Last night was awesome. Today suuuuuuuuuucked. Lauren and I went out last night to a hostel called the Wild Rover, where some of our new friends were staying. The Wild Rover is a notorious party hostel and we hadn't really gone drinking since we arrived, so we decided to cut loose. We met up with our Irish mates and headed to the bar at the Wild Rover. I won a free beer on a bet with one of the guys because I was able to read the map correctly and get us to the hostel, not a super easy thing to do when the city makes the addresses and street signs as inconspicuous as possible. I will admit it was kind of a cheap win because he was using a slightly more misleading map, but he was a good sport about it and wouldn't let me repay the kindness. "A gift from the Irish" is what he called my free beer, I'll take it. I was just stoked that my sense of direction is seemingly improving! We got to the hostel and found the tiny bar where everyone was crammed around small tables. You'd think with a reputation as a party hostel that they would have a bit more room in the bar, but maybe they just want everyone to be extra cozy. We also found upon arrival that it was an Irish themed bar, which is awesome when you're partying with 5 Irishmen.
We had a few beers, the Irish boys drinking 2 for every 1 I had. We found some more people from our bus and chatted a bit, and I had quite a nice conversation with a fellow from England about politics and the state of global social affairs. You know, the usual bar talk. Then the German girl we met in Paracas a week ago randomly showed up. Apparently she had been talking to one of the Irish guys via Facebook (they hit it off at the first dinner we all went to), and so she met up with him in Arequipa where we were. It was awesome to see her again and everyone was having a grand ole time. Then the real good times began. One of the bartenders hopped on the bar and invited people to come up and dance. If you know me at all you know I can never turn down an opportunity to dance on something other than the floor, so obviously I was up there in a heartbeat. It was fun, as dancing on the bar always is, and one of the Irish guys was so inspired he took his shirt off and joined the craziness. Now that's a party. Soon after that the bartender started coming around the bar offering free shots of this mysterious green alcohol to everyone (no, not absinthe, I wish). I still have no idea what is was, as it tasted suspiciously like mouthwash. Let's go ahead and call that free shot mistake número uno. So I'm about 3 giant Cusqueñas (one of Peru's national beers) and 1 shot of mouthwash liquor deep at this point, and that's about when they started playing Irish music. If you've never rocked out to 'Shipping Out To Boston' by the Dropkick Murphys with a group of Irish guys then you are seriously missing out. That song was followed by 3 more of the most popular Irish songs in America (and by 'most popular' I mean probably the only Irish songs any American knows), and we weren't dancing so much as jumping up and down and screaming our heads off. It was quite fun. After dancing for a bit and finishing off other people's beers, I was feeling pretty great. At some point the bar in the hostel closed so we followed one of the bartenders to an after party club down the street called Circus. He offered us all a free shot of something; it was tastier than the mouthwash but probably not a good idea after all the beer. So we will call that shot mistake número dos. At this point it's almost 3am and people from our group are starting to head back to their respective hostels. I don't blame them, we had to be up at 5:30 to catch the bus to Cusco. I, however, was not ready to leave and probably could've danced until 6am given the chance. I finally decided there was no one left to dance with so we headed back to our hostel as well to get a whopping 2 hours of sleep, thinking all along that it would be easy to sleep on the 10-12 hour bus ride we faced. Yeah, mistake número tres.
I awoke this morning feeling slightly drunk still and somehow managed to gather all my stuff together and get down to the lobby to await the bus. Everyone was feeling pretty alright despite partying all night and I counted myself amongst those feeling OK. That lasted a whole hour. When we got on the bus I was feeling hyper and talkative and wanted someone to play with, a ridiculous notion given that everyone else was trying to sleep. The good news was that most of us got 2 seats to ourselves. The bad news was that I was at the very back of the bus, which I didn't know would be a problem until a little later. We stopped at a little market 20 minutes into the ride to grab something for breakfast, and when I disembarked from the bus one of the guys in the group was sitting outside puking up water, poor Pete. I should have recognized the foreshadowing. I got some bread and a little something to munch on, all the while thinking I was fine. It wasn't until I was back on the bus trying to eat my bread that I realized it didn't look appealing at all and I in fact felt like crap. Once that feeling set in I started chugging water in an effort to minimize the impending hangover. I went through 2.5 liters of water in an hour or 2, to no avail. By the time we were a couple hours into the bus ride I had a splitting headache and was starting to feel the worst I think I've ever felt in my life. I was feeling so terrible that sleep just wasn't an option. I tried to make myself comfortable in my double seat but the bus was bumping up and down like crazy and we soon hit the curvy mountain roads. Like I mentioned earlier, the back of the bus was probably not the best place to be. On the bright side, once I started heaving my guts out I had easy access to the tiny disgusting bus bathroom. At some point we stopped at this really pretty little lake for some fresh air, which was nice, but then it was right back on the bus to enjoy another 6 or 7 hours of hell. To add to the misery, our wonderful tour guide decided that Trainspotting would be a good movie to play for us. I could've killed him. If you've never seen it, don't watch it. It's awful. Some people claim it's a classic and that it has a good message about people and blah blah blah, but it is an absolutely disgusting movie. After that we stopped for lunch, which I tried to eat but couldn't because I wasn't able to keep anything down at this point. Pete was still feeling even worse than I was, difficult as that is to believe, because I at least managed a few bites of rice at lunch while he could manage nothing more than sitting with his forehead on the table. Pete and I, kindred spirits. We were soon back on the bus, where I was able to curl into a tiny, pitiful little ball and get an hour or so of sleep. I awoke to the feeling of needing to use my trusty stash of plastic bags, which I was using instead of kneeling in front of the nasty toilet every hour.
We watched a couple more movies on the journey after lunch, and all the while I was counting the seconds until we arrived in Cusco and I could go to sleep in my bed. We finally got here around 7pm and the Peru Hop people got taxis to take us all to our respective hostels. It would be too simple of an end to this story if the taxi was to actually take us to the correct place, but he at least had the right street. He dropped us off and pointed to a door of what turned out to be a dentist office or something, indicating that was our hostel. It was fairly clear that was not where we were meant to stay, so I decided to ask the lady at the Internet cafe across the way if she knew where our hostel was. We didn't get far because she kept asking me what direction we needed to go, which confused me because if I knew that I wouldn't exactly be asking for directions, would I? Perhaps my rusty Spanish was to blame. Fortunately an English speaking fellow overheard and kindly looked up the address and directions for us, and luckily the hostel was just down the street. Finding the sign was easy, finding the actual hostel was not. It was in the middle of this strange alley where there were no real building numbers anywhere, though we were looking for number 4. After 5 minutes or so of walking back and forth, we asked a local woman where this place was and she pointed to the door we happened to be standing right next to. And yes, there it was, a faded number 4 written in sharpie on the doorbell. How silly of us to have missed that. So we finally arrived at our hostel safe and sound and feeling so ready for bed, off to sleep I go. The moral of this story is that drinking, high altitude and bumpy bus rides most definitely do not mix. Now that we are in Cusco at a lovely 3,400 meters (just over 11,000 feet) I think I will lay off the booze for awhile and let myself acclimatize. Goodnight all.