We waited in the Cruz del Sur office for our bus to come, which was suppose to be at 11.30pm. We booked a cruzcero suite bus, which we were led to believe was a full cama bed and paid extra for the privilege. However, much to our annoyance, the bus didn't turn up until 12.30am and when we got on, the bus was nice, full leather reclining seats with a private DVD player, but they didn't fully recline. This really annoyed me, as it was a night bus, we weren't even going to use the DVD player and we'd paid extra to have leather seats! Not amused, so we won't be using a cruzcero suite bus again in a hurry, although, the Cruz del Sur company is good on the whole. We settled down for the night as the bus was to take around 12 or 13 hours. I think I managed some sleep but once the morning came, we started winding round the mountains, so I ended up being sick. I just wanted to get to Cusco now.

After a few hours i'd made myself go to sleep so I didn't feel sick any more, it also made the rest of the journey go a lot quicker . The scenery around Cusco was really nice, lots of mountains around the place. Soon after, we arrived into the city. We'd arranged with the hostel we booked for a pickup from the bus terminal, but because we misjudged the time, we arrived earlier than we thought. So we just decided to get a taxi to the hostel instead. We got one from outside the terminal and asked them to take us to our hostel. We drove up to San Blas, which is the area we're staying in and the taxi driver told us he knew where the hostel is. So when he said it's up that road, we believed him and got out. When we walked up 'that' road, we couldn't see our hostel in sight, so we had to go in another hostel to ask where our one was. He pointed us in the right direction, but the only thing was that it was uphill, so we had to walk at high altitude (3000 metres plus) lugging all our things uphill to get to the hostel. It will be good practise for Machu Picchu I suppose, but it's very hard work for me, specially with my asthma, when we are coming from a lower level elevation. After all that effort walking up the hill, we found our hostel. We thought we were really far out from everything, but actually we weren't.

We checked into our hostel and the lady said she had sent someone to pick us up and he was at the bus station waiting for us. That was really annoying after all the hassle trying to get a taxi here, and it would have saved us the taxi fare . They had called the bus company to check what time our bus got in and were waiting for us at the terminal. They got there only 10 minutes after we left, which was a shame. Never mind. So after checking in to our room, we decided to go and explore the local area. We had a look around for local restaurants to eat at later. The area we are staying in isn't far away from the main square as we first thought. It's just down a few streets. When walking down those streets in San Blas, they are full of all the artesanal market stalls, which are all the kinds of shops I want to visit here. We found the main square and it was only a 10 minute walk. While we were walking down, I saw a little girl dressed up in traditional dress and she had a llama with her, it looked so cute and I haven't yet seen a llama, so I got a picture with her. She was a sweet little girl, so I gave her a sol. She was happy with that and I got my picture with her wearing traditional clothing. We walked around the plaza and there was a big church there. I'm getting a good feeling about Cusco, I like what i've seen so far . On the way back we found some nice restaurants in the San Blas area, and a lot of them did a set menu for only $14 soles including a drink. We found one we liked the look of and ate in there. They had nachos which tempted me into going there in the first place, but also local Peruvian dishes and other international dishes too. John was tempted by the free pisco sour drink, so he had one of them along with his dinner. Although it was a value meal we had, the food was excellent and I would thoroughly recommend this restaurant to anyone. It was called Tootaquachi, in the San Blas area of Cusco. After dinner we walked back to get an early night as we're shattered after the long bus journey.

The next morning, we got up and got our free breakfast, they have a nice seating area which has nice views over the whole of Cusco, so we sat up there taking in the views. We're not up to much today, only looking round Cusco and we have to pay the final balance to Peru Treks for our inca trail trek . We wandered around the artesanal shops in San Blas as i'm looking for one of those llama jumpers that all travellers have. John's going to buy me one for my birthday, so I want to find the right one. There are so many shops and lots of them sell the same thing. I just need to find one I like and see if we can barter the price down at all. I keep seeing so many things I like, but i've hardly any room in my rucksack for any new clothes. When we'd looked around enough shops as John could take, we took a walk down to the Peru treks office. We found it and went in to pay the balance. There were 2 other couples in there starting the trek in 2 days, so I presume they will be on our tour too. When we paid the balance, they called us into the other room and gave us the explanation about what will happen on our Machu Picchu tour. I can't believe it's in 2 days now, i'm getting so excited. Once that was all sorted out, we carried on looking around and had some lunch in McDonald's for quickness. This one had loads of wall murals about Machu Picchu, which was pretty cool for a McDonald's . Someone told me about the best ice-cream shop in town, so we went on a hunt for the place. It was a mission to find, but when we did finally find it, the ice-cream was to die for. I loved the ice-cream from here. Afterwards, we walked round some of the hiking shops to find any last minute bits that we needed for the trek and I found a market stall where I found the jumper I liked. John liked a hat and I liked the jumper, so we asked for a discount and the lady agreed, so John got the items and we were happy with our purchases. That night, we stopped off at our favourite restaurant again. This time, I ordered something called tequenos, which is a Mexican dish I hadn't heard of before. They are similar to nachos, but they have mozzarella cheese inside a rolled up nacho and they are also served with homemade guacamole. They were gorgeous, they are my new favourite thing! The rest of the food was excellent too.

Today is our last full day in Cusco before we depart for Machu Picchu . We needed to go back to the Peru Treks office today to ask something we forgot about Wanya Picchu. We wanted to check if our tickets had been booked for it, so needed to ask them at the office. When we walked down to the main square, there were hundreds of people marching and protesting. When I looked at some of the posters they were holding, I could see the protest was about pensions and pay, so similar to ones you'd get back at home. This protest, was however very peaceful and people were actually singing, which was good to see for a change. We carried on walking around the rest of the streets and there were literally thousands of people marching around and all the shops were closed. I have never seen so many people protesting all so peacefully. So when we made it through all the crowds of people to the office, it was closed. We rang the bell a few times and eventually somebody came down to us. He didn't speak English, so he said he would call someone for us. I spoke to a lady and she said they hadn't booked us tickets to climb Wanya Picchu, and that they were all fully booked now, so that was really annoying, we can't climb it now . We both really wanted to do it after Machu Picchu, but now we can't, never mind. After that, we walked back into the streets and the parade was still going on, i've never seen anything like it. We had to hang around for it to finish before the shops could open as we needed to buy supplies for Machu Picchu. When the shops did open, we went to the supermarket to buy things. Afterwards, there were a couple of local girls dressed up traditionally with a couple of baby lambs. I couldn't resist, and had to get some pictures with them. I even got John to get one done too. The lambs had knitted hats on and were so cute and fluffy. We walked back to the hostel, where John attempted to dye my hair for me. It was quite difficult at first, as he's never done it before, but when he got the hang of it, my hair turned out well. Afterwards, we went back to our favourite restaurant one last time before our trek. John tried llama steak, which he enjoyed, he said it tasted like beef. I really love this little restaurant, although there are probably hundreds of quaint places around Cusco to eat. After we'd finished a lovely dinner, we had to go back to pack our things for tomorrow. We decided to only take our small day packs as there was no way I was lugging my heavy backpack up all those inca steps. We hired a porter anyway to carry the rest of our sleeping bag gear, so hopefully that will make it easier for me. Now we're packed, we need to get an early night as we have a really early start tomorrow. I don't mind getting up for this trek of a lifetime tho.... Here's to celebrating my birthday at Machu Picchu.