Going to Peru? Albaca ya bags!

LONDON

It was a whirlwind last few weeks' of work for me. Trying to pack up four and a half years of my life, handing over my job and heading to multiple drinks trying to get to say goodbye to everyone. My grown nails ended up being bitten to within a mm of the tip and the drinking was a maximum with all the goodbyes including Wheatley's the week before mine, where I went exceptionally hard and quite honestly starting to feel my age. However, I was immensely grateful I could work from home that Friday to attempt to sort my life/ teach myself to eat again.

I packed up everything I owned and pulled my bike apart, thanks to Bike Shop BF Adam for coming over early the next week and helping me sort it. I shipped my bike away on the weekend in to a crate for the Great Southern Land- without insurance to hoping I will still have a bike!

I had a date on Tuesday night at Roxie's which I’ve been averaging once a week since I decided I was leaving Londres. The date was hilarious as he kept on changing the subject. It got very stressful for me and it was at this time I realised , this is how people felt talking to me, and having me randomly bring up a new topic!

Last Day of work with my throwaway dress

I had a very poorly organised after work drinks Wednesday and by the time it was my last day, I was running on alcohol and limited sleep. Thursday, I had an awesome afternoon lunch at the NED so called IT to come and collect my phone and computer and spent the morning saying goodbye to everyone. The Ned was a relief but a stress in itself realising I was now unemployed. It wasn’t long before I bumped in to someone I knew- Aidan’s long head popping in. The copious amounts of alcohol worked as a stress relief at the couple of intervals when I realised that the transfer to Heathrow was picking me up 4:30am and concurrently I had to pack up my room and clean it and put my shit away for my departure. Argh the stress. Beautiful nails gone.

I stupidly hadn’t checked my Expedia ticket so had to spend £50 for my bag which sucked as I’d much rather spent 100£ on a better airline than Air France which quite frankly – sucked. I boarded the plane and it was apparently a prison transfer flight of some skits Africans that did not want to be deported home. After a short delay to kick him off the plane and a short stop in Paris, and a 13-hr flight on a plane with the world’s worst leg room, I landed in Lima Peru, and was very shortly after greeted by Phoebs, who had travelled from Australia for our Adventure. I should mention that on the plane I sat next to a mind reading duo. I’m not sure if they could read my mind calling bullshit on their mind reading but I told him have fun in there for 13 hours before I knocked myself out with some Stilnox.

PERU

We basically landed, left the airport, spent an hour in an UBER to the hotel, had dinner and had to be up at 6am for our flight to Cusco the next morning. So, we didn’t really get to see a great deal of Lima at all.

After the short flight to Cusco we went past a hotel to pick up a couple of Lads – first glance I saw the tall Brunette with Blue eyes and I was like ‘wow’ then I saw his mate who was also good-looking but had zip off cargos and some questionable attire, then I went from thinking ‘this guy meets all my criteria’ to thinking, ‘these dudes are gay!’ Anyhow it turns out Rhys from Sydney and Bobbie from Boston are not a couple, however together with Phoebs and I we certainly became the awesome foursome.

That afternoon we took a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas and saw the Pisac ruins, perched on a hilltop with incredible views of the surrounding mountains. We also visited the fortress of Ollantaytambo with its enormous Inca terracing constructed on the side of a steep mountain. We stopped off on the way back to the hotel to split a Guinea Pig for a snack before dinner, which I bloody hated. Bobby became Bear Grilles and even ate the eyes out of the little man. Here we discussed our guide Wilson’s grandfather being 107. Ridiculous. We had team dinner where we shared a bottle of red and had a cocktail in preparation for our hike to Machu Picchu tomorrow here I showed I was all talking no action, retiring early to bed.

Day 3 – Macchu Piccu started with an early get up to take the train one stop (104km mark) in order to hike. I was wearing my trusty trainers and Bieber T-Shirt, Phoebs looked stylish in 2XU leggings, Bobby had all the gear and a knee brace because he had done his ACL 6 months earlier (positively sure that his OT would be over the moon he was trekking), and Rhys was wearing RM Williams work boots. There were so many weirdos on the train with all the gear, one guy opposite us was from Arizona and was saying he was an Athlete so had to eat a lot constantly. Eye rolls.

We set off with Me DJ-ing bangers along the way. Early on I struggled with my breathing but after a couple of stops I was feeling good. So much so that when Arizona man caught up to us at a stop, I legged it and said ‘come on group let’s go!’ setting off at a faster pace to gain some momentum away from him.  Instead of reaching the Sun Gate late afternoon, our group set a blistering pace reaching there at 2:30pm, being the first group to finish (yes, we beat the Athlete!) and stuffing our guide in the process. We sat from Sun Gate in awe and took it all in, before walking down and having a closer look. We had a further tour around the site, which I could have missed and caught the train straight back as I was feeling fragile and tired by this time, but I persevered and we hit town for dinner before boarding the last train at 7pm.

The train ride was hilarious, we started playing ‘Bullshit’ with cards and at one stage some angry Belgium man turned around and was like “this is a train not a pub” to Bobby. We lost our shit laughing but it meant our game lost its pizazz and we soon stopped. It made us all very happy that there were circa 6 kids sitting behind the angry man being absurdly loud for the remainder of the trip and we sat back with our beers, smiling. Karma.

We disembarked the train and boarded our van back to Cusco. We thought our adventure for the day was over, but boy were we wrong! First of all, the driver got pulled over by the police and had to bribe his way out of it, next old mate Drives decided to take a short cut back to Cusco – which can only be described as a track very much under construction, and yet to be on Google Maps. At one stage our spare tyre fell off, not being able to handle all the bumps and rocks on the road. 

The next day our group swelled to 7, with the addition of two Aussie girls and a British dude. We had a free day, but we maintained our perfect foursome and walked to the Jesus statue in Cusco – which I found harder than Macchu Piccu. I wasn’t feeling great this day, and after a quick wander through probably the shittest museum I’ve ever been to – the Inca Museum, we decided we were over walking e and shut up shop at a bar for the remainder of the day, drinking every Pisque Sour on the menu before having a team dinner and we hit the salsa club in Cusco town centre. Poor Rhys had to leave us with two for one Pina Coladas and return to the hotel as the toilet seat was missing from the salsa club.

Day 5 we had 8 hours on the world’s most luxurious bus, which I did not expect to find in Peru. I did not sleep, as my lucid dreams were keeping me solidly anxious. We stopped off at the local about 5 hours in and I asked Phoebs what she wanted. She was feeling rough, so said, maybe share a Powerade instead of Soft drink. I picked up two Coronas and said ‘Beers?’ and she said, ‘Yep’ so then we rapidly became the coolest people on the bus. Puno we were up again early to get to the markets and saw a local wedding, we were off again, this time picked up at our hotel by a Tuk Tuk for the hilarious cycle down to Lake Titicaca courtesy of our 80-year-old cycling guide to see the floating village.

This was rare, but I don’t think I really rated it, nor did I think it was worth the 3-hour boat rides there to the reed floating island Uros and back to see that and the other Island Taquile. I thought, seeing as we could see Bolivia, couldn’t we just keep going? But no, we were back to Puno again this time to party as it was Bobby’s last night. We had dinner at a restaurant where there were local flutists and dancers, it was very impressive and hilarious at the same time. I had Alpaca for dinner and it was delicious. We ventured to a bar where Phoebs cleaned up the pool table, while Rhys and I sucked. The bar was pretty cool cos we got to choose our own bangers and enjoy two for one cocktail at the mandatory happy hour that each bar has every night it appears in South America. Here Patrick came out of his Tortoise Shell and almost took Best on Ground off Phoebs, who dominated the dance floor and pool tables. We lugged ourselves back to the hotel at 1am and could not get in, which sucked. We finally woke our guard and managed a half 1 sleep before a 6am wake up for the bus ride to Copacabana. Here we said goodbye to Bobby, which was sad in itself, but he quite rightly so, could not be arsed trying to enter Bolivia with an American passport.

First stop was immigration, where the Peruvian government decided that they wanted to search our bags, presumably for bags. They soon realised our bags were at the bottom of the bus and gave up, in this time, we walked across the border to Bolivia and re-boarded our bus to Copacabana. This place I rated. Instantly, I liked this side of Lake Titicaca better, the water was clearer, and it was like a little seaside village. We stopped off for some Empanada at the hippy Argentinean man with swimmingly blue eyes’ bakery and meandered waterside to a rooftop bar to enjoy a Corona, before we had to again board the bus to take what can only be described as the world’s worst punt boat to continue another couple hours to La Paz.