22/04/2011 (posted 23/04/2011)
Somehow got up for breakfast at 10am despite the exhausting previous four days.
At breakfast, I met an English girl called Steph who is 23 and very easy to get along with.
I felt somewhat of a failure at having not seen any of the Ince sites in and around Cusco so we decided to do a city tour.
I firstly dropped off my 4kg bag of laundry, the smell of which I wouldn´t wish any mammal with cognitive thought to smell. We then went to the street with all the tour salespeople and were surrounded by people advertising their various offers.
Eventually we offered for one that cost 12soles (2.50pounds) which is insane.
We had lunch at a nice place with a free salad bar and most importantly, delicious pepperoni pizza. She´s from Manchester and has been travelling for a few months and will continue to until October, which makes her pretty interesting to talk to and get travelling tips from.
We then got on our bus for the city tour and waited for half an hour which made us think we had perhaps been conned. Yesterday she went on a ´city tour´ for 25soles but, having already paid, was originally not picked up from the meeting place and after forcing them to take her, was left at one of the sites and had to walk back.
However this tour was great - the guide spoke English and Spanish and frequently flitted between the two mid-sentence without pausing, but he was a funny guy and gave us some good information at each site.
There were four sites: Sachsaywuman (sounds like ´sexy woman´ the way they pronounce it) and three others with Inca names that I can´t remember.
A Brazilian guy on the tour who spoke English and I also quickly walked across to a massive statue of Jesus on top of the hill next to Sachsaywuman. The view is breathtaking and it was a brilliant spiritual moment to be up there next to JC.
All in all it was very interesting and well worth the money - still can´t get over how cheap it was.
When we got back to Cusco, I was aching all over from the Inca Trail and some of the walking today and decided to have a massage. When walking around Cusco, all tourists are constantly hassled by people advertising massages so it wasn´t tough to find a place.
I had a full body massage (not as bad as it sounds if you interpret that the wrong way, this was a proper massage parlour and not a ´massage parlour´), some hot stones on my back and she tempted me into having a pedicure which I have to admit was nice. It all cost the equivalent of 10pounds which was an absolute steal - she really dug in to my back and legs and it felt sooooo gooood afterwards.
After an hour and a half of being pampered, I went with Steph to a place for dinner. We were going to have Guinea Pig but a local warned us that it´s too heavy to have as an evening meal so we´re going to try it tomorrow lunch.
It´s the local delicacy so has to be done.
Got back to the hostel and there were two English guys who had joined me in my dorm room, Julian and Oscar, who seem cool.
At this stage I just crashed, the previous four days having finally caught up with me.
Massages are great.
JG
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