27th Sept - Cusco to Santa Maria

Up at the crack of dawn to get the bus for the jungle tour. Ah this'll be worth it. First day was a drive up some local mountains, then mountain biking for a couple of hours downhill to land in some out of the way place where we could either go white water rafting or just chillax for the afternoon. Too easy mate as the 4 Aussies with me might say!

We were ready at 7 as requested the night before and went to meet our tour. Turns out it was organised by the utter prick from the night before who we refused to travel with! The prick took great delight in seeing us there and laughed and pointed at us repeatedly when chatting to his buddies. I thought it was quite amusing, in fairness to the prick we'd walked out in disgust and here he was earning our money anyway! The Aussies were outraged though, which added to my enjoyment!

There were about 18 of us for the tour so we were split into two buses, each with our own guide. This was fine, but what was a bit strange was that over the coming days we'd v little to do with the other tour. At times we ate in different restaurants and always stayed in different hostels. It was a bit strange. Anyway, the 5 of us were joined by an Aussie girl and an Israeli guy. Against all odds, the Israeli guy turned out to be ok! Result of the week.

We drove for a few hours, then it was biking time! Magic. First thing we noticed was that the bikes - all of them - were utter shit. I looked good though:

I'm directing operations as Silvio has one last look at the brakes

Great downhill biking country!

Plus the sound guide Silvio didn't organise it v well. He basically sent us off and said he'd see us at the bottom. Meant that we didn't really see each other until the end and was a bit boring. I started last cos of gear issues and luckily caught up with Justin so we'd good banter for the last half hour all right. He takes a nice photo:

We eventually got to the bottom, had disgusting lunch, small drive with Carlos the hilarious bus driver (pictured here), more downhill.

Carlos the legend

This time all on dirt roads and most of us stayed together. Way better craic! When we reached our hostel we were offered the white water rafting but we were all too shattered to go! Spent a mighty hour chillaxing and talking nonsense with the lads.

Good chillaxing

Then got up and the locals were having a kick around on their 5-a-side pitch. They were all fierce friendly and I joined in for about 45 mins. After the match i went for a coke with a couple of lads who worked in a local construction site. Both v intelligent, one of them was the first lad I met in Peru who knew the difference between Norn Iron and the rest of the island!

Lovely dinner with the tour group, then a quiet one. We've to get up early for the 10 hour hike tomorrow!