We arrived in Cusco following another gruelling night bus however our tour leader, Fredy, gave us one of his great tours around the city. It's a very attractive city with the usual main plaza and cathedral plus lots of cobbled streets going off in different directions to cute artisan shops and little restaurants. Unfortunately it is very touristy which sort of spoils it because where there are tourists there are inevitably locals to take advantage of it. There's also a McDonalds and Starbucks right on the main plaza which again is not so nice. We were just in time to see the soldiers doing a procession on the plaza along with some school children and apparently this is a regular feature every Sunday.

That evening (sunday) we went out for drinks. I only intended on staying for a little while, but it was such a good night out we didn't get back until 4.30am! We started off at a club where we got a free salsa lesson along with a free drink. The teacher kept randomly saying "show me mummy sexy move" which later became the catchphrase of the night! The club took a while to warm up so we wondered around to other bars getting free drinks vouchers wherever we went making it a cheap night. When we ended back up at the salsa place it was packed and they were playing a lot of good music. There was even dancing on the bar so it turned out to be a brilliant night out.

The first thing that we were keen to do as a group was white water rafting. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time despite being a little nervous. For obvious reasons we weren't able to take photos of us doing it so you'll just have to take my word for it that we did do it and it was extremely fun! The rapids were only grade 3 so nothing too extreme for our first time but I have to admit it was much harder work than I expected. I thought you just get to sit in a raft while it goes over rapids but it turns out you have to paddle furiously whilst holding on with your feet so you don't fall out and listening to the commands of the guy in charge telling you to leap to the other side of the raft so you don't capsize! Fortunately we got to wear wetsuits because the water was freezing cold but some brave people including Bryan did jump in from the rocks at one point. When the rafting was over we got given a tasty buffet lunch before playing the most boring game of paintball in the world. I was the only girl playing out of 6 of us so I was worried I would get plastered in pellets. However, we only had 15 pellets each and only one person got hit and it wasn't me!

Our visit to Cusco was divided into two parts: pre and post-inca trek. The two nights we spent there pre-inca trek was mainly dominated by preparations for the trek and unfortunately our travel money card decided not to work and all our other cards were blocked because we were trying to access our money from abroad. This put a spanner in the works for our preparations because I realised I didn't have enough warm clothes so needed a coat and gloves. Fortunately we had some good friends who loaned us the cash until we got it sorted out. I also attempted to get my iPod fixed which has been broken since Ecuador and I have failed on numerous attempts to get it fixed in other places. Unfortunately I also failed here despite Fredy's help so I have resigned myself to endless boring bus journeys without my iPod to get me through it. However, it did enable us to see a part of Cusco where tourists don't go (and apparently G Adventures don't recommend we go) which was really interesting. There is a large indoor market centre which sells everything from baby clothes to kettles and countless streets around the market with stalls all across the pavements and into the streets with local women selling fruit, clothes, underwear, batteries and anything you can imagine.

When we returned from the inca trail I was more exhausted than I've ever been in my life! Somehow, the others all managed another night out but considering we had been up since 4am and trekking, plus I had been ill I had to give it a miss. I was quite upset about this because if I ever deserved a night out it was post-inca trek but I really couldn't manage it. At least I managed to catch up on some much needed sleep.

On our last day we had a wander around town and randomly came across a crazy procession/carnival type thing which was in celebration of a catholic festival. I've come to realise they will celebrate anything in South America and this one was the biggest we've seen so far. There were hundreds of dancers dressed up doing routines and bands playing instruments to provide the music. It was really great to see but by far the funniest was the two little kids dressed up as bears who took a break from dancing to pee against the wall!