Today we had to get up relatively early to catch our bus for the sacred valley tour. Fortunately we made it in time and had a very nice guide. I liked this tour more than the tour around Cuzco yesterday, because we spent a higher percentage of the trip outside the bus.The ruins and their history was also really interesting – it’s just a pity the photos always look ten times less magnificent than the originals.

For me it’s quite funny how widespread the use of Facebook is over here, it’s even more extreme than in Germany though Smartphones are far more luxurious over here than in Germany. The tour guides refered to Facebook several times. Another strange thing I noticed is people taking pictures with their iPads. Apart from the poor quality of the iPads camera it looks quite strange to take pictures with that (for a camera) giant thing.

We had an included lunch with this tour which was very touristic – crowded and relatively low quality. Afterwards in Ollyantaitambo we had some free time and the Pervians went to the train station to buy there tickets for our ride to Cuzco tomorrow. It’s quite a chaos – there are trains specifically for Peruvians with far lower fares, but it seems as if the tickets can only be bought at the station and not more than a day in advance. Thus they couldn’t reserve the return tickets. We walked around and took pictures a little bit too long, so our bus was waiting and we appologize multiple times. The infamous “hora peruana” that everybody sticks to in Lima seems not to work here, we already experienced that yesterday. Actually it was bad planning to go back to Lima at all, because we would leave for Ollyantaytambo again directly the following day to take the train to Aguas Calientes.

The morning started a bit chaotic with us getting up early and having to wait for the chicas a pretty long time. Additionally it turned out we had to pay the hostel and buy a tourist pass on top of the tour price which should be all-inclusive. Although I’m normally easy going when doing things with Peruvians I regretted not being able to use the time in Cuzco more efficiently by for instance just walking up some hills, enjoying the view and maybe find a Geocache 😀

Our city tour was scheduled to start after lunch and some wanted to do bungee-jumping before, so we took a taxi to the Action Valley. It was a really nice place with much sun and in between beautiful mountains. I had not signed up, because I was a bit afraid after seeing people do bungee-jumping from an old bridge into the Cañon of Autisha, but here everything looked nice and safe, but it was relatively expensive (120€ for bungee-jump and slingshot) for Peruvian standards. It was a lot of fun to watch the others jump from 120 meters though.

Afterwards we were running short on time, having a good lunch at the same restaurant as yesterday evening and arriving a bit late for our city tour. Our tour operator wasn’t very happy – it seems that the infamous “hora peruano” doesn’t not exist in Cuzco (which is a good thing I think).

The tour itself felt a bit strange – riding the bus from point to point, walking around  a few meters and getting back into the bus. I don’t remember ever doing a tour like this, but what we saw and the guide explained was really interesting. It’s really incredible what the ancient cultures created.

In the evening we went to a club right at the main square (don’t remember the name) until 3 a.m. It was very crowded with both Peruvians and international travelers and we enjoyed it a lot, although we knew we wouldn’t have much time to sleep afterwards.

I made several mistakes today that in combination resulted in my bagpack getting stolen, but let’s start from the beginning.
I was actually believing the advice on my bus ticket, that it would somehow be necessary to show up an hour before departure. In the end luggage check-in started exactly when the bus should already be leaving, so that was a mistake.
Second problem was I talked two two travellers from New York and believed they could watch my two backpacks while I was looking for the restroom. Third mistake was leaving my things a meter away from them. In the end the small backpack was gone after just being away for 90 seconds 🙁 They remembered someone, but they sweared they didn’t see him taking anything.
Luckily I had my money and credit cards with me and also my almost holy passport (as it contains the U.S. visa). Still I lost my Kindle, keys, sunglasses, Leatherman and some small things.
After that I boarded the bus with relatively bad mood, although I was astonished about how calm I took the situation. Also all the carefully selected food and drinks for that 20-something hours ride were gone :-/
Actually what I was upset about most is the inefficiency of such a robbing. I have to spend a lot of time and money to buy everything again, print my flight ticket to go back to Lima etc. while except for the food all things have almost no value (the bagpack was old and starting to fall apart, the sunglasses were expensive but also had some scratches and I am not sure whether they know how to break the Kindles password protection).
Stuck with nothing to read I had to watch the movies, which kept getting worse, but the Spanish was actually good to understand and I believe I learned a lot. As I only two thirds of a seat (the women next to me was sharing hers with her child) I went to the back of the bus enjoying the view for almost two hours. As I was a bit paranoid now, I had not taken the camera into the cabin, so no pictures.
The service and driving style were very good, we even got food and drinks.
We also made several stops, but mostly very short and it didn’t cost us much time in sum.
Thankfully Cuzco has a central bus station (in Lima every company has its own) and I was already awaited and taken to our hostel were I met the rest of the group (7 Peruvians and one guy from Spain).
We went to have some food and afterwards walked a bit through the city where I used the chance to buy a new bagpack and sunglasses.
Now we’ll catch some sleep as we have a good program for the next days.

There’s a tourist guide living in the Casa Roja for three years now and we were lucky he organized a tour to Lunahuaná for us. We had a really nice car with plenty of legspace for the
3 hour ride each trip. Lunahuaná is very beautiful, lives mainly from tourism and the sun shines almost always.
We went with 4 guest from the house (including our guide) and the family owning the Casa Roja, so we were 8 in total.
Our first activity was rafting, but we were all in a pretty large boat and thus it was not much of a problem cruising the pretty tough river. Afterwards we used the chance to swim a bit,
and noticed how strong the current really was. I actually wanted to cross the river, but it turned out to be almost impossible or at least dangerous, so I didn’t try.

After enjoying a nice vegetarian lunch (the family owning the house and some of the guests are vegeterians) we crossed the river on a ropeway and took a nice walk. A local showed us a grave with a
mummy he claimed was 3000 years old (we didn’t believe it, but it was still impressive) and a collection of human bones and skulls. He also told us very interesting stories about the history of the place.

So we had a very nice day and enjoyed the pure air and sun!

After getting home safely from the amazing IBM party at about midnight using micros Saturday was soccer time again, on the way to IBM we had to face heavy traffic because the police couldn’t pass a bridge – they had a Peruvian flag mounted on their vehicle 😀 Luckily they seem to have realized that early enough, but they were standing right where cars enter the hightway and had difficulties driving back obviously.

Together with a new girl in the house from Frankfurt I went to a very nice park (“Magic Circuit of Water Fountains”) in the evening – really amazing although I got quite wet. Must be really fun in summer. They also had a lot of interesting information about water (e.g. showing the pollution of the river Rimac, where Lima gets 80% of its drinking water from)

Sunday was really bad weather, it was raining most of the day (although very very light rain) and relatively cold. I didn’t do much the whole day and really regretted to not have gone to Caral early in the morning. Anyway I did some planning for my vacations in about one month 🙂

It’s really winter right now, always grey and cold (18-20°C), so I decided to finally visit a museum. The national museum is free and has different exhibitions. It is probably not the most exciting museum, but it was still interesting to walk through, especially because there are far too many ways to get to the next exhibition and it’s quite possible to end up in someone’s office (it is actually a ministry, but includes the national museum).

Yesterday I bought my bus ticket to Cuzco, when I asked it was 120 soles, at some point the cashier started talking about 110 and the bill and credit card receipt said 100 soles. Weird. I just hope I won’t regret saving money on the 20-hour bus trip.

After the somewhat philosophical parts I’ll now switch to fact-based reporting 😉

Thanks to Marco we had a wonderful breakfest and headed to the huge market that takes place in Huancayo every sunday afterwards. When we entered the busy and colorful place we almost immediately bumped into the Belgians again so we continued exploring all the offerings together. The traditional handicrafts, clothes and other small things were really nice to look at though I couldn’t decide to buy anything (the others made up for that though). Additionally you could buy various food, all kinds of shoes and international brand clothes (the prices suggesting they were not genuine), cracked DVDs and software and much more. So it was really diverse and after going on a few blocks the offerings started to repeat themselves. I guess the pictures tell you more than anything I could explain here.

Afterwards we checked various restaurants for lunch and finally decided to go to a chicken restaurant. The Belgians, who had left us to check out at their hotel, were already there ready to watch the final soccer game Spain against Italy. They were right in their anticipation of Spain’s victory.

After lunch we actually wanted to go rock climbing, but in the taxi Marco decided we would go to Torre Torre, one of the few really popular tourist attractions in Huancayo. Unfortunately it was too late to invite the Belgians now, but we enjoyed it a lot. At Torre, Torre we chilled a bit, talked to a very nice Canadian family backpacking in Peru and Marco played his flute. Time passed quickly and I found myself at the train station again to enjoy the last rays of sunshine with the Belgians.

According to the train staff at the station only 100 people would be on the train now with the vast mayority of about 80 in the touristic cars. Still there were many empty seats so I convinced the Belgians to try to sneak into a touristic seat. It didn’t take long until we were thrown out, but we were told we could upgrade for 15 soles (4,50€) which would be well worth it. Unfortunately it tourned out they wanted to have 120 soles in reality, which was too much obviously. So we each got four seats in our clasico car and made ourselfs comfortable. Some elderly Peruvians were upgraded for free. We found that fair because it was getting very cold at night and even we had problems sleeping in those seats.

We continued to chat a bit until we got food at 8 p.m. and afterwards everybody put on all clothes we had and tried to sleep somehow. It worked more or less, but we were still relieved to arrive well on time at 6:15 a.m. in Desamparados Station, Lima.