Sth America - Part 3 and 1/2 - From Melbourne to Cuzco....

Thought I might backtrack to our eventual departure from Melbourne to right now (so this is a sort of prequel to our last post).

We finally got out of Melbourne after waiting for 8 plus hours from 3 am and flew into Sydney - where we had to change the crew (because if we flew to LAX with them - they would be flying for over 20 hours or something). Check post number 3 for the link to Ant's Flyer Talk discussion post for the full gory details. But to cut a long story short - they had to replace the crew cabin door (which took half an hour) while we waited at the Sydney tarmac. There was almost a riot on board (I mean - is it really critical to fix the crew hidey-hole door - the plane won't fall out of the sky because of it!)...

We arrived anxiously into LAX - worried if we would miss our flight to Lima that we would have to stay another night in LAX. Fortunately - we battled our way through LAX and got to our flight on time. Our heart went out to this guy who was on our flight and had been booked on an Antartica cruise. He had originally been booked on Aero Linea - but had rebooked on Qantas (to avoid the Aero Linea strikes).... but he was almost going to miss his flight to Argetina and miss the boat literally.

LAX is a complete dive. Canberra airport looks lightyears more modern than LAX. The security was a complete mess - and we had to fight our way thru breakdancing jews (no kidding) to get to an ATM.

The flight to Lima wasn't too bad - we managed to fit in a couple of hours sleep before we landed at Lima Airport at about 1am local time. The customs at Lima was funny - if you have nothing to declare - you have to push a button which randomly either goes 'green' (ie - you are free to pass) or 'red' (ie you and your bags get stripped searched) - thankfully - the light was green for Ant and I. Another crazy thing at Lima Airport (which made LAX look like a third country airport) - they had a big sign warning people to declare X-Box's and Playstations otherwise they get confiscicated. This gave me the chills - I didn't want my shiny new PSP be taken away by overjealous customs officiers - but thankfully - they didn't find it. I was almost considering to hide it in an orifice since the thing cost me $400.

We were greeted at Lima Airport by a pervian with a 'Anthony' sign - we followed him into his souped up station wagon - complete with crazy horn and Inxs CD player... As we drove through the streets of Lima at 2am - it seemed pretty seedy. Ant and I got completely s$$$ scared when he pulled up into a back alley and drove us into a gated compound. We both thought - 's$## we are going to get robbed on our first night in Sth America'. However the compound was the hostel - and we weren't going to get robbed.

We slept in the next day to about midday - where we had to pack and venture back to the airport. Lima by day didn't seem as seedy as it was by night - but it was definately dusty and ghetto looking. We had breakfast at "Papa John's" - an american franchise at the airport. It seemed pretty reasonable (but they were Peru airport prices).

Our flight to Cuzco (or Cusco or (I can't remember the Inca spelling?!)) was fairly uneventual - but LAN made Qantas look like Aeroflot. There was this loud american guy who was continously bit"hing to the hostesses (this wasn't our last encounter with this guy either).

We arrived in Cusco late in the afternoon. It is a really scenic old town - set in a "mini" valley - with heaps of old churches, cobblestone roads and touts. We ran into one 12 year old tout who warned us not to follow a bunch of women tourists nearby because "they are a bunch of lesbians". (Of note - we ran into this "bunch of lesbians" the next day...).

We went to bed pretty early - but had a really bad night's sleep (with what all the wild dogs roaming the streets outside). We got moving at the crack of dawn to get to the MP train station (5am to be precise). Things started pretty badly when the kiosk at the train station had run out of food. Also - the food on the train itself was pretty limiting (there was one plate of crossiants to go around all the passengers).

See the previous post for more gory details on the doomed train ride to hell.

Following on from the whacked out American guy and the bunch of lesbians - they all happened to be travelling in our carriage on the doomed train ride to hell. The American guy was giving all americans a bad name when he was continually slagging off all the pervian staff. It almost got a bit South Park when he started screaming "ondelay!!" to the driver. I thought he was going to start saying "why don't you start eating some tacos you stewpid mexicans!". The group of "lesbians" happened to be a group of uni students from Adelaide. They said that they had bought some llama finger puppets from the 12 year old tout and when one of them refused to buy the finger puppets - he called them all a bunch of lesbians.

Anyhow - when we got back to Cuzco we managed to get full refunds from the train (despite them having terms and conditions which said that they have no liability) and the hostel at MP. Ant tried calling up the insurance but they wouldn't cover it if we wanted to change the flights - lucky for them "public uprisings" are exempt.

We checked out the local press - apparently there is some local militia who are making sure no tourists trains get through to MP over the next few days. So maybe it was for the best that we didn't get there (didn't want to be stuck there for 3 days plus). Here is a link to the Lonely Planet "Thorn Tree" forum site which talks about the MP riot/train - http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/messagepost.cfm?postaction=reply&catid=22&threadid=704981&messid=5982251

Anyhow - tomorrow we will do a 8km "hike" near Cusco in an attempt to get our "Seven Cities of Gold" Inca ruins fix.

And we are now off to dinner. I'm wanting to try some local pervian cuisine - apparently Alpacas and Guinea Pigs are on the menu. Bon Appite!