trip to Cusco!

 I left Rio Branco at midnight, in a very comfortable bus . I slept like a baby, to awake around 6 am, because we stopped at the border. First, to leave Brazil. We waited for one hour for the immigration officer to get there, another hour to have all our paperwork done. No problem, a lady and her pickup truck were there to see hot coffee and bread with cheese. Very welcome and very cheap! I had still some letters to send, thinking there would be a mailbox here at the border. Nope. So I gave them to the coffee lady who accepted to post them. i hope she did ;-)Finally we could board again, drive some 2 km, and stop. 

 Peruvian customs. Be patient. Enjoy the view. A very muddy street, because all the side streets were not paved and it rained a lot. A chicken crossed the streets with here 6 young adult chicks. Two dogs decided to chase a little pig that passed by. The custom office, just a building in concrete, faced a bar-grocery-exchange office. For one euro you can even take a shower, what the two drivers did, because the bus made the trip from São Paulo, Brazil, to Lima, Peru! 5 days in total! I only had a 24 hour trip ;-)

 Finally around 10 am we could leave, and a beautiful journey started . All these special landscapes! First flat plains, often under water. Villages looking very poor, streets rarely paved except our “main road”. I saw groups of palm trees with their feet in some brownish water. Lots of tropical forest still, some times open spaces where one could see the forest had been burnt to win the land. Cows chewing grass, looking like the Indian cows, but here they are much less skinny ;-) Special trees, standing alone, looking a little bit prehistoric. 

 Around 14hr, landscape changes, hills. Around 1530hr, we are in some kind of Austria landscape, mountains full of trees and some flowers, rivers down the valley, little streams running down the slopes, lovely views. Even the cows that now stand on the grassy slopes! Still this is not Austria, since the fir trees are replaced by banana trees and palm trees, and the houses are not in wood with lovely flower balconies, no, here, just concrete barracks like in the valley.

 The bus stops around 6 pm at his regular dinner stop place, we can have some soup and rice-meat-salad dish if we want, and by the time we leave, it is dark! Too bad, I will not be able to see the beautiful mountain landscapes!I feel we are getting higher and higher though, the bus is going slowly, we turn a lot (I almost get sick, I should not have taken the soup ;-)), it starts to be really cold and I am happy I had my good sweater with me (the bus has aircon but no heating), and my ears start to pop pop pop ;-)

 By midnight we stop in Cusco, and I find a funny little taxi for 7 "nuevos soles", I give 10 (3 euro) and am so happy to have a real bed and a good shower. 

 I loved this long slow trip! With a flight, you just jump over all that, it is quicker, yes, but I so much more like to take my time and see the country I am in! So I think that maybe I will try to make a long bus trip with some stops when I go back to Rio, if it is not too much more expensive that the flights of course, one never knows here ;-)