Hola from Cuzco... the city that steals your groove...

I arrive from the night bus bright and early.. Like 5:30am, get my bag and share a cab with a couple from Austria who I had met previously in Nazca... They drop me off first and I check in the hostel... they give me the bed straight away even though it was like 6am at this stage and there is no way that check in is that early.. This won brownie points for me.. Breakfast was at 7:30 so I thought I would stay awake, check in on the net and await breakfast.. Good theory by the time breakfast rolled around I was that tired that afterwards I literally went to bed and slept until midday... welcome to Cuzco I thought.

Once I finally awoke from my slumber I had a shower and got myself ready and went to explore... Cuzco isn't that big.. Well the sightseeing parts anyway.. I wander around the main squares looking at shops and trying to find a hiking shop to get some hiking pants but being a Sunday I didn't have much luck... after a few hours wandering around looking and also stopping off at a cafe for lunch I wandered back to the hostel where I met Matt who is a local guy that works at the hostel.. He asked what I was up to and I said I was in search of hiking pants but having no luck, he told me about this market place that sell everything that he was going to in a few mins if I want to tag along.. So I did..

This market was crazy.. it's like the Caribbean or dandenong markets but they sell everything from TV's to Nike shoes we wandered around there for a bit and didn't find any hiking pants but sis find some tracksuit pants which I had been after for those long days on the bus..

We went back to the hostel where I watched a movie in the common room and waited for dinner... Dinner was a BBQ... I was pretty excited for it.. I knew it wasn't going to be as good as the BBQ'S back home but a BBQ is still a BBQ.. 7:30 rolled around and it was time to eat.. I met a couple of Canadian girls, a French girl and a couple of Danish guys I think they were... the Danish guys had just finished the Inca trail so I was quizzing them all about it.. They did a good job of scaring me that's for sure but in the end they said that it was amazing and the trekking to get their is hard but bearable.. They too had done very little to no preparation...

After dinner we played flip cup a little but as I am not a beer skuller I only lasted a couple of rounds before bowing out gracefully... at about midnight after chatting to the Canadian girls for awhile I called it a night...

The next day I got up and got ready, had breakfast and met the Canadian girls.. We walked down to the square together where I went to Bamba to find out about the Inca trail for the next day and they went elsewhere to book the train to Machu Picchu.. We were meant to meet back up but we both ran late and I had a million things to do so it never really happened..

At Bamba they told me all about the hike.. 3 full days than 2 hours on the last day... 44km.. Climb to an altitude of 4215m high which is dead woman's pass.. See about 5 Inca sites along the way and hike for around 28 hours if not less depending on how quick you were... so they were the stats...

After my pep talk I went and found hiking pants, and the essentials for the trek... Gatorade, water, band aids, altitude sickness tablets, cocoa leaves, cocoa lollies and a bandage in case the trusty knee plays up again..

I went back to the hostel, watched a movie on the couch for a couple of hours and then packed... In the morning I walked past a guy and said hi to him.. All day I was trying to work out why he looked so familiar... that night after I finished packing I went to the bar for one night cap as it was still really early I needed some help trying to sleep. He was in the bar.. I had a beer with an Aussie girl I had met the night before she is also from Melbourne and I asked her if she knew where he was from.. No luck anyway a little later he came to get a drink and she asked him where he was from Tassie...he then said he knew me from somewhere and after a few minutes we realised.. Well he realised we met in London at the Collingwood Hawthorn replay and then again at church on Sunday... SMALL WORLD.. I remember chatting to him about sth America but I didn't think any of our dates match up but anyway there he was.. Pretty crazy how big the world is but yet how small it can feel.. I had another 2 beers with Adam chatting away and then I called it a night.. As I had to be up in 5 hours... so as per usual the night cap didn't really work.. Ah well..

I woke up at 4am... got myself ready for the big trek and went down to wait for the transfer and to call mum and dad you know just in case... as I was about to leave the hostel Adam and a group of people rolled in... Yep glad I went to bed when I did.. Big night by the looks of it..

My transfer arrived and I was off... the next four days will consist of mental and physical challenges all to see the spectacular (well at least I hope it is) Machu Picchu