Cuzco

Well here we are in the heart of the Andes mountains. Cuzco!

Getting here by bus should be something reserved only for cardinal sinners and lost souls worthy of astonishing punishment. I´m pretty sure the bus ride from Arica to Cuzco is a lost circle of Dante´s Inferno. We woke up at 6am at the hostal (family´s house) to head to the bus station to catch our bus to Cuzco. Our bus was set to leave at 7am from the terminal, so we got there at around 6:40. As the minutes start winding down to 7, the light in the stall for the company we bought our tickets from stays off. Every other booth in the place is open and we´re starting to get slightly anxious and mostly angry. At about 7:15 a man with a long, black ponytail comes up to us and says, ¨Gringos, to Cuzco?¨to which we relpy, ¨Si.¨ So we get in this guys car, which is littered wth Dragonball Z paraphernalia, hoping we don´t come out as lamp shades. The guy turns on an 80s mixtape and the mood lightens. He turns out to be a really nice guy who´s taking us over the boarder to Tacna to catch our bus.

We get to the border (in the middle of the desert) at about 7:45 and the boarder opens at 8. We get through with very little incidence, except for Matt´s Chilean Pisco being confiscated. We´re still not really sure why, wine was fine but pisco was apparently out of the question. With the boarder patrol´s assurance that Peruvian pisco was better, we headed off for Tacna. We reached the bus terminal and hopped into our own private hell.

Matt gave you guys a list of pros and cons for the last bus ride so I´ll do the same for this one. I promise it will be mostly cons.

Pros
1. Chuck Norris movie shown at 10:30pm, 14 hours into the bus ride
2. A few really awesome views of the mountains
3. A cute little girl who screamed gleefully about gringos for like 15 minutes when we got on the bus

Cons
1. For the first 22 hours we were in Peru, a strong stench of urine was present and completely unshakable
2. I said 22 hours, because that´s how long the bus ride took. We were told it would take 16.
3. If you do the math, that put us into the Cuzco bus station at 4:30am
4. I mentioned urine: The reason for the stench, we quickly learned, was the simple fact that people pee everywhere here. Men, women, children, whatever, wherever, whenever. Grown women just pop squats on the side of the road. No biggie.
5. The only thing to compete with the smell of urine, was the stronger smell of vomit. Stretta got the closest whiff when the girl next to him started throwing up in a bag. This was apparently common on the bus as I spotted no less than 3 bags of vomit littering the floor. The bus company´s solution: sweep and febreeze.
6. An average speed of 35 miles per hour
7. A small town pit stop where we picked up people who apparently bought floor seats, meaning I head a small kid resting his read on my leg for about 3 hours.
8. The last 10 hours of the trip were ridden in complete darkness, preventing any reading forcing us to rely on dying Ipod batteries
9. Assholes from New Zealand
10. Some little kid playing some game boy game with the volume on blast playing the same song over and over for about an hour. Almost caused an international incident.

Hellish bus ride aside, we made it and are staying with a very friendly lady in her hostal. It costs $10 a night and has hot showers so there´s little to complain about. We´ve just started exploring the city and it seems pretty awesome. We´ll have a couple more updates hopefully before we head out early Monday morning for our trek.

Never ride South American buses,
David