We were so glad to exit the rat's nest they call Lima that we completely underestimated the 21 hour bus journey to Cusco. In hindsight, the 1 hour flight would have been the smarter option… but the business class seats with TVs in front of us plus the comparatively dirt cheap bus tickets called our names. So even though I was feeling a little under the weather, we hopped on and added motion sickness and altitude sickness into the mix. The road basically inclined and winded left to right for the majority of the trip. I was wrecked by the time we arrived and Clare wasn't much better, but we carried on and found our hostel and got to know our new nemesis: lack of oxygen! Apparently there's 30% less oxygen up here and we soon found out that a task as simple as drying yourself off after a shower required a little sit down and some deep breaths. Walking up a flight of stairs with your backpack requires a lie down for 6 to 7 minutes. I know I'm not that fit, but this place made me feel like a 2 pack a day smoker!

That said, we found Cusco to be a delightful town. The main square was bright and abuzz with local activity and music. We quickly made a Canadian friend who happened to have an itinerary already planned out, so in our hazy state we just tagged along and jumped on whatever minibus he jumped on, because as usual we had done no research on this place and had no idea what there was to do. So we ended up in a cute town not too far away called Pisaq to see some Inca ruins atop a mountain. On the way up, we encountered a few people coming down the mountain who were equipped with walking poles, hats, hiking boots and those water bag things you put on your back with the mouth hose… we had none of those things. We could not catch our breath, had less than a half a litre of water and the sun was beating down, plus Clare was wearing thongs! So we waved goodbye to the Canadian who continued up and we went back down and caught a taxi up. Boy, was it worth it! The terraces built by the Incas for farming looked like giant steps carved into the side of the mountain and the ruined town at the very top was still in quite good condition, plus the views were spectacular!

I also went to the ruins at Ollantaytambo with the Canadian, but Clare couldn't manage to get out of bed that day due to altitude sickness. I too learnt what this was all about, the next day the same thing happened to me. Couldn't eat or sleep or barely move. But 24 hours later we were ok again.

The next week or so involved Clare doing her Spanish language course and just generally exploring and getting the hang of Cusco (and its altitude). But the time eventually came to leave this happy and peaceful existence behind to get packed into a full minibus at an ungodly hour of the morning for a long drive to a train station for a train ride to Machu Picchu station. Here we met our funny little Peruvian guide who took us on a long hike along some train tracks and through some jungle to a refreshing waterfall, accompanied the whole time by a couple of playful local dogs which at first were a little worrying (we didn't get our rabbies shots) but soon enough we couldn't have done without them! We somehow even managed to appear interested at the end of the day when our guide took us through an Inca museum about Machu Picchu. I was looking for toothpicks to keep my eyes open…

The next morning we hopped on one of the earlier buses up to the famous Machu Picchu ruins themselves. I know, I know: "You gotta walk the Inca Trail up to Machu Picchu", right?? WRONG. Not one part of me regrets taking the lazy option up. I'm nowhere near fit enough and walking around the ruins was exhausting enough without adding on a 42km 3day hike uphill at high altitude! We did even have free access to climb Wayna Picchu (that massive mountain you always see in the background of every photo of Machu Picchu) but that looked insane! We could see people who looked the size of ants crawling up the crazy steep zig-zagging stairs of the mountain. They could have that to themselves! So we learnt a thing or two from our guide about the ways of the mighty Inca people: that they built it so high so they could be closer to their Sun God, about the terrace farming and extra food they had to bring up from way down below and about the back-breaking building techniques. It was an impressive feat… shame they were still in the process of building it when they abandoned it because of those darned Spanish! But we totally enjoyed the breathtaking views and exploring this little town which was still in quite good condition. Just being this high up and actually seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World was something I'll remember forever. It was amazing, until the clock struck 10am and the tourist started flooding in in earnest and the sun really started beating down. I'm not sure about the Sun God, but the sun felt about 100 meters away. So we fought through the sea of oncoming tourist and hopped on a bus and made our zig-zagging decent.

Later that night we hopped on our train back to Cusco, but landslides on the tracks made this take three times longer than it should have. We spent as much time stopped or going backwards as we did forwards! But instead of pissing everyone on our carriage off, it spurred them onto cracking open a beer and having a train party. It was most odd.

Next stop on our tour of Peru was the town of Puno, which was a truly awful and depressing little town that is only really a tourist destination due to the fact it is the closet port town on Lake Titicaca to the Floating Islands of Uros. These amazing islands were actually woven from the abundantly available water reeds by the local indigenous population hundreds of years ago as a refuge from the aggressive land tribes (such as the Incas) and they still live on them today. Though the island locals today seem to live to produce touristy crap which they try to flog off to the hordes of tourists at over-inflated prices. But it was quite an experience: walking on the squishy, spongy hand-made islands and getting rowed from island to island in a traditional boat also woven from reeds. They even eat the reeds, we had a sample of one that they peeled like a banana… it tasted like water.

So with our Peruvian experience complete, we headed along the shores of the great Lake Titicaca for the Bolivian border to begin our next chapter.

Daz