We arrived pretty tired and thirsty but took a recommendation for a hostel at the bus station. An hour later we were set up in a really nice room with plenty of properly hot water and even cable TV (we are still suffering from our cable TV addiction and are looking out for a support group). The room is about 8.50 GBP so we thought we were entitled to a little luxury. We are beginning to think that more and more…Flashpackers, I think the term is ; ) After a refreshing nap we set about exploring Cusco and wandered up and down the streets and around the main square taking it quite easy. We had been told by our guidebook that an important part of any stay in Cusco is to sample the varied nightlife so we decided that as I had fully recovered from La Paz  we should give it a try. The guide surprised us in describing a number of  bars that actually existed so we had no trouble finding a few places for a few aperitifs. First a couple of English style pubs offering happy hour treats such as pisco and sprite, pisco and fanta (yum) which we managed to resist before trying to find the cheapest place to eat, always our primary concern. We duly found a menu for 6 Peruvian soles (1 GBP) and it was overpriced. I can safely say that is the worst spaghetti bolognaise I have ever had. Quite a feat considering how long we have been looking. We then tried to find some genuine Peruvian nightlife. A couple of salesmen tried to get us into a local pub offering Betty what I thought was more a Bolivian speciality to help us on our way. We managed to resist and went to an authentic pena (folk music club) to see a live band. The music was pretty good although it did seem to take the form of a juke box where everyone else knew all the tunes. I kept trying to think of the tune from the movie Desperado but as I didn´t know the name I wasn´t sure they´d know it and if I started humming it they might hand me a guitar and expect me to play.  That left us La Bamba which we kept to ourselves. We must brush up our South American music. We had picked the cheapest drinks we could find which was a jug of local Sangria which rather predictably turned out to be Pisco and red wine (with some finely chopped apple). This was too horrible to drink and even sipping it finished us off so we were back home tucked up in bed before midnight. Wild and crazy.  We took a trip out to Machu Picchu from Cusco (more later) and are now back in the same hostel treating ourselves to warm baths and are even thinking of having a stab at the Cusco nightlife again. Betty wants to start the evening with whole roast Guinea Pig so who knows where it will go from there…. Hope everyone is well. Keep in touch and enjoy the weekend. See you soon. Love Paul and Betty.