Moo's Mid Life Crisis: Xmas Intermission

Ok, ok, I'm a bad Moo. Sorry for the lack of recent updates (particular apologies to Yarissa). I'm becoming lazier and lazier. In Australia just now and because it's not an organised tour, there is not really that much going on, and somehow that makes me even less likely to do some writeups. Also I'm still writing up Peru when I've done Bolivia (1 day), Chille (4 days), New Zealand (mostly just family time), Fiji (quite lovely in places) and Australia (barrier reef and then lots of driving) since then, so it's beginning to fade, but then that was the whole point of doing this blog in the first place.

The Machu Picchu Express

Anyway. Mum will like/shake her head over this little anecdote.

On the way back from Machu Picchu we took the train along the Sacred River for an hour or two. Nice scenery, but we were all totally knackered having just done the trail and from getting up at 4am that morning. In an attempt to keep ourseves entertained and awake, we played hangman. Now, remember, the people playing are me, Sylwia (Polish), Richard (Jamacan) and Rod (Peruvian), so we don't have a lot of films / TV type things in common for guessing (and 2 of us were working in English, not our native language), so we went for things related to our tour.

There was "Inca Trail" (an easy one to get started)

There was one about my incessant coughing ("I need a cough suppressant" - I'd asked Rod how to say this in Spanish - I've forgotten the phrase, but it's something like 'I need something to cut the cough').

There was one ridiculing me for getting a little bit of sunburn while exploring Machu Picchu.

And then I tried to do the group name we had come up with. Our group name poked a bit of fun at Rod's height, he's small (but lovely), and Sylwia coined the Spanish phrase "Cuatro y medio", or "Four and a half". We would use it whenever we were trying to get a table in a restaurant and it always got a laugh from the restaurant staff and hilarious indignant comments from Rod. Unfortunately my Spanish is not terribly good, and when you are playing hangman, it kinda requires the spelling to be correct. Here was my effort, and it eventually caused us all to break down in tears of laughter, I can't remember laughing so hard for so long. I managed to incorporate Italian, French and Spanish in a 3 word phrase. I'd say the altitude and exhaustion were definitely contributing factors. It was utterly hilarious at the time, trust me.

So anyway, we bused back to Cusco, stopping for some photos of the Andes on the way. It was quite breathtaking, even after having been walking in the mountains for the past 3 days. Then it was a few days, in Cusco, followed by a long bus trip to Puno and Lake Titicaca on the 25th. Yes, Xmas day was an 8 hour bus trip.