Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Road to Cusco


IMGP5701
Originally uploaded by theslaad.
Our bus to Cusco from Nasca was supposed to be a 14 hour journey, leaving at 11pm and arriving at 1pm the following day. We booked some comfy seats and hoped that we would have a relatively hassle free journey. The guide book recommends not to take night buses as there are high instances of theft while you sleep, but we knew from when we caught the bus from Lima that the Cruz de Sur company films everyone getting on, and we knew there'd only be 9 people in our section.

It was not, however, a very hassle free journey!
The seats were comfy enough, but the road was very windy and uphill so there were lots of gear changing jerks. We managed to get some sleep but did feel quite motion sick. That turned out to be the least of our worries!
We woke up at about 9am to find that we were stationary. There had been a lot of rain and it looked as though a river had burst it's banks, turning the road into a bit of a river. It was okay though, as we manged to cross the water eventually.
A couple of hours later we came around a corner to find lorries parked along the side of the road. The bus driver kept going, but soon we were reversing to join the quene of staionary traffic. There was an announcement, but our spanish isn't yet good enough to understand what was said, but we did catch the word mañana (tomorrow), which is never a good sign. We sat around a bit, a few people got off the bus, and there were quite a few locals milling around.
After half an hour or so of waiting we went to find out what was going on. It turned out that there had been a huge rockfall which had completely blocked the road, and at best it would be cleared by the next day.
The concept of spending that long on the bus without any food didn't really appeal so we took the offer of a taxi from a local guy by the bus. The guys carried our rucksacks down past all of the parked traffic and over the rockfall where we gave them a few soles for their trouble and got into a taxi which we thought would take us to Cusco - another 3 or 4 hours away.

Around 3 or 4 minutes down the road we were stopped by the police who were in the process of retrieving a lorry from a ditch with a worn out rope and another truck. They told the passengers in the boot to get out and we squeezed past that little mishap. Once we were out of sight of hte police, the guys jumped back into the boot and we were on our way.

Until, 5 minutes later we encountered a mudslide, which was blocking the road. We had to abandon our taxi and take our things around the road, over a kind of verge to the other side of the slide where there were more taxis waiting. As you might expect, the verge was very slippery and we both fell over. I went down on my butt, and Chris broke his fall nicely on his rucksack.
We piled a lot of people into the car, three in the boot with our muddy rucksacks, and carried on with our journey.

This time we managed around half an hour before we had to get another taxi. We had thought that we were being taken all of the way to Cusco, but the driver just wanted to go to the next village where we were dropping off most people. We then had to wait around for our next taxi to fill up with passengers. Despite the obvious illegality, the car isn't full until there's someone in the boot!

Luckily, this taxi did take us all the way to Cusco. There were many more rockfalls to negotiate, but they only took up half the road, so we could still pass. The driver was a maniac though, and we occassionally feared for our lives when on the wrong side of the road going around a corner at 60kmph.

We arrived in Cusco at about 5pm, with very sore legs from being squashed into the back of the taxi, but glad to finally be at our destination. The git of a taxi driver wouldn't take us all the way into town though and ushered us into yet another taxi for our hotel. We were quite cross when we found out that it was in easy walking distance, but too tired and thirsty to care.

We stayed our first night in a charity hotel called Hotel Niños. It was nice, buit we didn't have our own bathroom, so this morning we moved ot a lovelly place for 40% of the price called Hotel Frankenstein, which is also nearer town. It's a very homely hotel, you can use their kitchen and living room, where there'a a nice wood burning fire. We have to negotiate our way around their pet Iguana - Martin in the mornings as he sits at the top of the stairs where there is the most sun.

Cusco seems very nice. We've spent today wandering around a bit. Have already bought a few things, and we're thinking that we are going to buy an extra bag! I've got a nice hat to keep my ears warm, as it gets pretty chilly up hear at an altitude of 3500m, it also makes it a bit tricky to breathe. But we should acclimatise in a few days.

3 Comments:

At 11:02 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's no llama... it's an Alpaca and I want one now!!!!!!! How gorgeous is that and with the old ladies in peruvian clothes, it's fantastic. Love the little iguana fella as well!

Sorry your journey wasn't the best but it's what backpacking is all about, a bit of adventure now and then.

Please please please bring me back an alpaca.... please.....

 
At 12:34 am, Blogger Chris and Jen Coleman said...

We'll try to bring back a little one for you.

Incidentally, most of the taxis we took on the trip weren't actually taxis, just opportunist locals.

 
At 4:07 pm, Blogger Leiali said...

What plucky travellers you are! Glad you got there in the end, and are staying somewhere nice!

 

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