What to do? After no serious consideration and some reference to people getting kidnapped from taxis in Lima, Carly and I decided the only sensible thing to do would be to stay up all night at the airport. And so it began.
It started off alright. We chatted to a thai-boxing instructor who was on his way to meet his financee in London. He left us a bottle of pisco and paid for our hot chocolates. So far, so good. But it was only midnight. There were hours of aimless wandering left to go. Reading a pamphlet on the links between architecture and fashion became impossible. The fact that I had worn my glasses for two hours without noticing that I was missing the lense in the right eye became hilarious all over again. Macdonalds started to exert an impossible-to-deny allure over Carly. The knitwear displayed in the stores started to look strange. Even the 24 hours massuese ladies gave up and went to sleep. We went to the internet thing and wrote sometimes unsendable emails to friends around the world.
And then we started playing "You must..." This game started after we'd already photographed me pushing the luggage trolley over a prone Carly and involved either of us pointing at various items of Forbidden Knitwear and saying "you must put that on" and then taking a photo. I ended up looking like Michael Moore craddling a stuffed green iguana.
Eventually we made it to Cusco. We were greeted by a traditional band playing right by the baggage carosel, a cheery sound at 7.30am after no sleep - just like the band at the Vic Markets only, you know, right there. Playing pipes. Next to your backpack.
By the time we had stumbled out to the taxis we had aquired a new friend in Dave the Californian bartender/history teacher. He was tall. He wore Certified Travelling Gear. He refused to speak Spanish or spill the beans on the story of how he came to be in Cusco waiting for a girl he didnt seem to know that well so that they could go hiking together. The only thing either of us ever learnt about him was that he and I shared a taste for 60s and 70s funk and soul and that he owned a turntable. But what about the girl??? (We met her before we left. She was hot. We tried to see if they'd moved into a room with a double bed in it but were thwarted by the gloom of the hostal.)
Cusco was full of cobblestones, toutes, tourists and bars showing free dvds. We spent three days "acclimatising" which meant checking out the free dvds, dying my hair and reading endless shitty books. It also meant being woken up 6.20am by some guy with our laundry. I have never been so angry to see my clothes in my life. In no time zone or country that I know of is it necessary to receive freshly washed clothes at that hour.
Eventually we realised we'd seen all the good films and it might be time to move on to that place that all those annoying backpackers kept on talking about. Mashu pish something or other. We heard there were rocks or stones or something.
Getting there seemed, considering the popularity of the destination, surprisingly hard. One travel agent told us it was impossible to go there on a Sunday. Another said it was possible but it was cheaper to go for three days than it was for one. Also, that we would have to meet him at 6.45am on Sunday morning with our passports for some sort of check for PeruRail. Why?? I demanded. Because. But that's totally stupid. Yes. Yes it is - see you tomorrow at 6.45. And thus I was introduced to one of the things that made my time in Peru so special. There is no answer to the question "why". There is only "because". And how could that possibly get annoying, right?
6.45am on a Sunday in Cusco is not a good time. The only people on the streets were people coming home. And four guys who knew enough english to offer painful anal sex with us if we'd only stop and talk to them. 6.45am was also not a good time for finding travel agents. So we cursed him soundly and went back to the hostal. Where he appeared ten minutes after we had crawled back into bed. And insisted that we follow him into a taxi. Carly was convinced that we were about to get kidnapped and killed and although I agreed with her I figured we may as well resign ourselves to fate anyway and get into the freaking car. And wait at PeruRail. And show our passports for five seconds. And then be sent off back into a taxi again. Why was that necessary?? [Because!]
After a soothing breakfast we started off for Macchu Picchu by way of some other ruins. The guide on our bus suggested if we were going to Macchu Picchu we might want to skip the first lot altogether and stay at the markets. Faced with the choice between
That afternoon we were dropped off at another fascinating stone-based thingo which we totally checked out from the comfort of a cafe which made one of the best hot chocolates I have ever drunk in my life. As was the way in Ecuador, however, just when I was hoping I could sensitively participate in a Peruvian Sunday afternoon by reading trashy UK magazines and drinking hot chocolate and try not to fall asleep on the table, my spanish was tested by the friendly proprietor who wanted to know where we were from, where we were going and what we thought of the ruins (oh great! the view was fantastic!).
After a dinner of vegemite and bread we headed off into the dark for the train to Aqua Caliente, the town at the bottom of Macchu Picchu. It was dark by then. We had been up for many hours and were dreading the prospect of being woken up at 5am the next day (Why did we have to get up so early? Because!). I was also dreading the prospect of sitting next to the crazy girl from dinner who had loudly proclaimed that Monsanto was the reason why chinese children were obese. Ok. Luckily for us, we sat across from Lolita and Ana, two girls from Spain by way of several other continents who, like us, regretted not bringing a hipflask on the train and who had their eyes peeled for unnecessarily ugly backpackers (as Ana said, where do they even get the clothes? And how much do you bet they go home, cut off the manky hair and turn back into stock brokers?)
Everything was going well until suddenly the train stopped. For once, this wasnt one of those "why/because" moments. No, it turned out that the train stopped because there had been a slight avalanche over the tracks and we'd have to wait awhile for the rocks to get cleared. Fine. Great. Only four hours of potential sleep remained for us by the time we got to the town since we'd both foolishly agreed to walk up to Macchu Picchu in the dark to suprise it in the sunrise, as it were.
Getting to our hotel as the rain started we... did not find our guide. Where was our guide, I asked. He was coming, in half an hour. Ok he was coming later. Ok, it was midnight and he... was coming at 5am. WTF? A heated argument ensued between me and the hotel clerk where I demanded he call the guide and find out what the hell was going on and he, waking us up four hours later, told us we had no guide and would have to beg for one at the bus stop in another few hours time. Then he woke us up again half an hour later with the mythical guide in tow who told us he'd be back in an hour. By this time we had given up all thoughts of walking to Macchu Picchu since it was bucketing down outside and what the hell was the point of walking through torrents of rain when there wasnt going to be any sunrise to see at the end of it?
As the guide told us, several times, as we eventually trailed after him through the ruins of Macchu Picchu, we were being treated to the "magic and mystical" view of Macchu Picchu. Not everyone got to see it, we were lucky.
Indeed.
After two days of arse-crack early starts and a week of cold weather and rain I had decided that enough was enough and after all the Quechera admiring and stone-staring and terrace-appreciating it was time to head to the jungle, find a hammock and do nothing but get warm for awhile.
So the day after Macchu Picchu we found ourselves back on the (avalanche-free) train at 5.45am looking forward to a short bus ride down to the edge of the amazon jungle. Maybe there would be monkeys! Or butterflies!
Or maybe there would be....getting off the train to an hysterical swarm of bus and taxi and collectivo drivers trying to get people back to Cusco. And one driver who assured me that actually, to get to the jungle we had to backtrack to another little town where he dropped us off and assured us that we just had to cross the street and, look! the sign said the bus would be there in a few minutes. The lady sitting next to the sign told me it would be more like an hour but nontheless, the bus to the jungle would totes be coming past here. Oh, and did we want tickets? Because she had tickets. She never moved to show us these tickets but she did say there were tickets there. For the bus. Somewhere. I figured she'd help us when the time came but until then we would wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And stare in horror at a local's toenails which were so... I cant... there were no words. And no buses. Until, after three hours, there was a bus. Only they said we needed tickets. And maybe it wasnt even the bus we wanted anyway. But did we have tickets? (The ticket lady had totally disappeared at this point.) And then it drove away.
And then I cracked it.
So we crossed the street and asked some incredibly nice lady on the other side if buses to cusco stopped there and she told us yes, and then some nattily dressed old gentleman came out and told us about the buses to Cusco as well and, in our weakend state, we asked him if he could flag one down for us which he agreed to and then he and I chatted about how beautiful the town in the jungle that I was no longer going to was and how I couldnt stand waiting anymore and how apparently Bolivia was also quite nice too.
Four hours after everyone else, we get back to Cusco and are dropped off half way across town in the only private bus terminal there. After being ignored by several taxis, we finally get to the proper bus terminal and are again confronted by people yelling at us for differnt towns. By this stage we are both exhausted, annoyed, kind of hungry and I am desperate to get out of Cusco since I relate it to all the ills and evils I have suffered in the past three days, plus, it is bloody cold. And Bolivia must be better than this, right?
So we decide to catch a bus to Puno that the lady promises is direct and has a toilet and will leave at 1.15.
The bus to Puno, it turns out, does indeed have a toilet which is locked, the entire trip, and leaves at 1.45 and takes the long, unpaved road to Puno so instead of a 5 or 6 hour bus ride, it takes us nearly 8 with lots of stops in strange and deserted towns along the way.
By the time we reached Puno, at 9pm after starting the day travelling at 5.45am, Carly and I had run out of words. We stopped really being able to speak half an hour out of Puno as we pulled into yet another desolate town, this one even more post-apocolyptic looking than any we had been through before. The whole day had been so hellish that there was simply nothing left to say. And Puno itself turned out to be cold and ugly and everyone appeared vaguely grumpy (in appearance anyway)and the place we are stayed at, although warm, was noisy and the guy who checked us in appeared to be a relative of the 6.20am laundry deliverer - waking us up at twenty to eight on our first morning trying to take us on a tour of the islands in Lake Titicaca which he had, apparently, tried to sell to us the night before (I thought I had told him that we were hungry, not that we were hungry for a tour...).
After another night though, our amigas from Macchu Picchu blew into town and together we found the fiesta that Puno had failed to show us before. Naturally, our timing being as impeccable as ever, we found this party the night before we were meant to get up early to go on a boat tour of the floating islands. We also found that the party consisted possibly solely of me, Carly and AC/DC at a bar somewhere on the main pedestrian street in Puno. But who can fight the power of american thighs shaking someone all night long? Not true Australians, thank you. Ana provided another fiesta after the bar which for some reason involved hanging out the hotel window and two out of three people falling asleep with their clothes on (No Mum, I have no idea what might've happened).
So the dancing and then the boat tour, whilst not possibly being the best of all possible combinations, almost endeared Peru to me. Almost. The floating islands really were fascinating, the tour guide lady was genial, the touristy things, whilst being touristy were also kind of fun and the sun was shining. And in the afternoon we were off to Bolivia - what could possibly be better (certainly not the salchipapas at Riko's Pan, the best freaking bakery in Peru) than that? Or, to put it another way, what could possibly go wrong?
Oh, I dont know, how about being stopped at the boarder by bored Peruvian police who went through my handbag, demanded to know why I hadnt changed all my money (because!) and asked me repeatedly if I had ever done drugs (actually that part was cool because I got to use a new spanish word - nunca! [that means never, mum]). Or how about finding out I had lost a slip of paper from my passport in The Great Perpetual Flood of Macchu Picchu and running around in the rain trying to find change for the fee of losing the paper since the man demanding the fee apparently had none. And having the bus attempt to leave without me. And then having the wizened, evil, crabbed and hunchbacked old man who sent me chasing through the rain try to stop me from leaving on the bus because the fiver I gave him had a rip in it. Well ¡no my problema señor!
And finally we were out of Peru.
Sans any forbidden knitwear (take that LeAnn Rhimes), con some bracelets that had brought me no luck whatsoever despite the number of Peruvians who assured me that they would and also still with Ana and Lolita who joined me in my tourette like swearing at key moments on our journey and who also promised to make us do more than just watch shitty dvds and drink red wine.
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