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We left Pucallpa late to arrive in Lima 22.55. Thankfully we had arranged for a pick up to take us to a hostel. Because we were getting stung for excess baggage we decided to leave our mountain bags at the hostel and go onto Cuzco with our “drop off” stuff. We eventually got to the hostel by midnight. This was a typical backpackers hostel. Over friendly, young, trendy, multi-lingual staff catering for a place full of hedonistic, studenty, dread-lock funky traveller types. As two skin-headed thirty somethings, we blended in perfectly. We sat in the corner of the bar, avoided like the plague and watched like two grumpy old men whilst the rest of the hostel entertained themselves with a jamming session involving several bongos, a didgeridoo, a guitar and…a cello, whilst someone wailed a painful tune from the back. Ed cracked the inevitable joke, “what´s red and yellow and looks good on a hippie?……fire”. Somehow, it seemed very relevant.

We ended up getting to bed by 01.30 to be up at 03.30 to get to the airport. We decided very quickly not to leave our kit there. Much that it was a friendly place, we have over 20K pounds worth of kit on us that we can´t risk having go missing. So, groggy and and grumpy we left Lima, paying yet another hefty baggage excess fee and arrived in Cuzco early in the morning.

Cuzco was originally the centre of the Inca empire which had spread as far north as Colombia. Sadly, just at the height of their empire success, the conquistadors entered from the north bringing with them the common cold, small pox, the flu and many other common viruses that the Europeans took for granted. However, this managed to wipe out thousands of indigenous peoples. Eventually, the Spanish, with themselves and their horses in metal armour and steel swords easily conquered Cuzco and built what is now quite a European city. But here and there is still some original Inca architecture showing their amazing ability to perfectly cut large granite blocks to fit randomly together to make solid buildings.

Cuzco is beautiful! An amazing contrast to the hot humid jungle environments we´d been getting used to. At approximately 3200m above sea level its officially at altitude. This means there´s less oxygen available to breath. So, even the simplest of tasks like lifting all our luggage into taxis made you out of breath. Still, after several days of acclimatisation we have managed to increase our running distances from a mere paltry 5m to an amazing 10m before our hearts decide to leap from our chests and our lungs choose to explode.

I had pre-booked us into the Amuru Hotel. Unfortunately, I hadn´t checked my Google Translate properly and where I´d thought I´d asked to be there from 19th TO 25th I´d actually put 19th AND 25th. Oh how we laughed as they told us we couldn´t stay after the first day. And during Semana Santa week trying to find another hotel was not proving easy. Thankfully though, with a lot of help from Amuru, they managed to find us rooms in their other hotels, but it did mean a lot of hotel hopping for a couple of days. Ed was not impressed, but then his Spanish is better than mine.

We have met with our contact here, Meltiardes who has offered more help than we could possibly imagine for. Our first “drop off” kit is now stored at his house. We have also picked up valuable medical and camping supplies already. Sadly, however, I have lost my digital camera (possibly stolen?) which had all the Pucallpa and Cuzco shots on it so we´re down to the one remaining digital camera (Ed´s). However, on a lighter note, Ed managed to lose his false tooth and is now speaking with a lisp.

This is our last night here. Tomorrow we fly back to Lima where we will be met by our contacts there as part of Project Peru together with some of the children from the refuge. They have kindly invited us to stay with them for a few days which we´re looking forward to. We will also be going into Lima for final preparations. Ed will be meeting with Minister of Interior whilst I will be obtaining final supplies such as maps (always useful) etc.

The next blog shouldn´t be as long as the last two and hopefully will have some better photos so many apologies for that. Also, Ed is working on the video blog and will be getting some raw footage for Craig to edit into a short video blog entry. Stay tuned guys and thanks for all your support.

Luke