Nov 20, 2005 - Cusco, Peru

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The stairs to Loki Hostel	Plaza de Armas at night, from afar	Plaza at night, close-up	Another try at the night time plaza
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Plaza at night, closest	Cusco's cathedral at night	Cathedral at night again	Final night time wide shot
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Same shot, morning time	Close shot in the morning	In the Plaza	The plaza from another side
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Cusco's central church	Cusco's Cathedral	The church and the cathedral	Me in an alley in Cusco

We finally got into Cusco sometime in the afternoon, and Maddy and Sarah (the two girls form teh Huanchaco hostel), and Bryan (a friend of Maddy's who had joined them just for a short Peruvian vacation) decided to stick together. Well, more correctly, the three of them let me tag along with them, so we checked into a hostel together. Maddy and Bryan are both from Australia and friends from back home, and Sarah is Canadian who is travelling alone but met Maddy a while back and they have buddied up ever since. The four of us actually stuk together for the next 5 or so days, and it was great to have some constant company and cool people to do things with. Those guys were really great.

Hoever, my first few days in Cusco sucked! First of all, I was still getting over the sickness, but it is truly miraculous what those wonder drugs can do. I didn't each much of anything during the bus ride, and Saturday night in Cusco just had some soup for dinner. But by the next morning, after my 4th dose, I was back to true form eating a massive breakfast of eggs, bread, fruit salad with yogurt and granola, fresh juice and coffee. After that, I was back to normal. The reason why these days sucked is that I could not do anything enjoyable or touristy in Cusco since I had to be searching down my Machu Picchu travel agent. Long story short, I had booked with them, and sent 50% of my money, but was having a heard time getting in touch with them and findng out information about the trip or if I even had a reservation. I was supposed to leave on Wednesday so I was a bit worried. Sunday I really just slept in and had that breakfast, and then started going to all these agencies to find out how I could find them, and what I would need to do if I couldn't. Of course, it was Sunday so many things were closed which did not make it easier. The office address that I had for them was no longer in use and people there told me the company had moved a few months ago. So of course none of the phone numbers I had were working, none of the tourist information and control places had the new info, and the address that he sent me in an email a while back tunred out to be wrong, or just false. I went there and it was just a house where the people outisde knew nothing of Exotic Adventures or the guy Alfredo Cornejo who I had been in conact with. The day ended with a simple dinner and some rest and not much else.

Then Monday turned out to be the worst day so far of my trip. Not so much because anything so terrible happened, but because it was just so boring, frustrating, and such a waste of time to be dealing with this crap for the entire day, late into the night, when I could have been enjoying the amazing city of Cusco. Let me break my comedy of errors down for you:

I woke up and went to South American Explorers office since they recommended Exotic Adventures to me, and I figured they could help me out with all this. They thought I should try the house address again since maybe he was just working from home and stopped paying rent for his office. So I checked that out, actually spoke to the people that lived there, and still nothing. I also went back to his old office and asked the people that worked around there but they had no new info or contacts. Back at SAE they figured something bad had happened, and I should go to iPeru, the tourist information office and control of tourism and its agencies in the area. The address that SAE gave me for iPeru turned out to be wrong, and when I called back to SAE from the street nobody picked up. I finally found it, and was supposed to talk with Paola, the woman who we had called fromt he SAE office and knew of my situation and was going to help me. But she was out to lunch and I had to speak with someone else and explain the situation all over again. iPeru checked the registration of tourists on the Inca Trail since they control the path, only 500 people can go a day, and they need to be registered 5 days in advance. My name was not on the list, nor was any name reserved under Exotic Advntures in the last week. We tried to see if Alfredo had finally emailed me back something, since I had sent another email to him that morning, but the internet was down in the iPeru office. They had a cell number for him, but on this particular day all cell service in Cusco was down. So we called some other numbers and spoke with his father, brother, and sister on different occasions to get info. First Alfredo was just outside and they would get him, then he was going to be on his way to the iPeru office in half an hour, another time they couldn't find him, and finally said he would be at the iPeru office by 6pm. I think I was there for about 2-3 hours. At this point I set out to reserve a tour with another company so I could still go. I went to a respected agency and tried to get one for Thursday, which would have only been a day later. They had a tour and spots for Thursday, but the branch of iPeru that gives reservations and manages the 500 people closes at 5pm, and it was 5:15. Tomorrow would not be enough notice to get on the Thursday tour, and the next opening they had was 6 days later. So I continued to walk and ask around, and finally got something temporarily reserved for Friday. When I went back to iPeru Alfredo had never showed, we called the numbers again, and eventually his father said he was out giving a tour and wouldn't be back that night. He also said Alfredo always closed for the rainy season and never made tours to Machu Picchu at this time. SO it was time for me to go to the Tourist Police and file a formal statement. I was still pretty sure I would eventually get my money back, since Exotic is a well-known company and it just didn't make sense, but I figured I could speed things along and have a stronger case with the police on my side. So I got there, and had to explain everything that had happened once again. The police said they would call the family again and let them know Alfredo had to come in to the station, since now the police were involved. I had to go out and buy a phone card for this call though. Then they told me the guy who takes the statements was out and I'd have to come back at 9:30. So I decided to get some food, and went to this highly recommended veggie place from my guidebook that has cheap set dinners for about a dollar. I walked there, and they had ran out of their set dinners and only had menu options left, so I went somewhere else. Got back to the station at 9:30, the guy showed at 10:15, and asked me to please explain everything that had happened. At this point cell service was working again so we called the number, another calling card, but it was the wrong number. So it was time to give my statement, which hemade me do in Spanish, and which consisted of me telling the entire story over again, word for word with every minute unimportant detail, and slowly for him to type it all out. I had printed out all the emails Alfredo and I hadexchenged for proof, and he made me go over the content and date of each one. After about an hour and a half of this suddenly the Word document closed, he claimed he didn't do anything, but said he had not saved it along the way. I started getting a little rude and angry at this point. Luckily he was ale to recover it, we finished it, printed it, read it, signed it, out my fingerprints on it, signed another book, and I was free to go at 12:15. I had heard bad things about walking Cusco alone at night so I asked if a police man could escort me to my hostel. No go, they said I should take a taxi. I explained that my hostel was up a hill that taxis can't go up (which is where I got those cool night shots from), but very close to the station, and then told me to walk fast. I realized that, at that point in my day, if anyone tried to get anything from me or do anything to me they would end up being the worse off for it anyway. In fact, I kinda hoped something would happen so I would have someone to explode on. In the end I just stormed back and went to bed.

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