Paddington returns to Cusco!
What an absolutley amazing city, this place is incredible, we thought la paz was steep, well we managed to pick a hostel right at the top of the city, on the plus side its the nicest place we have stayed an for a fiver a night, its worth being left breathless every time we try to get back.!

Some girls have no dignity!
So sharing a 13 bedroom dorm we were woken up at 6 in rhe morning by an american lad and an english girl getting jiggy for us all to see and hear, her words were no lie, "when in rome"

Full body massage!
This seems to be the big thing in cusco, very attractive women offering massages. After meeting 2 danish lads on the bus upto cusco, we have spent the day wanderig around. Initially settling our appitites at the very cultural mcdonalds, wr decided it would be rude not to get a full massage done, especially as it only cost £4. The madsage was heavenly, but the 4 girls giving them seemed to have fallen in love with us all. Wanting photos of us after, and also wanting to takr us all to a "disco" later on. Oh peru!

No alcohol-its elections!
Apparently there are some big elections going on in cusco or peru, which means what?...oh yea no where is allowed to sell beverages, good one! Our hostel has a massive halls of residence feel to it, most of the people are from an english speaking country and so the hostel bar has been serving shots of rum to keep people happy for free.

Dancing on the bar!
So our hostel finally went into full swing and the bar came alive, me and Adam partying hard...again?! But this time by leading the crowd in dancing on the bar, pretty cringe now were sober and feeling rough but it was definatly something to witness. The bar was rammed and me and Adam didn't think we would get to know that many people, howeve by th end of the night w coulnt beleive how many people we had chatted with. This place is like freshers week over and over.

Traditional Bolivian drink, 
After a final meal in la Paz with the swedes the Waite brought out some "free drinks"/shots 3 of which looked ok, but one was under a tea towel...revealed as a jar with a dead snake in, pickled in some liqiour. Me and Adam necked a shot of this rather random shot and probably won't try it again!

Inccccaaaaaaa trail!
Alive to tell the story, although my knees may well be looking to get replaced soon. Possibly the hardest most. Physically challanging thing I have ever done. So what happened?

Day one- sad to be leaving the Loki hostel after a great time we rocked up at the outlined hotel for our breifing and first taste of luxuary for a while, filling our bag with snacks we were good to go!

Sacred valley- the first proper day of our tour was just around the inca sacred valley, visiting old inca settlements, understading how they worked and seeing for the first time the incredible way they used to farm the hillsides, and shape their settlements in the shapes of creatures sacred o them, or example cusco is built in the shape of a puma.

First day of the actual hike, a nice 11km walk to warm us up for what the trail is like in blistering heat was nice, fortunatly walkig along the mountain valleys the walk wasn't over strenuous, however me and Adam have been labbeled as gay by both the guides and two of the canadians on our tour, being told we bikker more than a married couple.

Shit head,
You might have heard of this card game, well w were playing it on the campsite with about half of the group all joining in, to make it more interesting we introduced a few forfits for the loser ( which turned out to be me) so there I was being made to run around the campsite shouting "I'm a happy shit head" 

Food poisoning, 
First night on the trail poor Adam and 3 other guys got struck with a bad case of sickness and the D word that comes out the other end ;-) sure Adam won't appriciate me saying this on here, but every hour he was up decorating the camp site, with his new found chunder buddies,

Up at 5am day 2
So our slave driving guide woke us all up at 5am so that we could conquor the hardest part of the inca trail. Known as the 'dead womans pass' this is located at 4215m above sea level, and it was basically the biggest bitch to climb ever, on uneven steep stairs you are constantly breathless over a space of 6 hours. Adam have not slept and feeling pretty weak, battled on hard inspired by poor renditions of the rocky soundtrack by many of us.

Gringa killing stairs, so after smashing the dead womans pass, team morale had not been higher! However this was only 2/3rds of the way to the end...all down hill to the camp site sound good? Well yea except you decend 800ms over 4kms so the stairs down were unbelievably steep and have smashed
my knees to pieces.

Shit head Adams forfit, 
The feeling of getting to camp on the second day of the trail was simpy incredible. Being able to lay down in our tents and chill was simply bliss, however after some lunch we re racked te cards fi another round of shit head, however this time the forit wad to get woken up at 4.30am and go round each tent offering people cups of tea...uh and Adam lost! But somehow he didint end up doing this!

Coca tea- so Bolivia and Peru love their coca leaves...the basic raw ingredient of cocaine not your dairy milk bars;-) these guys have it with every meal as if it's nothing, pretty surreal at the check in at the hotel we were given a cup each. Now it's meant to help with digestion and help combat altitude sickness, as it's not refined down into cocaine it's not the same (so mum I've not been doing drugs) to be honest after trying a cup of it, we don't understand what the fuss is about, just another cup of boring tea needing a hob nob dunking into to make barable. However everyone else in our group is smashing the cups of it, pass and move on I think. Further on from this it takes 150kgs of coca leaves to produce a gram of cocaine so I don't think we are in danger of addiction, side effects.

Day three of the hike 16kms
Waking up to pouring rain and the image of a big f**k off mountain that needed climbing was not the best thing ever, especially ad once again we got woken up at 5am! However the third day was actually the best despite being the longest, a lot nicer trails and a mi of up down and flat meant the day flew by, being back in camp before we knew it there was a bar and hot showers! Also machu pichu mountain was on the horizon!

Mountain penis! 
So the Andean people in there native ketuchua langauge love laughing at tourists, why? Well we all seem to prounounce the lost inca city machi pi-chu which translates to mountain penis, the actual way of saying it is machu pict-chu so our guides had fun with that one!

Day 4 3am wake up
6km left till we got to MP which was a nice flat and down hill decend, only problem was that it hammered it down! Walking at that stupid hour in that weather was about as funny as one of Adams jokes! However, reaching the sun gate (cloud gate) we could finally just about see the reward of this trip. There it was, machu pichu ready to be explored, an amazing place that is pretty bewildering. 
Eventually the clouds cleared and the standard photos were taken overlooking the place.

Crazy school girls
On thr trail there wad a school trip of secondary school girls that followed us for a couple of days, wanting to practice their English with us, all good until we got to mp and they found us, I think me and Adam have broke a lot of hearts as they swomped us, desperate to get photos of us in groups and individually, it was pretty cringe especially looking at the pouts they were all pulling. Far too young!!

Guinnea pig
A national Andean dish is guinea pig, and the last time I saw one was in the pet section of Harrods looking pretty cute, however when they are deep fried whole and served with chips, they takr on a whole new persona, not trying one myself 4 people in our group had one and yea I don't think I will be.

So that's the last week and a half guys, were staying in cusco for a while so the next update will prob be in a couple of weeks time, I've got a shed loads of photos from Argentina Bolivia and Peru to put up, hopefully in the coming days. Hope everyone is well back at home it's been a crazy 5 weeks so far! Xxxx