Cusco rocks, it is a fantastic town, the people are great, that atmosphere is fantastic and the shopping is excellent (I now own two table cloths - oops, well one could possible be a bed spread - very nice and compact in the rucksack).
Machu Picchu is incrediably impressive although I am not too sure how I feel about all the reconstruction work, most of it is very obvious and they intend to do more, but they will never get it right and if they just build it up how they think it should look it will just become more of a model town than a genuine archological site, or at least thatīs my view. But it was excellent, I climbed to the top of Wyna (not spelt right, has at least 5 letters) Picchu which is the montain behind Machu Picchu, good long climb up and great views at the top where you are sitting on rocks just a few people wide with shear drops on every side, fantastic! On the way down though I made a mistake and that was to follow the sign to the Grand Cave - an hour and a half later (all down hill) I arrived at the site, and now the site was very pretty, had the moon temple there and it was cool cos very few people (sensibly) go down there. Just not convinced that it was worth the hour and a half walk back up!!! Still in hindsite good thing to do - at the time, very foolish.
There was a festival going on in Aguas Calientes (town near Machu Picchu) while I was there which was excellent. ALl the people dressed up in their traditional costume doing the traditional dances and free food and beer in the streets, great atmosphere. One of the dances was particually entertaining. In total there were about 12 or 14 men all dressed in full costume with face masks, and one woman similarly dressed except in a skirt, and the dance goes like this. Two people entre the centre of the group, one of them stands still while the other whips him as hard as he can around the ankles, then they change places and the other one get to use the whip (every person has their own whip) after a while of alternating like this, they hold each others left hands and then run around in a circle whipping each other until the woman runs in between them and breaks it up, and then everyone runs into the middle and hugs and the show starts again with a different two people. Of course all the men not involved in the whippėng spend all their time trying to stop the woman from running between the two guys whipping each other in the streets, by carrying her off, pinning her down etc... Very strange. ohh yeah and for added entertainment, when ever people are moving a person may run over and lie down behind then causeing everyone to fall over in a big heap, fantastic - I wanted to join it!!
So it took be 8 days in total to leave cusco but I finnaly did , saying some sad goodbyes to the restaurant workers near my hostel ( who I had got to know quite well) and headed off to Puno.
Arrived in Puno at 5 in the morning, found my hostel and went to sleep! Got up, wandered down to the harbour, bought some more 1 sol necklaces and instantly found a boat going to the floating islands. Got on the boat, went to the floating islands. Now the floating islands are quite cool, the island, houses, boats, baskets and pretty much everything are made form the same reeds. However you donīt exactly get a view of traditional life - unless traditional life is selling trinkets to tourists!! But it was cool and in our tour group we had a group of about 10 indigenous tourists, all in their traditional gear and everything, but definately tourists and on the last island me and an Isreali guy got malled load s of little kids, who were very cute but desperate to take my jewellery. I let them have the braclet I was given by the Ecuadorian girls at the boarder (mainly because they got hold of it and there was noway I was getting it back!) but hung on desperately to the ring and braclet Paul gave me, my necklaces and earings, which Iīm sure could quite easily have all disapeared, still they were very cute gleptomaniacs!
Finished the tour early afternoon and decided to head straight to Bolivia. So the one hostel I have booked in my whole trip was the one that I ended up sheepinshly returning to saying "I donīt actually need the room" - thatīll teach me to be organised! So instead I headed off in a little colectivo (like mini bus) to the boarder. In the boarder town I took a bicycle with a chair on the front to a place where I could pick up a motorbike propelled taxi to the boarder.
Leaving Peru happend smoothly only about 2 weeks later than I originally planned, now into Bolivia!!
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