Altitude

It fuckin sucks ass.

Seriously, Cuzco was the first time I had experienced altitude and the effects it has on the human body. Now as you all know I don´t claim to be a healthy individual, in fact if you´ve read the other posts I´ve written you know I´m a bit of a lazy shite. So imagine my chagrin when I found that in Cuzco, what with it being about 3500 meters above sea level I managed to get out of breath whilst doing feck all. Seriously I lost my breath when lying in bed sometimes (and not when I participating in nocturnal fun stuff either). Everyone is in the same boat so it´s not really anything to do with my health or lack thereof, the air is just really thin. It did mean that I hated steps with a passion. Not helped in any way by the fact the loki Hostel we were staying in was 116 steps up from the town centre (I have numbers OCD, I count all sorts of weird shit - my old house was 198 steps from the shop and it took 8 minutes to drive from there to my brothers house, just strange.)

Cuzco is probably the most touristy town we have visited, everyone who wants to visit Macchu Pichu comes through here, so it´s not just decked out for the backpacker trail like most places, there are loads of "tourists" around, Americans wearing hiking boots and vest jackets with loads of pockets, that type of stuff.

There are a couple of good night spots though, Paddy Oflatterhys is an Irish bar we frequented on a nightly basis followed by Mama Africa´s, a dingy nightclub full of Peruvian slappers. The former was just full of coke fiends and dirty locals...we went a couple of times.

So the time has come, off to the king of ruins, just a taxi and a train ride away is Macchu Pichu!