Cusco and Spanish School (3-12 November)

On our return to Cusco we decided we should take some Spanish lessons before we got any further into our trip. Having been recommended the San Blas Spanish School we arranged 22 hours of private lessons and found a pleasant and quiet hostel just off the plaza and settled in for a bit of a brain blast - it had been a while since our brains had had to cope with memorising and making sense of so much new information!

We also made time for a few fun evenings - dinner at Patcha Papas with Daniella and Glauco where we found out that this holiday had been their honeymoon! Congratulations!! Caparinhas at Norton's pub with Barry (how did it get to 2am without us noticing...), drinks with Denis, one of M's Spanish teachers and a great curry at Kurma Sutra where we met Larry, an American chap who susses out whether a mine will be viable etc, and who was missing his family.

We also did a few cultural things...Mass in the Cathedral, walked up to Cristo Blanco and Saqsawoman and chatted to a few locals in the plaza.

Oh, and we suffered a brief bout of food poisoning - guess it was the ice at a tourist restaurant, but who knows. I'm hopeful that it'll make us more hardy as we go down the line.

After all the lessons, we enjoyed a final day in Cusco chilling in a lovely little cafe, "The Meeting Place", catching up on the blog and e-mails. We then filled in the time before our night bus with a sunset drink on the central Plaza del Armas, then dinner and a magic show at Aldea Yanapay before a cab to the bus terminal.

I was pleased we arrived at the terminal with some time to spare - it was rammed! And there was a 'departure tax' that we had to pay with a disorderly queue of at least 100 people. At one point the pushing got so bad that M had to act as my bodyguard as I took my turn at the counter as one Peruvian guy that was at least 20 places behind took to English to tell us off for pushing in! The audacity! But we made it on the bus just fine and were impressed with the big seats which reclined 160 degrees, muy bien :-) The journey was a tad bumpy, and so didn't lend itself to the best night's sleep, but it was sufficient for a few hours and before we knew it we were in Puno and could see lake Titicaca, awesome!