We have been in Peru for a few weeks now and our pace of travel has been the fastest since our trip began, we have spent a few nights on buses, some comfortable and others so uncomfortable it takes days to recover. We arrived in Cusco yesterday after the longest night so far....there has been a bus strike in southern Peru and the route from Arequipa to Cusco was the worst hit with the longer route for the more comfortable buses being closed. Fortunately for us there is another route over the mountains and through the desert and we started from Arequipa at 7pm for our 12 hour journey.....it was not long before i realised the leg room was seriously lacking and not much longer before ice formed on the window and the road stopped being a road anymore...the windows were shaking and an icy draught was howling through the gaps.....luckily there was a film shown...Orca the killer whale, dubbed into Spanish, full volume and the tracking on the video was way out.....eventually someone turned it off and we had only the roar of the engine and the rattle of windows to keep us awake....we arrived around 7am in a state of delerium but looking back with the hindsight of one day it was an amazing night....there was a full moon and the desert and mountains looked like the surface of the moon...we stopped a few times for toilet breaks, once in the middle of nowhere...it was absolutely freezing but the sky was full of stars and there were huge red rocks and sand everywhere....the second stop at a small bus station almost was the end of my ride as the bus decided to leave with me still in the banos....luckily Siobhan stopped the driver or i would be somewhere in the mountains...........Cusco is busy and busier right now as there is a big festival tomorrow....its also alongside all the Inca history and colonial architecture the place where John Peel died....so the place has many meanings for a lot of people......Peru has been the most touristy place so far of our trip and we have been hounded to do tours, stay in hotels, eat in resteraunts and take taxis....we did go to Nazca and fly over the lines, we did spend a night at Huacachino the desert oasis of hotels and hostels among the huge sand dunes and now we are about to buy a 10 day tourist pass that lets us into the many Inca ruins and museums around Cusco....its cold here, pretty cheap so far and soon we will be trekking in one of the worlds deepest canyons with condors hovering high above. We have some pictures of the last couple of weeks and Stoo is making a short video from the tapes i sent him so an avalanche of digital media will soon fill our blog...........