2nd Oct - Cusco to Lima

Woke up bright and early and went to plaza des armas for 11 to look around. Not normally one for the people watching but this was v pleasant! Then at around 11.30, I went to the Real McCoy where I had a delicious breakfast yesterday! Delicious again! Bit of Ryder Cup on tv too. All good. Strolled back to the hostel and said goodbye to a load of people.

It has started to dawn on me that the first part of my trip is pretty much over. I've spent the last two weeks in southern Peru and had a great crew to hang around with. And part of that has been hanging around with Rich, Rob and Matt from Melbourne. Really great lads and I'm genuinely going to miss them a lot. I'm travelling with them to Lima later today and maybe for a little longer. And maybe I'll see them around in Ecuador, in fact it's pretty certain that I will, but still, the actual travelling with them and the excellent daily banter is pretty much over. And I'm pretty disappointed about that.

Ah well, onwards and upwards!

Caught the impending 21hr bus to Lima. This promised to be a nightmare journey due to distance and the fact that most of it was up and down mountains and around millions of hairpin bends but at least we'd booked the posh seats and they really were class. It was possible to pretty much lie flat out and I was sitting beside a dead on lad from Amsterdam. Peter worked for a climate change crowd back home and they'd flown him to Peru with work for 10 days! He extended his stay to see Machu Picchu. Nice one!

Bizarrely, Peter from Holland is taller than me!

Bus left on time anyway at 2pm and we were treated to the following "delights" over the coming hours:

• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - not that bad actually - some good lines.
• Last Song (with Miley Cyrus) - words fail me. Atrocious muck.
• Law Abiding Citizen - v enjoyable!

Sunset was also savage - see obligatory photos here.

And then we played bus bingo! The hostess on the bus (fancy buses have hostesses in Peru) called out the numbers over the intercom in Spanish and we'd to fill in a full house. Mighty craic. None of us won the fantastic prize of a trip back from Lima to Cusco (where we'd just come from), which of course was non-transferable and cannot be exchanged for cash. Bus company cunningly know that most prizes will go unclaimed. The winner did have to take the mike and give a victory speech which was ridiculous though!

Bus bingo - mighty craic!

In lesser fun news, the windy roads took their toll on Matt, he spent about 3 hours puking. Ah well, I got nearly 8 hours sleep which was nice!