Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Punch and Judy, Tourists and Dumbos. Somethings just go together. And so it was that we did the dumbo tourist thing. Jumping from the Amazon basin at it´s pleasantly low altitude up to Cusco, the city at the very centre of the Inca world, nestled as it is, up in the Andes, only a few feet beneath the international space station, isn´t actually all that smart. The realisation first hits you when you look out of the window and see that the plane you´re flying in is no longer surrounded by jungle greenery but by humongous jagged mountains topped not just with a light powdering of snow but ruddy great glaciers. Scenes from the movie "Alive" were vivid and, after not really having eaten anything for days, I was hungry.

The next little inkling you have that you´re no longer at sea level is when you get off the plane and the lack of air gets you breathing as hard as a teenage lad at a Britney Spears concert. Then you feel like you´ve just been clouted around the noggin with a cricket bat. At this point you realise that the human body just isn´t designed to live among yeti´s, llama´s or condors. Yet we do it and some do it permanently. Among these people, who have, overtime proved Darwinian theory correct by growing an extra lung, are the descendants of the Incas. It may seem slightly mad that anyone would live in such rarefied air, but these people aren´t mad; only those who jet in to see them are. Luckily along with the extra lung the locals have developed a know how for mixing a cracking cuppa from cocoa leaves. Which while it apparently doesn´t offer any chemical imbalance to your already oxygen deprived mind will help alleviate the potentially lethal effects of altitude sickness. Hmm, tell you what, I´ll have another cup of that.

Our primary focus for being in Cusco was to get on to see the famous Macchu Picchu, but before doing so we had to acclimatise and it really is a fine place to do so. The town, ancient though it is with its Inca heritage, is really a Spanish colonial town and while it may not be very politically correct to laud Francisco Pizarro and his Conquistador cronies you´ve got to say they knew how to put together a very attractive town. The town square is a delight and to add to this delight you can view it very comfortably from any number of balcony bars!

Although it is deeply appealing to spend entire holidays watching the world go on around you from the comfort of a bar stool it really would be a wasted opportunity to come all this way and not visit the odd museum or church. So we duly did. The rather impressive Inca Museum was a great place to while away a few hours and to educate ourselves a little on the people whose great legacy we´d come to view.

Not such a great place to spend hour upon interminable bleedin´ hour was the train station at Cusco. Or rather the second train station at Cusco. The one from which you wouldn´t actually catch the train to Macchu Picchu but the one from which you must buy the tickets. We discovered this after walking to the Macchu Picchu station. Well pardon us for trying to be smart. The waiting at the station seems to be a function of two things: travel agents who get queueing priority and then purchase about twenty six thousand tickets, but that seems reasonable, they´re local business people plying the trade that brings people from all over the world to the town and secondly groups of toss pot Israelis who clearly are much more important than everyone else and thus have no need to wait. I did indeed tell one bunch exactly what I thought of their behaviour. I´ll take the mumbled reply they gave to be some form of apology. Typically these two reasons alone would account for a few hours at the station, but with the added bonus of strike looming in the next few days which threatened to paralyse the transportation system things were just given an extra spiciness. 

We visited a cooperative dedicated to preserving Incan culture and ancient weaving techniques. It must be said that these old women, adorned in their traditional garb which is: a brightly coloured woven scarf, come shawl, come large, very useful bag and topped off with a boater crossed with top hat that sits upon their long plaited hair which is joined in a knot at the bottom, looked great and produced some fine tapestry. Heide, much taken by the artistry purchased one of these shawls, though it was marketed as a table runner. Multi functional weavings these!

Dining in Cusco is a global affair. From Guinea Pig to Couscous, here you can get it all but, and I suppose it´s almost a bit sad to say so, the pizza is superb! Honestly in the great global league standings of pizzadom (and to a bloke such things are clearly very, very important) I´ve elevated Peru to second place after Italy. After dining on a rather impressive Guinea Pig (know your rodent) and Pepperoni my cannibalistic thoughts, first brought about on the plane ride in, were, happily, ended.

A few, rather decent days, in Cusco were almost spoiled by a slightly worrying failure to find any accommodation in our next port of call, Aguas Calientes. My completely inept Spanish was met with friendly blanks (I can picture the person at the other end of the phone wondering exactly what language I was trying to speak) but with the help of the fabulous staff of the Hotel Andenes de Saphi we were able to find a bed for the next night and so were off for what promised to be the highlight of our South American tour and the trip to Macchu Picchu.