So it turns out that "direct bus" doesn't mean much around here. We ended up having to change busses twice - the second time in the pouring rain?? We eventually arrived in Cusco latebit in the evening on Tuesday 3 April. The bus terminal was a crazy, but we managed to get a taxi to the main plaza. By that stage we were both starving so we were quite stoked to find a not-too-expensive italian restaurant just off the plaza. After supper, we got another taxi to our hostel, had a quick shower and crashed into bed.

Wednesday we were up fairly early and walked down the narrow streets into into town. Our mission for that morning was to try and arrange our visit to Machu Pichu. After a LOT of walking around and chatting to numerous travel agents (they are everywhere - the whole city of Cusco exists for tourism) we managed to book a tour and arrange train tickets from Olyantaitambo to Aguas Calientes. After buying some things lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city. We saw a number of plazas and old churches, and shared an awesome freshly-made fruit shake thing at the local market :-) After all the walking around - we went back to the hostel to make some food and then had a well-deserved nap. That evening we walked back into town to buy our train tickets, only to be told that they were now all sold out! It was now after 9pm and we had no way to get to Machu Pichu the next day :-/ So after some frantic surching and walking around, we were eventually able to get some tickets from another company. That night we visited a cool and cheap Indian restaurant where they have an all-you-can-eat buffet. The food was amazing, and we were both stuffed when we left for the walk back to the hostel to pack.

Thursday morning we were up early and left with all our things for our day-tour of the Sacred Valley. The area around Cusco is really mountainous, and the Sacred Valley is basically a huge river valley that runs from Cusco all the way to Machu Pichu. Our first stop was Pisac where we got to try some traditional bread before heading off to the nearby ruins. After looking around for about 30 minutes, we headed to the lunch stop at Urubamba. We had packed some rolls for lunch and tried some of the Inca Cola (bright yellow) to drink, which is local to Peru and outsells Coca Cola. We drove on to Ollantaytambo where we would leave the tour to catch our train to Aguas Calientes. We dumped our bags and did a whirlwind tour of the ruins before catching a motor-taxi to the station. The train was quite clean if a little cramped, but left on time and soon we were on our way to see the much aticipated ruins of Machu Pichu! (see next post)

It was late in the afternoon on Saturday 7 April when we arrived back in Ollantaytambo from Aguas Calientes. We struggled to find a bus back to Cusco, but eventually found a taxi that we shared with two other Swiss travellers. The taxi driver took us on the "scenic route" so we were relieved when we finally arrived safely. We had a quick chinese dinner and then walked back to our hostel, where we found that we had the whole dorm to ourselves! We went straight to bed, but didn't sleep too well as there was this crazy couple screaming and fighting upstairs!?! Never a dull moment staying in hostels :-)

Sunday morning we slept in and just chilled out in the hostel until our taxi arrived at around lunchtime to take us to the bus terminal. Everything went really smoothly and soon we were on our way to Lima, the last city in our South American leg!