So, as promised, here comes Cusco´s blog. Unfortuntely I haven´t been doing anything particularly adventurous or exciting as of yet, as I have, most surprisingly, been feeling somewhat under the weather. I promptly got a cold on my arrival here (or swine flu, who knows), which isn´t helped by the fact that it is freezing at night-time, or by the altitude. The combination of these factors understandably gives me some difficulty in breathing. Other than that, though, the altitude hasn´t really affected me. I mean, I wheeze and feel my chest constricting when I walk up a hill (of which there are numerous examples in Cusco), but I haven´t had headaches or weird dreams. I´m kind of wallowing in the illness by lazing around reading etc to preserve my energy for my Inca trek, which is tomorrow, hurrah! I´m sure I´ll be fine when I get on it. If I´d spent the last few days charging around then maybe it would be a different story.

The bus journey here was not as nice as some I´ve been on. There were no snacks, and the toilet didn´t seem to work, providing nothing more useful than an appalling smell for 11 hours. We did have some entertainment in the form of travelling salesmen, a concept I have never seen anywhere else but is probably quite a good idea - where else are you going to get such a captive audience? So we had a man selling kids´ text books, which did a roaring trade, I think two thirds of the bus bought some, followed by a man selling some kind of herbal or vegetable supplement. We stopped for about an hour in the middle of the mountains, and when we finally drove on again (in a convoy of about 20 buses who had all set off at different times), the cause for the hold up was revealed. A lorry had ploughed into the mountain face on the wrong side of the road (the other side was a sheer drop) and overturned, it was a really bad accident. Very sobering. The driver spent the rest of the journey trying to make up the lost time, which given the accident we´d just seen, didn´t put me entirely at ease.

When I got to Cusco, though, the situation improved. I´m staying at Home Sweet Home again, which is about a 600 metre climb from the Plaza De Armas. The first time I walked up there with my rucksack I thought I was going to die. When I got to the top, however, I forgot the fact I couldn´t breathe as the view was so stunning. I´ve seen so many places over the past six months I´m getting a little jaded at times, but had it not been for the fact I already didn´t have enough oxygen in my lungs, the view would have taken my breath away. Cusco´s town centre is set in a valley, and at night-time the Plaza De Armas and all the churches and other buildings are lit up. There are several hills going up away from the centre (of which I was on one), and you can see the lights stretching away. When the Incas built Cusco, they designed it to be in the shape of a puma. I read this in my guidebook before I arrived and scoffed, imagining it to look as much like a puma as boat mountain looked like a boat in Cambodia. But it really does look like a puma, it´s amazing really. They built it like that hundreds of years ago and it still looks the way they designed it, even after the Spanish knocked down all the important Inca buildings and put up their own. Admittedly the first night I thought the head was at one end and the next night realised it was at the other, but it´s still impressive.

So other than admiring the view, and going for little walks around the city, I haven´t been doing much. I did prove that you don´t have to experiment with local cuisine to have culinary excitement, during an incident involving a chillie which looked like a red pepper and a hob which shot out fire like a flame thrower. My nostrils, hands and tongue burned for 24 hours. I also got another foreign haircut. Sadly, the communication was not as successful as on my last attempt in Thailand, because after industriously growing out my fringe for eight months, from a single snip, it is well and truly back. Ah well. I have also been, after a fashion, preparing for my trek. I´ve done a couple of treks since I´ve been away but I think this will be the most difficult (and hopefully rewarding). I was slightly disturbed to read one of the "thank you" notes pinned up in the office of the company I´ve booked with, Llama Path, which read "thank you so much for encouraging me to seek medical help, I was hospitalised for a week with endema related to high altitude, but I will be forever grateful to the porters who carried me from the second day". They should really think about the effect these little tales will have on people yet to do the trek. Still, at least I know I can be carried if need be. I already have half a porter to carry my heavy stuff, like sleeping bag and mattress, and my five layers of clothing I know I will need at night.

Other than that, I´ve been trying to plan my next move. After my trek I only have three weeks left! I´m flying out of Rio in Brazil. The only thing I have left that I would like to do is go to the Amazon jungle, and you can cross the border in the jungle and cross by boat (in fact it´s the only way). After making my way across land for the entirety of my trip (bar between continents), I have been trying to avoid having to fly. But after writing down the four bus journeys and at least two boat journeys I´d need to take I calculated I´d arrive in Iquitos (northern Peru) around the time I need to be in Rio (some couple of thousand miles away), so I´m going to get a bus to Lima and then a flight to Iquitos, cutting out about two weeks of travelling time. I´m quite disappointed as it sounded a very cool final adventure, but I should still be able to get my boat across the border.

So I´d better go and make final preparations for my trek, which I will update on on my return!

P.S. I wrote this four days ago, before my Inca trek, but the website was down so I couldn´t post it :( I´m now in Augus Calientes recovering. I get back to Cusco about 11pm tonight and then I fly to Iquitos in the morning, from where I can hopefully get a boat. I´ll write about my Inca trek soon, but it was really good and aside from very sore legs and being tired from getting up at 3.30am I´m happy.

Adios!