We arrived in Cuzco and there was a guy with our names on a white board waiting for us, as we'd arranged accommodation before we'd left Lima. We all jumped into a taxi as the guy was gonna give us "special price". The hotel turned out to be alright and we wanted to do some more white water rafting while we were in Cuzco so we asked him how much he charged as he claimed he could sort out most things, thinking his price was a bit extreme we told him we'd meet him later on and tell him if we wanted to do it. We were back up at altitude and Brids head was already pounding. We had a wander around the town. Cuzco is probably the nicest town we have been in so far, everything looks clean and there are not too many minky South Americans lying about begging on every corner. Checked out the company the guy told us about for the rafting and it turned out he was gonna charge us more than double so our arranged time for meeting was quickly forgotten.

We booked some quad biking for the next day, when we tried to get a big discount for booking with 4 people the guy was almost crying claiming he couldn't do it for any cheaper, thinking we got a good deal we headed off and got some food, then headed back to the hostel for a while as we were all pretty tired.

Up early for our quad biking today, we walked up to the office to get picked up and taken out to the track, all the bikes we were getting were semi-automatic but Brid was still a little scared about using it. Somehow I managed to get the one with the biggest engine, which was good fun. There was another guy on the trip, a Canadian guy called Thomas and after speaking to him for a bit we discovered he'd payed much less than us and he didn't even ask for a discount, cheeky bug*ers!! Most of the biking was on dirt roads which went up far above Cuzco city. Brid and Louise stalled a few times but they soon got the hang of it. The first place we stopped to get some photos also had a small track and a wee jump we could go over. We all had a couple of goes on the jump before we were told we had to move on, Louise's bike started to behave a bit weird and wouldn't start, petrol was leaking out the bottom as well which didn't look good, after the 2 guides messed about with it for a while we got on our way again along more dirt roads.We came to another bit we could do some jumps and we managed to get some photo's and video's of us jumping this time. We headed off to our final part and the guides kept sitting on Ray's bike as I reckon he thought we were messing around to much, we weren't doing anything to bad, just skidding around. After the Quad biking we stopped off at a small pool to clean up. Headed back to the hostel and headed to a cafe called Jacks that everyone raves about here, nothing is that special about it apart from the fact you get food that the exact same as at home, after 2 months of eating crappy south American food we were dying for some beans. I had a fry which was pretty good.After mucho shopping the made it to the Irish pub in town, which is in the Guinness book of records as the highest Irish pub in the world. The pub had the worst happy hour times ever, 10:00 till 10:30, not even a bloody hour, whats the point. the drink at altitude was hitting everybody and the drink was flowing

Next day Brid was sick from the altitude, may have been helped a bit from the drink, Ray and I had a wander around town until Brid came and met us later on and we headed back to Jacks so Brid could get some much needed toast. Even though she was still ill she somehow managed to summon the power to go shopping for a couple of hrs, we ended up buying a painting which would later be sent home with Ray and Louise. Early to bed as Brid was still feeling a little poorly.

Today we're supposed to meet the rest of our group who met in Lima last night for the Inca Trail. We packed up our stuff and luckily the hotel was only up the road a wee bit, arrived in reception and sat and waiting for the rest of the folk to turn up, and the GAP rep. The meeting was a bit pointless as they only arranged another meeting at 8pm that night, and told us we had to pay even more for our sleeping bags, sleeping mat and walking sticks. After paying a heap for the actual tour we didn't think we'd have to pay all the extras. The group seemed like a good laugh expect some sour faced Irish girl who'd already decided that she didn't want to do the trail, good idea booking it then, twat. Another wander around town and Ray and I decided to head off to the pub as there might have been some football on, what was supposed to be a 2hr pub visit turned into an all day binge, Brid and Louise popped in to the pub at random times to check up on us and told us to make the briefing or we'd be dead. We agreed and kept drinking, not letting on the girls that Ray had a secret plan to propose to Louise and he wanted to go out and buy a ring, knowing the only time he could manage it was when they were at the meeting, we still have to pay some money for the tour and we could hear Brid and Louise's screams when they realized we weren't coming to the meeting, They stormed up the road to find us both totally hammered and not having a clue what was going on, but judging by the looks on their faces we were not in the good books. After the girls left we finished our drinks and headed off back to the hotel to meet the girls, on the way we decided to try and buy some champagne and wine glasses to as Ray wanted to propose at Machu Pichu, being drunk and trying to find these things when you don't speak Spanish is not a good idea, we wandered the streets for ages trying to find someone to sell us glasses, eventually we found a restaurant willing to sell us 2, I kept the glasses in my room so Louise wouldn't see them. The girls weren't there but we decided it would be a good idea to head back to the rooms and wait for them.

Meeting the group in the morning to start our Inca trail.