Border crossings - illegal aliens in Peru (Soundtrack: Sting - Englishman in Peru)

We returned to Copacabana had a quick breakfast, went to the book exchange for new reading material and then did a bit of haggling for bus tickets to the city of Cusco, Peru. Unfortunately the official at the border didn't agree with our calculation of 90 days as the total of our duration in Bolivia - he counted 91 days (including the day we arrived as one whole day, as opposed to one day being 24 hours after the moment we arrived). So, we had to join the naughty line to await our charge of about one quid fifty each. The meagre penalty itself we could have lived with - it was what happened afterwards that became a ball ache. As we'd had to spend extra time queuing in two queues we were quite far behind in line, and most of the people from our bus had moved on. The bus conductor was getting impatient and moved us to the front to get our stamp, telling us to hurry up. We got our stamps boarded the bus once more. It wasn't until we had almost reached our destination that we realised that we'd only recieved our exit stamp from Bolivia, and not our entry stamp for Peru! Whilst we had been waiting to pay our fine (which we shouldn't have had to pay in the first place) our fellow passengers had dissapeared, not to the bus as we'd thought, but to another office to get their entry stamps. No one had told us about the other office and we'd been rushed through. So we were illegal aliens in Peru.


As we passed through vast expanses of open fields the air became jet-black with smoke from huge areas of burning grass; some kind of natural pasture burning for grass renewal. It gave the impression of traveling through a war-torn country dotted with the smouldering remains of bombed-out villages.

We arrived in Cusco late and managed to find a fairly cheap hotel despite the 'historical centre of Peru' being possibly one of the most tourist-driven places in South America, due to it's history as the capital of the Inca empire and its close proximity to Machu Picchu.

Despite it being completely over-run with visiting foreigners (ourselves included of course), with over 850,000 visiting in 2007 alone, and with all the high brow accommodation and restaurants to cater for them, Cusco is a pretty nice city. There's plenty of nice old colonial architecture and narrow cobbled roads and stone walls (many of which were built by the Incas), and the many plazas are always bustling. You do get sick to death of the countless people trying to sell you dinners and massages though, prompting the creation of the Irish bar's 'NO GRACIAS!' T-shirt. There were few street parades during our time there and we visited an art exhibition of giant paper mache swine-flu related pigs!

We found respite from the masses in the local semi-open air market, where each we'd start by eating breakfast with the locals. This would consist of a couple of Tamales (steam cooked corn dough, sweet or savoury, wrapped in a corn husk) and bad coffee, and maybe an egg buttie for good measure.

Due to the daily turn over of visiters using Cusco as base to visit Machu Picchu, there's a pretty good night life, with several clubs lining the central plaza. On our second night I asked around to see if I could get a gig or two and soon enough I'd been invited to play at 4 clubs the following night!

The first one had a really nice layout with the booth up on a balcony looking down onto the crowd below. Some classic Hip Hop and Funk coaxed out a couple of B-boys and soon enough there was a battle going on, much to the delight of the circle of onlookers. Thats the first time I've played to the B-boys in a while and it felt good, reminding me of the K0 Rockin'It days! Just shame I was playing on the most basic of CD decks - I was itchin' for a scratch! In the second I played mainly breaks and a bit of reggae, and ended up playing for a good 4-5 hours, so I never made it to clubs 3 and 4!

We booked the mandatory trip to Machu picchu. We chose the 4-day 'jungle tour' which would involve one day of bombing down a mountain on a bike and a few days trecking through the jungle to get to the ancient site. We'd originaly wanted to do it alone, without a tour, but the price was pretty reasonable and I was well up for some mountain biking. So we packed our bags and got ready for some serious walking.....