All aboard the Inka Express!

What a view
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All aboard!! As mentioned in the previous entry we decided to catch the Inka Express to Cusco from Puno to make sure we were up to date with all of our Inca knowledge before hitting the Inka trail from Cusco.

The trip included visiting various sites along the way including a museum at Pukara, Raqchi (the Incan temple of the god Wiracocha) and a local ‘Andean house’ where the family had set up a kind of mini-Andean amusement park complete with llamas, alpacas, baby lambs and an Andean kitchen with guinea pigs ready for the dinner table!

Can't believe I forgot my snowboard
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A South American day trip wouldn’t be a South American day trip without a stop at a cathedral though and we weren’t disappointed with our last stop of the day at Andahuaylillas - referred to as the Andean Sistine chapel because of its magnificent frescoes. I haven’t seen the real thing yet but this was pretty impressive!

As well as visiting the various sites mentioned above the trip also included a buffet lunch and on board services including ‘tea, coffee, coca tea, mineral water, hygienic bathrooms, OXYGEN (very important), music and TV video’. How could we go wrong?

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It was supposed to be smooth sailing the rest of the way to Cusco after this stop, supposed to be…

There just so happened to be a festival taking place in the district of san Geronimo on the outskirts of Cusco (they have a festival of some kind every second day in South America) so we were directed to take a detour through the back streets by the traffic police. This is where the trouble began!!

Basically the problem was that the back streets of this town were barely big enough to fit a bicycle and most of the traffic that was being diverted were tourist buses and semi trailers!! To top things off most of the streets were one way but everyone was ignoring this making for possibly the worst traffic jam in human history (including in Incan times)!!

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Trucks and buses were attempting superhuman three point turns (most of them succeeding, special mention to our bus driver Mario!) whilst all the smaller traffic, mostly taxis were trying to duck and weave into any space possible to make some progress. We finally managed to escape after two hours after Mario pulled off the most amazing three point turn I have ever seen!!

It was all good fun though (afterwards) and it made for an exciting start to what we were sure was going to be an interesting week ahead.