Jan 3rd: Salma Hayek's in Peru!!!

Ok not really but she played the Muse in Dogma and we spent about 8 hours in a bar called the Muse (which I love) where Nadine created this blog and her posts for about five or so hours (real social) while I just sat and drank (slowly) as we had a 10am checkout and our bus out to Puno wasn't until 10pm.

Who knows what happened to the rest of the day - read Nadine's post :p

Actually I can because of the bus drama and getting ripped off etc but hey, the bus was comfortable, we slept a lot, and I may have witnessed Walt breaking bad while he got off the bus to cook up some Meth and blow up a few gangsters before pretending to his wife he was just an absent minded fool... So what's a few dollars more? I was feeling lucky, punk.

Jan 1st and 2nd: Schadenfreude/Sucks to be you!

We head back up to Machu Picchu at 5am after some crazy drama where I leave my ipad in the hostel and run all the way through town (I didn't know I could walk properly) to get it back before the bus leaves!

It's a beautiful day... For those that love schadenfreude aka taking pleasure in other people's misfortune. You can't see anything as the clouds/mist cover EVERYTHING and it's raining to boot. We get the guided tour of the various ruins and reach the bottom where we join up with the other tour groups we'd been chatting to the past few days... They are so upset their trek ends in disappointment so we exchange empty condolences while secretly high-giving each other at our decision to push on. Bernadine 1 - unlucky sods 0.

We get an awesome train back to cusco and move into a new hotel... Nadine's choices of hotels works out amazing and we end up in a really cool place with nice bars called San Blas just behind the main square... The next day, the weather's great so we walk around until we find a really quaint little place run by a German guy who seems to be loving life in cusco. I'm inspired and think I'd like to do something like this until I remember the steak and wine are better in Argentina so will reserve judgement til later! Had my first beer in.. Oh wait one day but that was a post trek celebratory one so it doesn't count :p they have some really nice craft beers from Peru and they went down a treat.

Dec 28th: Hallelujah...

Nadine isn't crying anymore! And we also got our bags back! It's a happy time and Nadine is dancing in the airport :) we relax with some nice food and Cusco is suddenly a more beautiful city! I think we'll have to do separate posts with pictures and stuff of places - haven't downloaded any from the camera yet.

Dec 27th: Out on a Lim(b)a...

So our bags didn't arrive in Lima. Technically this is more like up shit creek without our paddles but that didn't really work that well. Maybe "I Need $Dallas, $Dallas, $Dallas is what I need" but Nadine hates that song... Anyway I wasn't too worried I've had my bags lost a few times and it's always made it in a day or two - we had one and a half to spare but hey it's an exciting new trip and I'm not ready to be upset yet... We try all the calls we can and Nadine gets more and more stressed but I decide to leave it for a day and enjoy not working for another day (you may remember I actually stopped working more than a month and a half ago but it's still the best thing ever).

Anyway, I try extol the virtues of a PMA (positive mental attitude) on Nadine - not so much because I believe in the power of positive thinking or karma (she even wanted to pray for a while.... In a church!!) - I just think it reduces the moaning and whining when there's nothing really to be done but wait. :p

The only thing that upset me a little bit was that if we'd just booked this on the amex platinum (which I highly recommend but please contact me so I get referral points), then we would have been able to spend up to £300 EACH on replacement items (bags, clothes, shoes etc) for not getting our bags back in FOUR hours! And another £300 each if it hit over 48 hours - anyway lesson learned. I will be flying he most complicated routes throughout the States in the future. Anyway, rant/commercial over.

Dec 26th: Leaving on a jet plane...

I hate flying. I'm not afraid it's just boring. And wolverine was so bad I watched until the last ten minutes just where the climax is and gave up because it sucked so bad.
Thirty minute delay turns into 2 hours but I don't really mind because I love sleeping during taxi, take-off and landing! Rushed through Dallas airport and starting to worry but hey American Airlines wouldn't lie to you about your bags right? Oh wait.

Donde esta Walter? (Where is Walter?)

January 4th 2014, Puno Cusco

After reading so many stories and blogs and travel forums on scams, we still ended up getting scammed! I guess I'll begin with the Puno tour. Jhonathan told us he has a friend in Puno who organises tours so he could arrange everything with him for us, including our bus tickets from Cusco to Puno - an 8 hour bus ride. Our Swiss friend told us that she'd paid 82 soles for a cama (sleeper) bus so we paid that amount for our bus and got tickets on "San Luis".

On the 3rd night, we hurriedly get to the bus station after many pisco sours and Chilcanos, ready for a good night's sleep. We don't see our bus anywhere so we begin to panic running around with our huge havasacks. Additionally, in Peru, you need to pay a lot of taxes, tourist tax, entrance tax, leaving tax etc so we were very confused. 

To our luck, we met a Colombian couple meant to travel on the same bus so we hung out with them. By 10:20pm, our 10 pm bus still hadn't shown up and all the others began to leave, so we started getting worried. Finally, the Colombians found out that our bus doesn't actually exist/didn't intend on showing up so we were to get on another bus. This was not a sleeper bus. The tickets on this bus cost 30 soles each. SCAMMED!!!

We tried arguing but the bus guy feigned ignorance, it looked like he's familiar with this routine and so we had to just take any available seat and stew in silence. In the midst of the drama, Berns thought it unsafe to keep our bags in the luggage compartment and so we sat with our bags on top of us, but poor Bernie holding on to our big bags left in the aisle. 

We decided to go to sleep and not get annoyed, which I did quite promptly. Then at about 4 am, I woke up as the bus pulled in to a petrol pump. At this point, Bernie got out of his seat to close the door that separates the bottom level from the stairs going up so there's less noise. As he did this, an older Peruvian lady began yelling at him: " no, no, Walter esta aqui... No." Poor Berns, thoroughly confused didn't know what she was saying and kept shutting and opening the doors of the toilet and our compartment door. "Donde esta Walter?" And then she realised Walter wasn't on the bus and it had begun to move and she began yelling to Bernie to stop the bus. I understood the whole thing, but poor Bernie was still opening and closing doors, no idea about poor Walter! 

Everyone kept shouting to doorman Bernie until finally another man sitting near us ran to the front and stopped the bus. Then we hung around for 20 minutes with the old lady shouting "walteeeeer, Donde esta?" and the bus kept honking, until finally Walter shows up with no explanation whatsoever. So random!

I really enjoyed the scene and went back to sleep, but when i awoke an hour late in Puno, the hours of sleep made me really angry that we got cheated and I wanted to fight with someone. Poor Mahatma Gandhi Bernie just wanted a quiet non violent morning, but no such luck. We got picked up by Edison from the tour and he seemed so sweet but I was too angry to chat with him. We left our bags at his shop for the night as our tour of the floating islands began at 8 am and we'd only return the following day. 

By the time we got to the port and on our lovely boat, I was in a much better mood. For now. The floating islands deserves it's own post.

When Jhonathan told us about the islands, he pronounced it "floating ice-lands". Keeping in mind that English is his third language, I still didn't get that he meant "Islands". So I'm now on this tour looking for floating bits of ice in the middle on lake Titicaca where local people live.

Thank you wifi

January 3rd, Cusco

After a day of R&R, we've checked out of our hotel and are heading to Puno tonight by overnight sleeper bus. We then go to lake Titcaca (Peru side) and spend the night on a floating island with a local family. We're going to learn the local dances!

We've spent the day at a lounge/restaurant called The Muse mooching their wifi. This place has the best nachos ever. We've eaten some interesting food here, alpaca burgers, ceviche and basically a lot of beef and pork. The guinea pig we tried was not good, but I blame the restaurant. However we weren't brave enough to try it again. Cusco has a lot of Italian restaurants as well. All menus randomly have rogan josh on them for the random Indian passing through I guess. I didn't try it!

I also saw my first llama, very cool. I was too scared to touch it, turns out they don't eat llama meat here. Our Spanish is not good at all, I only throw a gracias around now and then but we are planning to go for classes in Bolivia or Chile, so hoping I am fluent by the end of the trip.

I am so thankful to be here, but most of all I am thankful for my Smartwool socks which cost an exorbitant £15 a pair, but the best socks ever for trekking, and now for everyday use.

Until next time!

The Bernie Miracle

27th December, Cusco

After a good night's sleep, I have woken up with renewed faith that our luggage drama will be sorted. The previous evening, Jhonathan our Machu Picchu guide came over to give us a briefing about the 4 day Inka Trail and I got more and more depressed when we realised that we would need to buy every single thing for the trek, AGAIN! However, I had faith because of the Bernie effect.

What its the Bernie Effect? He loses his passport in the London underground and it's returned within an hour. He loses his wallet at Octoberfest and the police write him a letter saying they found it with all the contents. Basically, he gives out good karma and thus the world rewards him. With it being so close to Christmas and the Bernie effect, I was confident in a Bernie miracle.

It came true. We got our bags back that evening, just in time for the trek!

Cheerio England, hello South America!

December 26th, Boxing Day, London

Bags are packed, we're ready to go! Three months in South America and a havasack and small bag each. At Heathrow we're thrilled that our American Airlines flight to Dallas Forth Worth is a code share and we actually get to fly British Airways. I'm quite nervous as we have a long journey ahead and too many changes: London to Dallas to Lima Peru onward to our final and first destination, Cuzco Peru. We've checked our bags to Lima and we get on the flight excited. We both immediately fall asleep and wake up 2 hours later in... Yup you guessed correctly, Heathrow. Flight's been delayed by two hours, exactly the layover time in Dallas.

But we figure the airline will have to put us on alternate flights if we miss our connections. 10 hours later, we're in Dallas and are given our "express pass" and told to run through immigration and security to our boarding gate to Lima. We make it in the nick of time but ask about our bags. The lady at the counter promises us that they are not leaving without our bags. Happily we get on board the flight with a huge tour group of Asians. We feel at home.

At Lima, we wait at the baggage carousel... And our bags don't show up. We're not too annoyed because we expected this in a way, travelling through the US is always a nightmare. We speak to a nice lady who shows us her computer screen which tells us our bags are in Dallas. There's only one flight a day she says, so hopefully you will get your bags tomorrow. We chill at the Priority Pass lounge and eat olives, confident that all will be well and isn't this all so exciting?!

We finally land in Cusco/Cuzco, 3400 m above sea level. We wait around for two hours filing reports and the confidence is going down as we listen to other people in the line who haven't received their bags for more than a week now.

Oh boy! We get to our quaint hostel Inkarri and are so pleased with wifi and skype as we get on the first of many calls to LAN, American Airlines, Cuzco airport, Lima airport, Dallas airport... And lots of angry tweets to AA.

The great South American Adventure has begun!