Back in chaos

I kept a diary in the jungle which I´ll condense and make palatable and post here once I have a little more time - probably after my arrival in Canada. Today I went to the Laguna Quistacocha, which is a zoo and botanical garden located just outside Iquitos. It put me in mind of Gerald Durrel´s zoo from my childhood in Jersey - eccentric enclosures over a large space, and filled with endangered species. And I finally got my big mammal fix, since there were precious few in the jungle, staying as we were so close to a hungry village full of people.

On the way back I realised how much better my spanish is, since I had a conversation with a mototaxi driver that I would previously have thought was a failure of comprehension on my part.

"Do you want a taxi?" He asked.

"How much to Plaza 28th July?" I replied.

"10 soles." (About 1 pound 40)

"That´s too much. I´m taking the bus."

"The bus is 1 soles."

"I know."

"I am 10 soles."

"I know."

"Take me. I am better than the bus."

"You are 10 soles. The bus is 1 soles."

"I am not the bus."

"I want the bus."

"The bus is 1 soles."

"That is why I am taking the bus"

"There are three of you. That is 1 soles each. I am 10 soles for all of you."

"Yes. But the bus is still only 3 soles for all of us."

"I am not the bus. I am 10 soles."

"I know. I am taking the bus. The bus is 1 soles."

"Do not take the bus. Take me. I am 10 soles for all of you."

"Thank you. No. Goodbye."

This is a very typical conversation over here. I would have been convinced that I was missing something and that there was a good reason why he was better than the bus or cheaper than the bus had my Spanish not improved. Of course he was more expensive and noisier than the bus - the things almost deafen passengers. Also I´m very glad I took the bus as it was an experience in itself. There were two drivers who kept swapping jobs with one another. When one of them was driving the other one was hanging out of the window buying fanta and sweeties for both of them. They consumed a vast amount of each. There is no glass in the windows and everyone shouts and jumps on and off as the bus is moving. Halfway through the journey, a politician got on the bus. He stood in the aisle and talked about his party policies. Then he produced with a great flourish from his jacket pocket a massive bag of sweeties. These were then offered for free to all the passengers. Brilliant. Graffiti and sweetie bribes. Peruvian politics never left the playground gang era.

Shanty shanty shanty

I went for a walk in the Amazon yesterday. There is a floating shanty market but this being the dry season it isn´t floating. All the traders sit at their unfloating stalls and you walk along the ground where the Amazon was. And since the traders are used to it being wet they just hurl all their organic waste into the river that isn´t there. And it festers in the sweltering heat for months. Needless to say, the place is crawling with nasty black headed vultures behaving like pigeons. Until yesterday I had never seen a vulture close up. Now I´ve seen hundreds. Nasty little things. And yet I was so excited to see two condors in the mountains. Odd. I hate seagulls, but would be excited to see an albatross. Why is big allowed to be better?

I have a proof of the counter-argument. In the form of Nathan Chew. Nathan "God in human form" Chew. This morning I rolled out of bed, and was in the process of deciding which cheek to scratch when I got a text message from him with all my credit card details. I leapt from my room and rushed to the Amazon lodge and paid them in full and got my money and passport back. Now I have enough cash to buy water in the lodge, and beer. And do an Ayahuasca ceremony... If I dare. I understand it involves a lot of vomiting.

Salsa and balloons

All the hammering and sawing was worth it. I got to the party and they had built a bloody great big scaff bandstand with netting and dancefloor and sofas and a whacking great big free bar and cheese and tables overflowing with meat and nary a vegetable in sight. So I started getting those free Pisco Sours down me. What a blimming marvellous night. After about half an hour of standing at the edge of the dancefloor thinking "I really don´t want to have to dance" I got grabbed by Mrs. Kelly who helped me come round to the opinion that I did. And looking at my camera it seems clear to me that that´s all I did for the rest of the night. Apart from drink a whole hell of a lot of alcohol. And eat approximately 3 and a half llamas, one of them raw in carpaccio form. I may have taken something hallucinogenic too, as I remember many many balloons fighting in the air, and one gigantic huge big LORD OF THE BALLOONS who towered over me and filled me with awe at his terrible beauty.

However it worked out the party was a stormer. Best band in Peru - (As in 15 piece orchestra and loads of excellent singers). Superb cooking of the llamas, although some cows slipped in somehow. Mercifully most of the vegetables were weeded out at the expense of letting in a chicken or two. But they´re everywhere here so it´s to be expected. In fact they grow them in the desert. When I was watching the sun go down in the middle of the desert there were X-Files style long white silos in the middle of nowhere. Practising my Spanish, I asked the guide "What the fuck are those??" "Cheekens" he responded. Yep. Cheekens. Farsands of ´em. Out in the desert. Growing. Waiting.

Anyhow. Leila or however she spells it proved a patient Salasasasa teacher and taught me a new move. So now I have 3.

This internet cafe has no photo download facility. Honestly. I come to use the internet in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and they don´t even have a thing to connect my camera up and download photos. So blog is gonna be dry until I get back from the forest I guess.

Coz I am in Iquitos. Land of the motortaxi. I have yet to buy a jungle tour as everyone is too keen that I buy theirs and I don´t trust any of them. Problem is I am English and these guys are used to Americans, so they are spending way to much time explaining how clean their jungle lodges are without realising that I want a bit of dirt. Not too much dirt of course, but I don´t want to go to America in the jungle. I want to pretend that I´m in the rough of the jungle, but without the pissfish and strychnine. I´ll even put up with the pissfish if it´s not my urethra. In fact, here´s a picture of a pissfish so all the boys can wince. It´s barbed and it swims up your wee and gets jammed. Ow.

Anyway right now I´m using a good excuse to not book my Amazon tour. I´m telling them that I´m unable to pay until my new credit card arrives at my house tomorrow. Nothing they can do about that, and it would be a great way of ditching salesmen. I just wish it wasn´t true. I´m looking at the possibility of sleeping on a street filled with mototaxis. They had better let Nathan my flatmate sign for it, not least because he´s taking off work to get the fucker but also because I am properly up shit creek without it. But let´s take it one day at a time. If I get the tour you won´t hear much for a week as I´ll be up the Amazon. If I don´t get the tour you won´t hear much for over a week as someone would have run over me in a mototaxi and then reversed to steal my Tshirt, before feeding me to the crocodiles.

Oh and a mototaxi is a moped rickshaw thing. They´re everywhere here. No roads in. Where the hell do they all come from?

Party Time...

Despite Harry Potter having come out in Peru this evening - and all the Peruvian bookstores being loaded with English copies - I am suited and booted and about to head off to a party. I´m staying in a lovely flat owned by a spinster friend of Beatriz who is just the sweetest person. She gave me her bed! I had to make up for it by buying her a 20 dollar bunch of flowers. For 20 bucks you get a hell of a bunch of flowers. She then rather perplexingly asked me if I could see her Herpes and then her scotty dog attacked me.

The changing of the guards was a sight in the Plaza Major - lots of soldiers but more interesting were the policeman who were guarding the guards. They all had high calibre rifles which they were clapping against their hands in time with the music and not really paying attention where they were pointing. Apart from one of them who was sending a text to his mum. This country is universally hilarious and terrifying.

Lima time

It is pitch black and outside the window there is the sound of desperate hammering and sawing. The Peruvian workers are building a scaffold block for the party tomorrow. They have ensured Beatriz that they will hammer very very quietly throughout the night. Like little hammering mices.

I just got out of a taxi. The taxi driver drove 20 minutes in the wrong direction before stopping a policeman by driving in front of him and asking for directions. He then called his girlfriend to confirm we were going the right way, before gleefully announcing that he was infertile.

This morning a taxi driver reversed 400 yards in a race with another taxi driver who was also reversing. He then almost killed Jack and I twice in his excitement to try out his english. Of particular concern for him was whether or not english girls would like him, because english girls are nice. I told him that I´m sure there might be some english girls who liked him. This pleased him, and he was curious to know if they would give him a blow job. Or perhaps a fucky? I told him it would depend on the girl, but that he might need to work on his small talk. This was enough for him, and he retreated into happy dreams of english girls, to the exclusion of all else including traffic.

Somehow I made it in one piece.

Rocks and sand

Back to Cuszco, and nobody knows where we`re going next. Lawrence is sick and Charlotte is tired and the teachers are still on strike so that rules out Arequipa. Ayacucha is 25 hours away by bus. After much wrangling Lawrence and Charlotte book a flight back to Lima, leaving Jack and I and Louis, Augustus Joss and James to work out where we can feasibly go. One trip to the bus station later and we`re all off to Ica, for the town of Huacachina. Happy I know where I`m going I head on up to Saksaywaman, the oh so hilariously named Inca fortress just outside Cuszco. It was raining a bit, but I took a few photos of rocks. They`re massive, and just stacked on top of each other. Clever lot the Incas, apart from that lack of writing thing.

Then it`s a luxury overnight bus trip. Utterly terrifying. I was in front at the top and ended up having to close the window so I didn`t panic every time the driver overtook on a blind corner with a precipitous drop. But we arrived in Ica unscathed.

Ica is full of fat taxi drivers who pull your clothes. Jack and I got into one of their taxis with two guys we met on the bus and headed for Huacachina. The taxi driver kept trying to tell us he`d take us on a tour of the town of Ica, which is about as appealing as an offer of a glass full of shit. But we smiled and nodded and got the hell out of his cab at El Huacachinero - our hostel. LUXURY! Swimming pool, hammocks, beds with pillows, a shower that works, and the sand dune comes right to the bedroom door. The town itself is tiny - just a cluster of buildings clinging on in the middle of the desert, clustered round a stinky lagoon.

First things first we went out on dune buggies, where a Peruvian driver has access to a precision vehicle and a huge tract of desert. Brilliantly terrifying - I was glad that Health and Safety hasn`t made it as far as Peru, as it was highly dangerous and all the more fun for that. And punctuated with stops to strap on broken sandboards and limp down great big dunes standing on the things. After that it was time to do some lazing by the pool, with occasional breaks to walk up a dune and run down the other side. Or to eat food. Or to get up to date with this blog. YAY.

Trekking on the Ritz

"Where the hell is my backpack?"

"It`s on one of the mules."

"oh"

So I packed light and got a good backpack so I wouldn`t die on the trek. And then they go and load it on a mule. God Damn it! I only have three T-shirts and a pair of shorts. Still nice to know I get to travel light.

Day one was pretty relaxing. 20k into the mountains and the only shit bit was that we set off so late that it was dark by the time the stragglers arrived in the campsite. This first campsite came as a surprise. It had a bar and a shower. I was beginning to get the impression that it might have a swimming pool somewhere. This, I really began to understand, was not going to be a Trek so much as a manicure on a mountainside. The Union Jack that was erected at the top of the first peak we reached - despite the fact that much of the party was Scottish or French - brought home to me the fact that this was going to be one of those quests for lost colonialism. Take that, I thought to the bitter old witch I had met on the train to Macchu Picchu. The British empire still at least thinks it rules the world.

I stuffed about 27 coca leaves into my mouth with some baking soda and retched for 2 minutes before they stopped tasting utterly foul. Then I chewed them hard until they were a pulp and stuffed them into the corner of my cheek which went completely numb. "These things have no effect at all. What a waste of 9 pee," I thought as I sprinted down the mountainside to the river, leaping over obstacles and howling at the birds. Clearly it`s just a placebo, I said to myself as I overtook all the guides but one, who I collared, embraced and chewed his ear off about how beautiful the mountains were and how big the world is and how lucky we all are to be alive.

Day two was a little more trek like. I got down into a valley and crossed a pretty sturdy rope bridge, before starting a day long climb. Slog slog slog slog slog. Pant pant pant pant pant. Gorgeous but dusty. Halfway through I tried some more coca. Nope. Not much help. Mostly driven by the fact that it was stunning I got to the rest point and met some very engaging American lesbians who were travelling with another American girl and her Senegalise Italianate Rastafarian boyfriend. Of course they had guitars and bongos and a saxaphone of sorts, so Jack got out his guitar which had been providing endless entertainment and we all had a sing along. Their guitar was right handed. This was a good thing, as Jacks is left handed therefore nobody can play it but him. We had a good jam before we all were called for luch. Mealtimes on the trek were a hilarious affair, with everyone being forced to wash their hands before sitting at a really very long table and passing bowls up and down. Since almost everyone had been to or were still at boarding schools this was a very familiar ritual, and the food was surprisingly good considering it had to be made up of the lightest things possible, although bulked up with local produce - eggs from the condor proof hens, who have slippery red plastic on their backs, etc etc.

Most of us made it to the campsite on top of the mountain okay although a few ended up on mules. More jamming in the evening before realising that camping on the side of the mountain is stupid as you slip out of the bottom of the tent. I had put myself in an empty tent which was a relief as I was meant to have been sharing with Jack and Lawrence who slid down the hill, tore a hole with their feet in their tent and got eaten alive by spiders and flies. I just fell off my groundmat and froze to death.

Day three was just a hop , a skip and a jump to Choquequirao, which was stunning. Mostly buried still in cloudforest, and with some of the restoration work having been done with CONCRETE (I kid you not) the city is vast and still being uncovered. Some locals still come up and sacrifice things there - and as I discovered, the muleteers from our trek sacrificed a rooster from our campsite. Okay I cursed it when it woke me up, but that`s extreme. Either way, Choquequirao was a sight to be seen, and I fear it won`t be for long. Roads are being mooted and there were sickeningly awful blue arrows embedded in the floor to try and ferry people round it the right way. Alix de Cazotte and I got a little fed up of being herded like the mules and so we abandoned the group and pretty swiftly found a stunning view that we would otherwise have missed. Then we found a little pathway up into the Cloud Forest and wandered far enough to satisfy our sense of rebellion before heading back down to join the group who had found the most absurd place yet to have lunch, right on the side of a hill. I thought it was a good time to have my first cup of tea, so I sipped tea on the mountainside and it was jolly nice.

The rest of the trek, so as not to bore you too much, was the same as the first half but the other way round. But I was noticeably more able to breathe in the altitude which can only be a good thing. I arrived back in Cuszco feeling fit and healthy. Hurrah! And I made it back to Cachora in the first group which pleased me even if it was just coincidence as nobody was really that interested in racing. Such a huge trek and so many people, it would take me forever to go into explanations of all of them. There were French families and then there was the French family who were English and there were Australians who weren´t or were they and lots of Barclays and even some Mathers.

It was an amazing trek. We covered only 62 Kilometres but it was usually very steep and with the range of ages and experiences it was pretty impressive the way that nobody got hurt beyond one vicious spider bite to Hugo as a reward for taking a shortcut, and a stack of nasty blisters.

Politics and Coca

Finally the time for the trek had come. 43 people from many different nationalities, age groups, and walks of life gathered together and loaded onto buses to take us to the small town that would form the launching point of the journey to Choquequirao - the town of Cachora. This was an eye opener - certainly the poorest place I had yet seen in Peru, the majority of the houses are made from Adobe, which is basically mud mixed with straw. Not really built to last. Here´s a pit for mixing it up.

On the way in, I learned a thing or two about Peruvian politics. Rather than party political broadcasts or question time, it seems that elections are decided by who can spraypaint the nearest house with the biggest name. Some of the more enterprising candidates had helicoptered off to the nearest mountainside armed with gigantic lawnmowers and quite literally carved their slogans into the mountain. Brilliant.

Also the Peruvians seem to know how to strike. Currently the teachers union is on strike. The powers that be are threatening the status quo by introducing exams for all the teachers. This is because the standard of education in Peru is incredibly low compared to all other South American countries. The problem is that the teachers don´t want to take exams that they know they are going to fail and their livelihood is threatened. So they are up in arms. But rather than waving banners and shouting slogans and being ignored by their supposedly democratic government despite marching in their millions, they set off rockslides. Yes - massive huge great big whacking rockslides. Huge big boulders all over the roads. Now I have already explained that people in Peru drive like lunatics. They have already killed a busload of people this way, and they have raised merry hell with the transport system. Even if the rocks get cleared they are put back into place by crowds of gleeful children who are glad to be away from school because their teachers are so awful. Thankfully we set off early enough in the coaches to Cachura to avoid the worst of it, although there were some trees felled on the road and a couple of times the driver had to get out and hump rocks, while having insults and sticks hurled at them by the local kids.

The whole of the town of Cachora had been mobilised when we arrived. There were about 40 mules and 30 Peruvians attached to them as well as 5 guides all milling around vaguely in shock at the humungous gringo windfall that had blown their way. I went for a little wander and found a small shop that sold coca leaves. Good for altitude sickness I am told. One of the guides spotted me and made me go back into the shop and buy some baking soda as well. Apparently they don`t have any effect unless you catalyse them with the soda so that was nearly a waste of 9 pence. Phew.

I swear that the white powder there is baking soda. The leaves themselves are all pretty brown and unappetising looking. I wasn´t sure I wanted to try chewing them but virtually everyone was getting some including my brother Rupert and he ought to know...

Burgers and puppets and thieves - oh my!

Back to Cuszco, and I remember that my sister in law Beatriz told us all that temperatures in the mountains where we will be trekking have been plunging to minus 20. And all I brought is a selection of T-Shirts. So it`s off to the shops for me, and thankfully Lawrence has a good friend called Jack who has arrived on the scene and knows Cuszco pretty well. We all jump into a taxi and head off to the poor part of town where we reckon we can haggle a decent coat. Once again the God of coats is kind to me, and while Jack is buying himself an unbelievably hideous full-body orange jumpsuit and a wife-beater, I found myself a good oiled fleecy jacket, and paid 35 soles for it. Just over a fiver. And that was still too much.

Then everyone went back to the Plaza del Armas where they have recently built a Bembos. This is a Peruvian answer to McDonalds, and sent Lawrence into paroxysms of excitement. I opted not to go, and this turned out to be the biggest mistake of the holiday. While I was vaguely wondering where to go and get a sandwich a small child nicked my wallet. And then probably went off singing to his be-mittened old singing mentor for some cold cherries and custard and pease pudding and saveloys. Leaving me totally dependent on my friends until my bank gets it´s finger out and sends me my new card.

UGH.

Gay Incas?

On the train to Macchu Picchu I met a loathsome American woman who barked at me all the way about "This Fucking country! All this fucking walking! They´re so backwards they make you dump your toilet paper in the bins!" She was about 3 foot tall and shrivelled and spent the whole time we were talking trying to croak and laugh at the same time. The overall effect was like being washed with nails. When I mentioned to her that I had been perplexed by the water going down the plughole the wrong way she either roared with laughter or her pacemaker exploded loudly up her throat. She then turned her attention to the British Empire and how it was OVER and now it was time for the Chinese, and that America was OVER. We finally found some common ground over a hatred of Bush, and departed friends, although I´m sure she told the next person she met how I had tried to assault her or something.

Macchu Picchu itself was stunning although much easier to get to than I had hoped. I was expecting to have to hike for a couple of hours, but a bus dropped us off right outside the site. So of course it was overrun with tourists. On the way up I was struck by the number of gay pride flags there were - on the buildings, on the buses, on top of the mountains. The rainbow was everywhere. It was only when I mentioned this to my Nephew Lawrence that I realised I was a total idiot and that it was the Inca flag. But it´s identical, so very confusing. Our guide spoke faster than any man I have ever met and most of the time made no sense at all. He showed us many rocks, all of which he insisted were the most important rock in the whole site. Then after a brief but torrid romance with the words June the twenty first, which he must have said 15 times in the space of a minute, he left us in the queue for Wayna Picchu which is the large sharks fin mountain at the back of the site. My first bit of proper hiking. They only let 400 people up so Lawrence and Charlotte kindly waited behind while we confused the guard into allowing two more than he thought up there. Louis - (another nephew) - and his mates Augustus, Joss and James and I slogged up it in the blistering heat for some amazing views of the cloud forest and the Sun Gate and the site itself. The problem with altitude is that you get really out of breath quickly as the damn oxygen is just too heavy, so I was puffing and panting like anything and just glad that the guys I was with were as knackered as I was most of the time. Here`s me on the summit.

The odd thing is I never realised how recently the Incas were around - they only really started during The Wars of the Roses, and got wiped out while Shakespeare was writing. In that time they built some pretty impressive edifices and without using mortar - they just hewed massive boulders into just the right shape and stacked them. Amazing that they stood the test of time.

To Cuszco... AND BEYOND!

So got up in the morning and staggered back to the airport and flew to Cuszco, dosing up on altitude sickness pills so I wasn`t yakking all over my shoes for the first couple of days. At Cuszco airport we had to run the gamut of taxi drivers and eventually managed to get a lift to Urubamba - a little Andean mountain town convenient for the Inca Trail and Macchu Picchu, which I wanted to get to before the trek. This involved my first long road trip. At the time of writing I am inured to the terror of Peruvian driving having been in too many long bus journeys. But on that day it was utterly terrifying. The man in the cab had a happy smiling face on his rearview mirror, perhaps with the idea of filling us with comfort. I made a Peruvian highway code.

1. Honk at dogs. Stop for pigs.
2. All cars are your enemy.
3. If possible, only overtake enemies on corners.
4. The enemy side of the road is the best side to drive on. Do this unless they force you to move.
5. Only change your beams to full when an enemy car is coming the other way.
6. If you cannot overtake, attempt to lock bumpers with your enemy.
7. You aren´t honking enough. Do it more.
8. Play Dire Straits on the radio. (This is also true in aeroplanes, although The Thompson Twins will do in a pinch.)
9. Never ever ever let an enemy overtake you unless on the inside.




Here is a piccy of our nice taxi. Note the car in front trailing twigs onto the road. These twigs are not being transported. They are being used to make it harder for enemy cars to overtake.

Urubamba is a very typical Andean town, and I took loads of snaps of things like walls and people dressed in the Peruvian standards. If France was like Peru then everyone in France would cycle around with berets, moustaches and strings of garlic. The people outside the towns wear the stereotypical clothes - really bright colours, Alpaca, hats - you know the stuff.

I started to get to know the people we would be trekking with. So many people. I had no idea. 43 people. Yowza.

Getting to Peru

Well I thought it would be better to just post on my blog and let people follow if they have any inclination. Also I can use this as a sort of diary, since otherwise the madness will be forgotten which will be a shame.

Anyhow, I woke up in the morning on the day I was meant to be going to Peru after staying up far too late with Nathan. Of course Addison Lee weren´t answering the phone as usual. They are clearly getting too popular for their own good. The people on the phone are sarcastic bastards half the time when (if) you do get through. So I hiked my stupidly fat rucksack onto my virgin shoulders and struggled off down the grey road towards Victoria station. Hiking practise, I thought. Never too late.

Five minutes later I was on a bus. Much better idea.

Then a budget airline to Toronto, which left half an hour late. This worried me as I had a connection to make. All worries were shortly afterwards rendered meaningless by the sad fact that the plane was filled with hyperactive teenage girls with carefully filed elbows. Bruised and deafened I emerged some hours later in Toronto. I was tired, but everything was made better by the lovely rollercoaster ride that they gave me for free in Toronto airport. I took a photo.

This corner is called "Crazy Tower Fork"

The Rollercoaster is free and runs regularly. One of the coolest things about it is that you get a countdown to the next one IN SECONDS. SECONDS I tell you. No leaves on the line here, eh? I asked one of the local women to take a photo of me on the coaster but she just hooted at me like an owl. So I made friends with a gay japanese guy living in New York, and together we found the place to check in, after much confusion over which side of the escalator we were supposed to stand on.

So having left London a couple of days after a major terrorist attack, and having had absolutely no trouble whatsoever getting through customs I then had to hang around for ages and ages while some jobsworth twat tried to stop me getting on the plane because a corner of my passport was slightly loose. But I made it with seconds to spare.

My companion on the second leg was a woman from the Las Casas family, who lives in Toronto now married to a Pole, but who was born in the mountains some distance from Lima. Her mother was dying and she was going to have to take a 22 hour busride up the mountains to sit by her bedside. My heart went out to her. She distracted herself and me by trying to work out which mystic number I represented. This mostly involved making rings around letters and numbers fairly randomly before nodding in a satisfied manner and telling me that I was mostly 3 but with a strong 5 and 7. And not enough 4. Which means that I´m chaotic and need to work on my work ethic. At this point I started to wonder if she´d been following me around, so I went to sleep and woke up shortly before we landed in Lima.

Lima caused me to panic by taking FOREVER to wheel out my bag. When it eventually came I was convinced that whoever was supposed to be meeting me had gone, and that I was going to get beaten up, mugged and sold into sex slavery in Columbia. Thankfully my nephew Lawrence was there to meet me complete with funky long hair and lovely girlfriend Charlotte. We bundled into a taxi. This was my first experience of Peruvian driving. Pretty good in retrospect. We only had two near misses and both were pedestrians. We were briefly held up by a car that had managed to flip onto its nose on a dual carriageway. But we made it to the gorgeous house of my sister in law´s parents late at night but with all my luggage intact. I got inside, drank about eight litres of water, crawled into bed and passed out. Long haul sucks. Cusco was beckoning with just a short flight - wooo.