Cusco

Its been awhile since I posted a blog so a lot to catch up on! On the Sunday am after saying a sad goodbye to Coll and the rest of the group, I spent the morning wandering around the bustling market in Pisac. Managed to connect briefly with Jen and Stew who were on a tour, for some coffee and carrot cake then ate lunch (cerveche - their local dish of raw fish marinaded in lime juice) with some of the locals and loaded my bags onto a collectiva (the equivalent of our mini buses) and headed for Cusco and the very fancy hotel that Stew and Jen were staying in. What bliss - to soak in a nice bath! The next morning we visted various travel agencies to investigate transport down to Puno and Lake Titicaco and to book flights to Peurto Maldonardo in the Amazon which we want to visit before coming home. In the afternoon while Jen and Stew
went on a tour of the city, I met up with Mary (a friend´s sister) who lives in Cusco. It was great to meet her and to chat to someone who could paint a very real picture for me of everyday life in Peru. That evening,  we went to see an amazing local Peruvian dance/mime comedy at a theatre, which we really enjoyed.
The next day we had arranged with a young Peruvian guy to take us cycling for the day. He had promised  to take us to an area in the countryside outside Cusco where there were no tourists. What an experience!! First we had to travel with him in a taxi into the back streets of Cusco to get the bikes from a friend of his. We then rode down the narrow congested streets to the central plaza where he flagged down a taxi and promptly piled all 4 bikes one on top of the other, on the roof, tied them down with string and off we set! The day was magnificent and true to his word we did a circular ride of 50 - 60 kms on country roads through villages and rural hamlets, stopping for a picnic lunch on some Inka terraces at an archeological site and agricultural research centre. To get home we went to a taxi rank (much like those back home except here they transport everything imaginable -  even saw them offload a live pig in a plastic bag from the roof of one of the taxis!) and repeated the whole operation to to get back to Cusco for a briefing with the Inca trail organisers. Packed and went to bed early as were being collected at 4am the next morning.