La Paz - Cusco

I think this might be a record for time in between blogs. A whole week!

Somewhat deceptively, the most exciting part of this blog did not happen in La Paz, it is left over from Samaipata. On my last day there I decided to take a tour lead by a crazy Dutch man into the cloudforest. I was accompanied by the most miserable German couple, but this didn't ruin the experience in the slightest: there were giant, prehistoric ferns, slugs that spat yellow acid, monkey tracks (no actual monkeys), jaguar tracks (no actual jaguars, I would probably be dead by now), and many other exciting and Othello-soliloquy things besides. It was very pretty, but alas, the computers still can't cope with photos so you'll have to wait a bit to share the beauty.

I then took a three hour taxi ride to Santa Cruz through some more amazing cloud forest scenery and got on a bus straight to La Paz. On the bus I sat next to a nine year old boy who was travelling all on his own - you thought I was brave! I felt very maternal. This bus, though far superior to the previous life-questioning buses, took so long to get to La Paz I nearly cried, but eventually we got there and I went to meet my two friends Una and Kate in our hostel.

What followed was a number of very lazy days. I have the excuse that not only were we getting used to the altitude, I was also feeling very delicate in the stomach region, and although I know exactly how to fix this, the thought of not eating for 24 hours and spending all day in bed does not appeal to me. Neither does dioralyte. So I have been suffering for some time. We therefore watched the Michael Jackson movie and 2012, ate lots of ice cream, spent long lunches in cafés, wandered around the streets shopping for alpaca themed pretties and visited some museums including the musical instrument museum where you are allowed to play all the instruments, including the armadillo harp. Awesome. We also had a number of good nights out.

I did not do the Death Road. I don't know why, but it just didn't appeal to me. Let's blame it on the altitude again (apparently 3600m above sea level). Kate and I did, however, go horseriding on some HUGE but very docile horses, all the way up to the tip of Valle de la Luna (there are lots of Valle de la Lunas - remember the one I went to in Chile? There is also one in Argentina, and apparently they are all individual and we have never seen anything like them before.) We also got to see the city from the famous viewing point, and it was pretty impressive. I am also coming to like horses more and more, though I still don't know what to do when they start to move faster than a steady walk.

Due to civil unrest and road blocks, we were unable to get to Copacobana and Lake Titicaca on a bus (pity) so we decided to be flashpackers and took a cheapish flight from La Paz to Cusco where we arrived on Sunday morning to our new hostel. We did fly over Lake Titicaca, which was pretty impressive, and don't worry, I will be getting myself down there. I'm not coming all the way here to miss the spooky Inca legends of the Isla del Sol.

Now, because I have the attention span of a fish, I am about two weeks ahead of schedule, having never spent longer than four nights in the same place. So I made the decision to stay put in Cusco for a while, and get free board and food at my hostel by working some bar shifts. There are many positives to this idea: it is only 4 days a week, leaving me free to travel to Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca on my days off, and to learn Spanish when I'm not working, and to do day trips to Saksaywaman and other interesting Inca sites, and to do some river running. However, it is a three week commitment, so I'll have to rush the rest of Peru into two weeks (probably more than enough time, I get bored easily) and, if any of you ever heard any stories of my ski season - it looks like it might be similar to that, but now I am older and wiser and better at avoiding DRAMA by disappearing or keeping my mouth shut or simply shrugging and saying 'I don't know man, I only got here yesterday, I'm not really sure what's going on.'

So the next few blogs will probably be stories of ridiculous people with code names, interdispersed with incredible stories of freezing to death on the way to Machu Picchu. It is cold here.

Last night's story involved Cockney girl, who doesn't even work at the hostel anymore, deciding she did not like the Pretty German, as the Pretty German had apparently been running around breaking the heart of the Boy Who Should Know Better As He Is 26 Years Old. Not that this had anything to do with Cockney, but true to form of all our favourite British representatives on international soil, she decided she would express her opinion aggresively, with violence, expletives and loud enough for the whole hostel to hear. How ridiculous. Finance Bear, a fellow Brit, summed up the thoughts I had tactfully decided not to articulate: 'I came travelling to get away from pikies like her.'

So, as I'm sure you will understand, I will be asking to work the night shift so I can avoid these social delights, and will be getting up before 9am every morning to slink out to my Spanish lessons/cultural experiences.

Until the next 'International Eastenders' episode...