How I survived Peruvian dentistry and the Inca Trail

Never play "Punch Buggy" in Cusco, you get a dead arm in an hour.
Just a small bit of advice.

http://www.getjealous.com/getjealous.php?action=map&go=eleanoroundtheworld

Instead of listing all the places we've been to, here's a map with our route so far and dates when we was there.

La Paz was interesting enough, not David's favourite place, but I enjoyed it despite the smell of dead llama foetus on the witches market, strange I know.

Copacabana was a lovely little town on the shore of Lake Titicaca on the Bolivian side, we got a boat from there to Isla del Sol, an island on the lake that the Quechya people believe was the home of the Sun. We stumbled across a fantastic little festival going on with people dancing all sort with bright and wonderful costumes on, just to celebrate the anniversary of the school.

Around this time I'd started getting toothache and so when we had to spend 12 hours on buses to get from Copacabana, Bolivia to Cusco, Peru, I had never been more glad to leave a bus. We got on in Copacabana and there was just a coupe of gringos, then half an hour later we stopped at a small town and the bus became over packed with locals, old women sat in the aisle on their packs as there weren{t enough seats and the bus would stop on the road to pick anyone up.

So we're currently in Cusco, such a beautiful city. Lots of small paths all over the place and most of the architecture is half Inca (the bottom bit) and the top is the Spanish. Our hostal is up on a hill in an area called San Blas and we have a spectacular view over all over Cusco when we have breakfast.

The most amazing thing we have done so far in our travels has been the Inca Trail. Neither of us really understood what we were getting ourselves into. I'd though it was just a nice trek for four days and David didn't even realise it was that. My word, were we in for a shock! The trek involved waking up and down numerous mountains with uneven rocky paths and steps which weren't really steps! We slept in tents on steep slopes, getting up each morning at 5 to start walking by 6:30. But iwas worth every footstep. The views were breathtaking. You were literaly in the middle of the mountains with nothing else around you, no sounds of trains or cars or roads, just green and blue. We walked through cloud forests were the beautiful green was punctuated with bright reds and purple orchids and the sounds of bubbling streams. And Machu Picchu, wow. When we arrived at the sun gate it was completely misted over, you couldn't see anymore than 20 metres or so ahead, not a chance of seeing it, but we slowly descended and stopped every now and then to check the clouds and then slowly the mist would lift and we could see the ruin laid out infront of us. I think the mist and the clouds made it even more spectacular, very magical and mysterious. If you ever get a chacne to go, do it. It's amazing. Not just the ruins, but the locations in the middle of the most beautiful mountains.

As for the dentistry, I started having toothache in La Paz and it just got worse and worse, by the time we arrived in Cusco I wasn't eating or sleeping much so it was off to the hospital where I saw a doctoer who referred me to a dentist who said I needed a root canal. Yay! That's almost finished now and there's no pain, but I wasn't expecting Peruvian dentistry. The dentist is lovely and speaks reasonable Engish.

Not a clue where we're headed next, but we're mulling the idea of getting a boat down the Amazon from Iquitos to Brazil after exploring a bit more of Peru. Life's exciting, never knowing where you're going next.