You Can Pee at the Next McDonald`s!

Que onda amigos?!?

I´m writing to you all from the beautiful city of Cuzco, Pero. It`s full of gringos and one of the most touristy places I`ve ever been but it still has an amazing allure. It`s incredibly peaceful and relaxing.

Our road trip was quite the adventure. If I could describe it in one word it would be curves. We started in Salta with our Canadian and Dutch friends and drove to a small town named Cachi. Cachi is about 90 km from Salta and took about 4-5 hours to drive there. The road, compared to the rest of the roads we drove on, was fantastic. Beautiful mountain roads going up and around without guardrails and over bridges and through rivers. We drove through the worlds second largest Cactus national park and saw some incredibly tall cactuseses and landscapes. Cachi itself has a population of about 2000 people and we stayed with a wicked nice dude named Nester in his hospedaje which is like a homestay. He had a gorgeous backyard and shared some Yerba Mate with us in the evening.

Our next destination was Cafayate which is the second largest wine producer in Argentina. The road from Cachi to Cafayate is around 160 km. Everyone in Cachi said it would take about 4 hours if we stopped to take pictures. Try 7 hours on roads no wider than our car winding on incredibly steep mountain roads with no guardrails and trucks flying at you in the other lane. But again we drove through some of the most incredible landscapes I´ve ever seen. Cafayate is another amazing place. We stayed at an awesome hostel, made a delicious dinner, tryed wine flavored ice cream and biked all around the town. We spent two days in Cafayate and one morning went on a beautiful hike to a waterfall. The trail winds through a canyon following a river and every once in a while you have to decide your own way across the river and make your own trail. We lost the trail at one point and the river became impossible to cross so we hiked up and around the cliffs until we found the trail again. After two hours we came to a picturesque 50 ft waterfall where we had lunch. We were in the middle of the desert and were hot from hiking and really wanted to swim but the water was freeeeezing.

We spent the next day driving from Cafayate to Purmamarca north of Salta. The road north of Salta was one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on. The same windy roads only windier and the same cliffs only bigger however instead of being in a desert it`s in a beatiful green forrest and the roads are actually paved. They were still no wider than the car however and our car was small. A Fiat Palio which is like a VW Gulf only smaller. Purmamarca is a very small town famous for it´s cliffs of 7 colors. It`s a peaceful town with beautiful landscapes. We spent the night and heard some traditional folklore music. It was great until they played a pan flute version of ¨My Heart Will Go On.¨ That fantastic song from Titanic.

The next day we drove west through Las Salinas Grandes, big salt flats, and up to a town named San Antonio de Los Cobres which is an old mining town at 4000 meters. We drove through there and headed to the south through an area called las nubes, the clouds, and went on some even more crazy windy roads. We then had to take a detour through a dry river bed because the mountain road collapsed in a land slide. We had to drive through some big streams a few times but it was good to give the car a bath after 4 days in the desert.

We spent the night in Salta and said goodbye to our new friends. They were heading south, one to Mendoza and one to Cordoba, while we were heading north to Peru. Our bus left Salta at 6:45 am on Friday morning. We arrivied in Calama, Chile at 6pm and then took another bus at 9:30 to Arica, Chile on the border of Chile and Peru. We got into Arica at 6am and then had to make a decision about what to do. We could take a taxi across the border and try to figure out our plans from Peru, we could try to get a bus from Arica to somewhere in Peru, or spend the night in Arica. We were debating our options and talking to the bus companies and one guy said he had a bus that left at 7am and got into Cuzco at 9pm. We thought that was perfect because we didn´t really want to visit anywhere in southern Peru. He charged us a price that we thought was reasonable at the time for a direct bus route. He walked us over to their collectivo and we crossed the border to the bus station in Tacna. From Tacna we got on a filthy bus that smelled badly like urine. At least it was a direct bus right? wrong. This bus stopped at essentially every small town from Tacna to Puno which is 7 hours south of Cuzco. We were told we had to get off the bus and we said ¨is this Cuzco?¨and they told us that no it´s Puno. This was at 7pm. We had to wait 2 horus until the bus left again for Cuzco. That´s 9pm, when we were originally told we would be getting into Cuzco. At this point we were pretty angry but there was nothing we could do. We looked at our tickets and everything was in order except that the tickets we got in Tacna cost about 30 dollars less than we payed for them in Chile. At this point Peruvians were doing a really good job of living up to their reputations as liars and thieves.

We arrived in Cuzco at 4:30 am, in the dark, and were warned by our bus driver to be very careful around the area. Our bus driver ended up being a very nice man and looked out for us. At the bus station a man who works for a tourism agency started trying to sell us hostels. This happens at every bus station you get off at in South America. We were a bit weary because we have been told the bus station in Cuzco is dangerous and you shouldn`t trust the cab drivers. This guy kept talking to us and trying to get us to go to one of the hostels. It was either go with him and get a great deal for one night or sit around until dawn and try to get around the city on our own. He said he would personally accompany us in a taxi to the hostel and Bree and I looked at eachother, after having spent 48 hours on a bus (there is a two hour difference between Argentina and Peru so it was litterally 48 hours) and decided we either give people a chance and trust the man our rough it on our own. We trusted him and he took us to this hostel and got us a great price and everything turned out well. We passed out immediately in our bed and woke up to an incredibly sight. Our hostel is up on a hill and overlooks the entire city, it has a beautiful garden in the center and everyone who works there is very friendly. Everything ended up okay for us in the end.

We are going to spend a few days in Cuzco relaxing before we head to Machu Picchu and eventually to Lima. Our hostel is so cheap that we think we have earned a few days of rest after the last few days on a dirty bus.