More buses

Our hostel in Puno was extremely cold, and I would have traded the TV in the room for some internet access or a little heat in an instant, even though Harry Potter 3 was on.

7:30 a.m. taxi ride to the bus station in Puno. A security guard at the bus station entrance - where are you from, Estados Unidos, where are you going, Cuzco, where are your passports, aqui estan, ok we need you to come to the office with me, but why what did we do wrong, never mind, you may pass. Inside the bus station it is a ruckus, voices competing, ArequipaarequipaarequipaAREQUIPA!! as if with each repetition you might be more enticed to buy a ticket to that location, from that company.

7 hours in the front of the bus, where the sun pours into the windows and no windows or air system offer respite from the heat. All I ate on the bus ride was an orange and some Ranch Pringles; our previous bus experience lulled us into believing that every bus ride was a small marketplace of food. Rural Peru is full of unfinished brick and concrete buildings, the stairs exposed on all sides and steel supports for future upper floors sticking up like thousands of antennae searching for money to finish the work. The bus driver does not exceed 50 m.p.h. the entire trip, taking care to drive around potholes so as not to damage his precious bus. He passes other vehicles slowly in the left lane, scattering the three wheeled cabs coming towards us. Where there is road construction in Peru, there is a dirt path detour, and our bus driver drives in the center to stay out of the mud, nearly forcing a van full of angry locals off el camino. A like-minded bus driver approaches from the opposite direction, and our buses play chicken, each unwilling to cede the center of the road until the last second.

We arrived in Cusco at 3 p.m., without having eaten a proper meal all day. Our cab driver has no idea where our hostel is, and we spend 20 minutes driving around Cusco as he jumps out to ask random locals, donde esta el Hospadaje Turistica Recoleta? We eventually discover that there are two streets named Pumacahua, and he demands more soles to pay for his inadequacy. There is a reason this hostel is ranked No. 4 in all of South America: WiFi, internet, an anteroom to our 3 bed private, a roof porch, TV, and a REAL SHOWER. All of our other showers have had an electric switch that must be flipped before the water is zapped hot immediately before it reaches your cold tired body. Evan and Everett were shocked several times, but my main complaint has been unreliable warmth - either too cold or too hot, with no way to control the temperature. In this hostel, they burn incense at night in the lobby so it smells nice when you come home.

Although we wanted to eat, we needed to go to the office of our Inca Trail trek to pay off the rest of what we owed and to get briefed on our trip. We will be hiking for four days; 12k the first day, then 12k, 15k, and then 5k. The second day is supposedly the most difficult, where we top out at 4200 meters. The third day has a variety of ruins to peruse along the way, and has a steep descent at the end. On the last day, we will wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. to try to be the first group to get to Machu Pichu at sunrise. I will try to write more about this tomorrow.

We went to Plaza de Armas for dinner, and we picked an amazing restaurant with a view of the Plaza. Cusco is much more touristy than the other cities that we have been to thus far. It also feels larger and more European than the other cities, with narrow cobblestone roads and even skinnier sidewalks. We were surrouded by a dozen people, please, we have excellent food, is not expensive, can sit on balcony and see plaza, want to go white-water rafting, need good place to stay for tonight, massage, please good massage?

For $40 for the 3 of us, we had an unlimited salad bar, which had hot peppers, salsa picante, cauliflower, plantains, romaine lettuce, grains of different types, and several dishes that I cannot describe. We had Cuzquena malta, a local beer that ads say is acknowledged to be one of the finest in the world (really? I mean, it is good, but, why have I never heard of it before?). And our main course was a huge barbecque platter that we split, with alpaca kebab, grilled alpaca, grilled lamb, lamb kidney, beef heart, fried trout, fried potatoes, and barbecqued cuy, or guinea pig. Now, before you go all PETA on me, guinea pig is commonly eaten in Peru because it is in great abundance in the countryside, and now sometimes they farm them for eating. It has a great flavor, kind of like rabbit, but Evan describes it as "minty." We ate like kings and made up for the other 2 meals that we had missed earlier in the day.

We have set up a flight back to Lima after our Inca trail and hostel stays for our time in Cusco, so for the next day, we can relax and prepare for the grueling wondrous hike ahead.