So on Friday, we upped sticks and left Bolivia and headed for Cusco in Peru. We got on the bus from Copacabana and were at the Bolivian / Peruvian border within 20 minutes. After a relatively easy border crossing we were in Peru. Our first act was to buy Sublime chocolate bars as we had nothing for breakfast. You can't get these in the UK but think of a solid slab of chocolate with a few nuts in. Bellissimo!! We continued the bus ride to Puno and it was pretty comfortable given that the bus was less than half full and was relatively new. We got to Puno in 3 hours and were quickly ushered into the bus station to catch our connecting bus to Cusco. This bus was to be very different to the first bus. It was about 20 years old, very worn and absolutely rammed. The journey to Cusco from Puno wasn't the best and seemed to be one of the longest journeys even though it was 'only' 8 hours. One of the more interesting aspects was that they played the film 'The Orphanage' in the middle of the day. We are sure that this is a horror film and there were kids on the bus. Anyway, there were a couple more interesting occurrences during the journey. About 5 hours in, we were stopped at a checkpoint and several police boarded the bus and proceeded to check everyone and all the bags on board. They rounded up several 'dodgy' looking people and asked them to leave the bus. What they did to them we and be sure but they were off the bus for about 10 minutes. Luckily we were both 'normal' looking!!! The other interesting event happened about 6 hours in when we stopped in a little town. Several people got off for food / toilet and got back on. However, they don't check that everyone is back on before they leave and a Japanese girl had still not got back on and her friend was frantically trying to stop the bus. Luckily, the locals on the bus has also realised that she was not on and they managed to stop the bus. One of them even ran back to the station to get her. Well done to the locals!!!

We arrived in Cusco at about 8pm on Friday night. After getting our bags off the bus, we went to get a taxi. Immediately a man shouted taxi and proceeded to put our bags in his car before we agreed a price. We knew we were going close to the main square, Plaza de Armas, and the board in the station said this should be about 5 soles. We wanted to know the price and when the driver said 15 soles we said no and quickly got our bags out of the car. We then managed to get a taxi for 8 soles. It's hard not to feel that people are constantly trying to rip you off at times!!! Once at our hostel, we quickly found a cash machine, a bakery and went back to the hostel with our food. Our room has cable TV so we even managed to watch Dumb & Dumber in English!!

Saturday morning was an early start and I was over the moon when I found that I could watch the match on the cable tv in the room!! So I was sat there for a 7.45am kick off trying to keep the noise down while Beth slept. This didn't last long and Beth was up within about 5 minutes of kick off. Anyway, what a match and Beth will testify to me jumping around the room in absolute silence as the goals went in!! After the match we had a good walk around the city trying to find another hostel to move into for the week ahead. After much deliberation, we have booked into the Dragonfly hostel from Monday onwards which is just around the corner from where we currently are. Our first impressions of Cusco is that it is far more touristy than anywhere else we have been in South America. However, it is also beautiful with all of the churches, old buildings and small streets. Saturday afternoon was spent in the hostel doing administration. Yes that is administration!!! We checked how we were doing against our budget and the news was so good that we managed to book return flights from Melbourne to Sydney for when we are in Australia. We then went out for tea in the pouring rain where I had a decent burger and Beth had barbecue chicken. The restaurant did manage to mess up Beth's order so at first she ended up with a chicken salad. They did let us have this on the house but I was amused as it looked as though Beth had ordered two courses while I just had the one!!!

So it's now Sunday and again the weather hasn't been great. We have dodged the thunderstorms to have another visit to the square and we have also looked around a handicrafts market and San Pedro market which looks as though it sells anything you could ever want. We then grabbed some dinner from a supermarket which was a rice dish with chicken, noodles, egg and some veg. It was delicious for about £1.50. Someone has a cold again so the rest of the day isn't going to be fantastically exciting but we move hostels tomorrow and will hopefully find the company we are doing the Inca Trail with to get some more information before we start this next Sunday