The journey was meant to be a 10 hour over night bus journey from Arequipa to Cuzco, however some farmers had other ideas! The bus journey started at about 9 pm, we had only been going a few hours until I found out my reclining seat did n´t recline (especially annoying as we had paid extra for good seats). At about 2 in the morning the bus stopped, and it seemed to stay stationary for a long time and we could not work out what was going on until sunlight hit at about 6 in the morning. Stepping out of the bus you could see a number of other buses sat along the road, and then a large gathering of people about 200 yrds away. On closer inspection, I found a huge mound of mud and 300 angry farmers!

We spoke to a lady that spoke English and Spanish and we found out there was a farmers strike and the blockade would last days! ahhhhh. So after long deliberation a large group of us took our bus back the way we came to the nearest town with a connection to Cuzco, an hour and a half away. Unfortunately, when we got there we found out it is going to take 12hrs to get to Cuzco and the bus was not going to leave for another 3hrs and it was going to cost us another 15 pound each.

So, begrudgingly we paid the extra money and an hour later than they said, we were all on our way! The bus was quite a lot worse than the one we were previously on, and we felt like sardines most of the way. The journey ended up taking 14hrs and we arrived in Cuzco at 2:30 in the morning, a total of 29 hrs after we started our journey!

I can honestly say that was the worst journey of my life!