Somehow we ended up in the party hardiest of all the Cusco hostels, set far too far up one of the valley hillsides, luckily for us the old colonial mansion that Loki occupies has literally metre thick stone and rubble walls so most of the continual partying was filtered out. And unlike most hotels you stay in hostels take security really seriously so there were lock boxes in the never abandonded reception area, a pack lock-up for day trippers, and an armed guard at the door. Cusco is a city built in a long valley at somewhere over 3300m, so as Loki was very near the top of the valley we

1. had an incredible view of the city from the common room
2. almost died everytime we ascended the street back to the hostel

The street was so steep that it is was necessarily one way, with taxis having to take a six block detour to wind up to the top of the street.

Cusco had some big negatives, the whole town seems to be setup to part tourists from as much money and time as possible, all the minor ruins have formed a syndicate which requires you to buy a NZD100 ticket to visit any of them (so they say, the ones out of Cusco will actually let you in a for a pittance but the ticket sales people completely lied about it), and the prices for Machu Pichu were astronomical, I think we spent over NZD600 on the train, bus and entry for the two of us.

Cusco also had way too many dogs (and dog by-products) none of which seemed owned, and way too many try-hard backpackers who haven't heard that no-one smokes any more. The upside was that almost none of the locals seem to smoke at this kind of altitude so I didn't feel too much of the normal Gringo shame as I felt all the locals were looking down on them too (instead of feeling they were all acting as free advertising).

But all in all we actually had a really good time, we visited a monastery that was built directly on top of the old Incan foundations of an Incan monastery-anologue (where they kept and educated all the pretty children they would eventually get around to sacrificing). Machu Pichu was actually pretty cool, but just because it was set amongst incredible peaks and had fantastic scenery, the ruins themselves were far inferior to most of the sites we visited in Mexico (and about 50 times the price). Half of the enjoyment may have came from the fact that it is about 500m lower than Cusco so I actually ran up some of the steps and continued to bounce around till our return train journey.

I think we may have actually had just a good time on our day trip out Uribamba in the Sacred Valley near by Cusco. We managed to time our trip to conincide with the start of Carnival which aparently this town celebrates quite heavily but neither of us had paid particular attention to what form the celebrations took. But we were pretty sure what was going down by the time we had parted ourselves from our Colectivo (a 50 Sole note proving impossible to change anywhere but the bus terminal at the far end of town). Strangely a lot of the gutters were flowing with a lot of water even though it hadn't rained for a couple of days, and sales of shaving cream seemed to be absurdely strong amongst teenage boys and girls. We carefully made our way to the main square where we rapidly made our way to a first storey restaurant and a window seat where we proceeded to watch the towns youthful population drench each other with water bombs, buckets, super soakers, and home made (and very effective) pipe squirters. At times it looked strikingly similar to footage of rioting you see on tv with swarms of young boys flowing back and forth across the square, returning to the almost dry central fountain to reload.

The restaurant owners four year old girl and friend were perched in the table next to us armed with sly smiles and a bucket of water so big I was surprised she didn't just drop it on herself. But sure enough eventually a pack of boys strayed under the restaurants overhang and were doused at which point we hurriedly tried to close all the windows before the return fire saturated us and our lunch (which included a kind of miso soup with a pear in it). We were only partially succesful and Jacquie got a damp back, but we were mostly OK.

Things calmed down after that as the fountain was running low on water, and even the overly excited youths must have been getting tired from all the running around. But then the local Police decided it was good time for them to drive past the square and make sure every one was behaving. As is the habit in these parts the patrol took the form of nine men standing together in the back of a Hi-Lux. They made it down one side of the Plaza unmolested but as they turned down the second side the attitude of every boy in the square turned from stunned silence to yelling and running and fully forty or fifty boys converged on the ute and completely doused all its occupants.

Now in the 'west' you could probably imagine the police response would make the six o'clock news but here it seemed to be considered appropriate behaviour, and the only response seemed to be the Hi-Lux running a red light out of the square (which isn't even necessarily unusual as the driver was safe inside and probably laughing almost as much as Jacquie).

We decided this pretty much signalled the end of festivites and tried to slink out of town, Jacquie came upon the winning strategy of following about six inches behind a little old lady (complete with bowler hat). The elderly seeming to be rigourously avoided we had seen three middle aged folk quitely enjoying an ice cream in the middle of the plaza during the chaos. Apparently I was lagging a bit far behind (the lady hadn't stopped and given me a funny look about why I was so close) and was picked as a target of opportunity by a giggling twelve year old girl who managed to hit me with a full washing basin of water before being caught in a counter ambush herself. Luckily it was a pretty hot day (and the air is always very dry in the Andes) and I dried reasonably quickly.

We rounded off the day with a couple of quick visits, one to a salt production facility that has apparently been running since Incan times. Up in the hills above Uribamba there is a salty spring which is diverted out to a whole series of terraced pools on the hillside to evaporate. Quite scenic and very cool for its historical usefullness.

We then headed up the hill to the Moray ruins (10 Soles made us very happy we hadn't succumbed to the syndicate ticket). Moray is quite different, it is only terraces but they are arranged in circles and patterns (the largest of which you can see on the wikipedia link). It was quite restful and quiet with very few other people around. The only excitement was the discovery that the only way up and down most of the terraces were the Incans 'flying stairs', which are just three or four longer rocks protruding from the terrace walls.

With all of Cusco's chosen attractions ticked off we got yet another bus, this time to Puno near the Bolivian border.