Im actually in the jungle now, but ....

Goodbye Cusco, city of endless stairs. Hilliest city in the entire world. One Giant Mountain. Its an official Allison-statistic that Peru has more stairs than any other place on earth. And the thing about stairs is (I dont know if you knew) they go up. And up. And up and up for ever and ever, Amen. And when youre at roughly 12,000 feet altitude it is a law that when you ask for directions to your hotel (when youre tired and aching and carrying everything you own) the helpful stranger will nod and point UP and kindly tell you that no, it never ends.

I have neglected you all sorely over the past few weeks. I always seem to just barely have sat down at a computer when PJ wanders by and prods me because whatever destination we had decided upon next was about to close (or maybe the shopkeeper was about to go out for a 2 hour beer break ... equally likely). If you can believe it of me ... Im a little bit of a space ... and his sense of time (as opposed to my "eventually") is probably half of what kept us together and moving this entire trip.

The night we got back to Cusco from our Machu Pichu hike we had a 10:30 night bus to Lake Titicaca. I have vivid memories of PJ checking my cell phone anxiously as our Machu Pichu tour bus ambled into Cusco at around 10 pm, trying to figure out the best place to have us dropped off so that we could go racing up and down the hills of Cusco in the dark and cold to reach our hotel, grab all of our stuff, make reservations for the 24th, and frantically hail a taxi to the bus station. Fortunately both of us had enough common sense NOT to try to tell the weaving, honking, typically lawless taxi driver to hurry up.

I have no idea how we actually made it.

The bus to Puno (the town next to the lake) is hereafter known as The Coldest Six Hours of My Life. I shivered, shook, huddled next to PJ, and scratched my million bugbites until we got dropped off alone with our bulky backpacks on a deserted street at four in the morning with no idea of where we were. We were saved by a rickshaw taxi.

Rickshaw taxis. Motocarros. These are, quite possibly, my favorite things about South America. Or at least the parts of Peru remote enough to have them. They consist of a motorcycle and a sort of attached buggy (I sort of feel like Im in the big-kid version of a burly cart). Our luggage gets strapped onto a little platform at the back and we crawl into the little bench seat. Hold onto your backpack and purse because the doors have a habit of sliding open while youre racing along ... not to worry, though, sometimes theyre tied closed with a bit of rope.

But back to Puno and our taxi driver rescuer. After negotiating the price (in Peru, there are no meters in taxis, you negotiate everything before you get in) he helpfully drove us to the hostel we had picked out of our Lonely Planet Peru book (also affectionatly referred to as "LP" or "Lonely"). Wherein we negotiated something which seemed to define the whirlwind night-bus-filled second half of our trip. Namely, "Do we have to pay for this night (at 4 am) or can we only pay for tomorrow? (because the bus was SO cold/hot/uncomfortable/loud/rough/smelly that we didnt sleep more than an hour and we really, really, really want to go to bed) ..."

Finally, as per usual, after a small amount of discussion whoever is behind the desk takes pity on us and just gives in and points us to a room. Where aching, dirty, exhausted, thirsty, hungry and itching we set the cell phone alarm to way earlier than were going to get up and fall into bed.

Welcome to Puno.