8th September - Cusco

4am and I awaken with a bad stomach. For a while I tried to ignore it, but eventually I got up and stood over by the window. I hadn't been standing there long when I heard a door in the courtyard open. Exiting the other room, a fully clothed Mr Croll went on the prowl. It wasn't till later that Lyndsey put two and two together: we had both had the chicken curry in the Cross Keys and seemingly it hadn't been cooked quite enough. I felt pretty naff for the rest of the morning and was expelling extremely foul air such that I didn't need to worry about insect repelling my trousers...

Our room rose first next morning, I think it was for Jamal to fax some documents through, as I remember. Once we had done this we returned to the Hostel, but, seeing as no-one else was getting up, we decided to take a wander up to the church of San Christobal. The view from the plaza outside was superb, but we decided to continue up to see if we could reach the cross on the hill behind that again. We headed up the road and then branched onto another path up the hill by the river. As we reached the top, we spotted a huge Inca wall. Suddenly, a ticket collector swooped on us. She insisted that we buy a 'tourist ticket'. This allowed us to visit countless attractions for the next ten days, however, given that we were only in Cusco 1 day and it was Sunday, the half of the things weren't open and so we decided that it wasn't worth it and returned back down the hill.

We popped our heads around the door at San Christobal just to see the church and caught the somewhat curious sound of the Peruvian choir singing a chorus to what sounded very much like 'Hey Jude' by the Beetles. Most, most bizarre. We continued on down the hill to the Hostel and sat out in the courtyard for some time waiting for the others to get up and dressed.

While everyone was getting ready, we popped into the International Youth Hostel next door to see if it would be possible to get a room for 6 people once we got back from the Inca trail. They agreed and we arranged to leave our luggage in at 8pm that evening. Then we all headed down to the plaza for breakfast. We had it from yet another balcony overlooking the square.

After that, we then headed up a hill into the tourist market area. After looking in a number of shops, we then headed back down the hill towards the church which had been built on top of the Inca temple of the sun in the centre of Cusco. Just before we reached it, we found another mini tourist market and spent a happy 30 minutes browsing and haggling (Zoe ending up paying more for her rug than she had been offered at one stage of negotiations; I buying my final present and James asking a 12 year old girl whether he could pay her 40 pence for something she was asking 5 quid for (not that he would steal food out of the hands of infants...)). We then headed into the old temple, which was quite interesting and must have looked amazing when coated in the gold and silver sheets that the Spanish promptly nicked before plonking a convent on top of it!

After visiting the convent, we headed back up the Av El Sol via the cash machines to the plaza and then on up to the Hostel. Unfortunately, as we were trying to leave the luggage we weren't taking on the trail with us, the batty old lady from the Hostel caught us and Jamal ended up having to try to explain why exactly we were moving our luggage next door. Felt quite guilty really. Oh well. We continued on down the hill afterwards and started to look for somewhere for dinner. Having overlooked goodness knows how many plazas, we decided to try a restaurant on gringo alley which had offered us a six course meal for S/.10 (2 quid, 3 US dollars!).

Jamal, Chris, James and I had the 6 course set menu while the girls ordered pancakes and drinks in the hope of getting home quickly. Zoe was instantly irritated when the girls' drinks didn't arrive before the Pisco sours that made up course number one for us. She asked for her drink. The first half of our second course arrived. Zoe asked for her drink. Our third course arrived. Zoe, getting moderately to highly irritated by this stage asked for her drink. The second half of our second course made a surprise appearance (we thought it had gotten lost completely). Zoe, moderately seething, asked in no uncertain terms for her drink. The waitress left the restaurant. Initially we thought she was off for counseling, but she returned a few minutes later with Zoe's drink. Shortly afterwards, her pancake also arrived. Our fourth course then arrived. Followed by Lyndsey's pancake and later her drink. The girls then left. We finished our fifth and sixth courses before tipping the restaurant for providing us with such excellent entertainment!!!!