After a sleepless nights travel coupled with travel sickness as the driver swung the coach around the mountain roads Sue and I arrived in Cusco looking to acclimatise to the altitude for a few days before heading over to Machu Picchu. We took a taxi from the bus station to the area of town where we had earmarked a hostel we would like to stay at. Once we got to the area we couldn't find the hostel we were looking for so we went for an alternative in the same part of town.Once we had settled in we walked down in to the town centre where we found somewhere for lunch. After lunch we wandered around the city centre to get our bearings before heading back uphill to our hostel in the mid afternoon. We decided to take a nap to catch up on some of the sleep we missed on the previous night's bus journey. After our nap we woke up to find that hot water and tea bags had been placed in to our room which was rather bizarre. We got ourselves sorted and headed out to find somewhere for dinner. We stayed in our area of the city which was a collection of narrow cobbled streets and steps. Down one of the streets we found a restaurant which was advertising a tourists set price menu so we decided that would be a good option. After dinner we went to a bar to have a quick drink but left rather promptly after seeing the prices. Back in our room we were about to settle down for the night when we got a knock at our door. The manager of the hostel had noticed I was travelling with a Ukulele and wanted to invite us up to his room so we could play music together. This is something I have never done before and was not particularly comfortable with doing but I thought it was best to accept his offer. Thankfully he was more interested in playing his music to Sue and I who sat on his sofa as a rather bemused audience. Things got much weirder when we started telling us about how he wrote one of his songs called 'Flor'. The long and short of it was he was in the middle of the Andes having taken LSD when we became inspired by the flowers and the stars and wrote this simply awful song about his then girlfriend. After hearing him play the keyboard, guitar and whistles he invited us to come to watch him in the bar that night supporting a band on his harmonica. He also invited me along to play but we politely declined both offers and went to bed with 'Flor' still ringing in our ears. The next morning we decided to give our day some more structure by walking around the religious buildings of Cusco, we were lucky that our hostel was at the Plaza San Blas where one of Cusco most beautiful churches sits. After this we walked down to the main square where we purchased tickets to Iglesia de Jesus Maria, EL Triunfo and Cusco Cathedral. Jesus Maria and Triunfo are attached one on either side of the Cathedral, we were able to enter through one building and walk through all three. Some of the works of art, particularly around the altars were out of this world but also hard to accept that so many riches can exist inside a building where outside people are begging for money. After the cathedral we wandered around the city some more including a long walk down to the train station to try and book our ticket to Aguas Caliente (Machu Picchu). Typically, after walking the whole way down we discovered that the train station was shut and not due to open until the following day. We walked back up through town to our hostel where we got ourselves ready to head out for dinner. We walked down the Plaza de Armas which is the main square in Cusco, just off of the square we found another restaurant offering a tourist set menu and had almost a carbon copy of the meal we had the night before. After dinner we went back to our hostel to pack our bags for the following days travel to Aguas Caliente. It is possible to get the train to Aguas Caliente from Cusco or from Ollantaytambo, we aimed to leave from Ollantaytambo as the train is much cheaper and it is possible to stop of on the way to Ollantaytambo to see some other sights. The next morning we were going to have to go back to the train station in Cusco to book our Ollantaytambo to Aguas Caliente tickets before catching two buses to Ollantaytambo, leaving enough time to get to Ollantaytambo before our train left. Due to these restrictions we had to be up early the next morning to book our ticket before we caught the first bus. We planned to leave our hostel at around 8am although this didn't prove to be so easy as Mr. LSD turned in to a bit of a psycho. When we first booked in we asked the room rate and were told it was $20US which was about the average we had paid throughout Peru. When we went to check out he decided it was $20US per person even though I had asked when we checked in if the $20 was the price for the room. First I had him shouting down his cleaner's mobile phone at me before he came downstairs to continue his tirade, I tried to reason with him and meet him half way but that was not an option. His body language suggested he would have been more than happy to hit me to get the money out of me and I felt that an extra $40 was a great price to keep my nose straight. We left their feeling very bitter and we were now also behind time due to the payment fiasco. We got in the first cab we could find and headed down to the train station to book our tickets, once at the station we found ourselves in a fairly large queue but thankfully it moved quickly. With tickets in hand we headed to the bus stop to catch the bus to Moray where we were stopping on route to Ollantaytambo. We arrived in Moray much later than we expected to we only had about 20 minutes to enjoy the Incan amphitheatre. It was a spectacular place to visit and it would have been great to have more time, particularly as there were very few other people around so we could have spent a lot of time wandering around the site. After Moray we headed back out on to the main road where we had to catch another bus to Urubamba where we changed before catching a minibus shuttle to Ollantaytambo. We arrived in Ollantaytambo with about 45 minutes to spare before our train left. We boarded the 'backpacker class' carriage which was almost full. On route we were treated to spectacular views of the sacred valley before arriving in Aguas Caliente in mid afternoon. I'll update on that soon.

John