Miss Maps Goes Solo

Hi all

Had a lovely chilled out Christmas here, I hope you all had a good one too. Having my friends Justine and Pippa here made it ten times better, otherwise I reckon I would´ve been pretty home sick.

Christmas eve was a big one, this is definitely a party hostel, a bit too much so actually. There are some serious drinkers here, I feel a bit old! So Christmas eve we went to a club on the main square which happened to be the club every gringo went to. It was good fun though, we drank way too much rum and coke and danced loads, at 3500 metres it´s hard work, I felt like I might have a heart attack. The main square looked like a war zone, Peruvians really love fireworks and there aren´t any restrictions on them so kids as young as 5 were setting off rockets and god knows what.

Christmas day was pretty much spent recovering from the hangover. It was lovely to get some prezzies though, I got some great stuff from James, so nice to receive a package from the UK. Justine, Pippa and I decided to exchange prezzies too. I got those things called poi from Pippa, they´re like the fire chains that people swing around but without the fire. They´re very cool although I haven´t dared to try it in public yet, I keep hitting myself. Justine and I both gave each other chess sets, they have these really decorative hand painted ones here where one side is the Spanish and the other side the Incas, they´re very cool.

Yesterday we had a wander around a fantastic cathedral and watched Harry Potter in the evening. Today was fun, I was really ready to do something big so we went out to the inca ruins nearby. There are 4 in a row, aobut 7km apart so we got a taxi out to the furthest one and walked back in. The ruins were great, incas really knew how to build walls! After the 2nd ruin the skys were black and we could see sheets of rain coming down over the mountains on the other side of the valley, it was so dramatic. Then the storms started, fork lightning coming down in about 4 different places and really serious thunder, it was absolutely fantastic. At one point we could see the rain pouring down only about 100 metres away from us but we were totally dry. Didn´t stay that way, by the 3rd ruin it was chucking it down so we took cover and watched for a while before getting a bus back to the town. We´ll have to do the last two ruins another time.

Justine is doing the inca trail to machu picchu from 2nd January so we plan to stay in Cusco until then, we´ve loads more touristy stuff to do, then Pippa and I plan to do the sacred valley (which is all the stuff on the way to machu picchu but without the trek) and apparently a white water rafting thing. Hmm, this could be another time for me to overcome a fear. We´ll both get the train out to machu picchu to meet Justine there for sunrise on 5 January, followed by a dunk in the hot springs, I can´t wait.

On 20 December I cheerily bounced up to the check in desk of Quito airport, with a ticket dated 20 January, bugger. Stupid travel agency, stupid me for not noiticing, stupid Taca airline staff for finding it all so amusing. Amazingly they found me a seat on the flight anyway, ha ha! Not so funny now. I had to squirt myself with free poison perfume and buy a bottle of red wine in duty free, just to calm my nerves.

A total journey time of about 4 hours actually ran over 2 days because the stupid flight to Lima gets in late in the evening and the connection to Cusco leaves at 6am, who´s stupid idea was that? Sorry, I´m in a childish strop by this point. The good news is I got to stay in a swanky airport hotel for the night. It was all such a novelty that I stayed up until the early hours watching cookery programmes in Spanish on cable TV.

Cusco took my breath away, partly because it´s so high up there´s no bloody air to breath, but also because it´s the most beautiful town I´ve ever seen in my life. The view from my dorm room balcony is absolutely wonderful.

The hostel is great, the people are friendly, the architecture is gorgeous and the culture is amazing. I´ll definitely be happy to spend Christmas here, probably new years too.

I´m writing this on Christmas Eve and I actually have a stinking cold so I´m feeling a bit sorry for myself, which is probably why this update isn´t particularly enlightning. I´ll right more once I´ve recovered.

I´m kind of ignoring Christmas slightly because it makes me a bit sad being away from home and all. Maybe I´ll call my travel insurers and demand repatriation due to homesickness and having a cold!

But I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas.

Lots of love

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