Peru & the pneumatico

Ahoyhoy,

I hope this blog finds you all well. It finds me alive and in Cuzco so what more can you ask for?

After pootling into a local´s restaurant in Juliaca where for a pound or two you get given what they feel like feeding you - wallpaper paste soup then chicken and rice, which was ok, I hit they hay after enduring 10mins of Spanish Avatar on TV. An early start had me heading for Cuzco by 7.30am through fairly uninspiring scenery compared to what I´m become acustomed to. Alas at 9.10am I had a sudden puncture in the Sir Humphrey´s front wheel whilst canted over in a courner at 70mph. Now would no-one please tell my Mum how lucky I am to be alive as thanks to some serendipity there was no other traffic about and after 300yards of veering across the road at ridiculous angles I somehow managed to bring Sir Humphrey to halt by the edge of the road shiny side up. More than that the tyre was seemingly undamaged. It did have a large piece of glass in it though:

Despite this and the plethora of ´puncture safe´ goo inside I could not find any defect on the inside of the rubber but A closer inspection of the inner tube later may tell all and enable a repair. As it was after two and a half hours I had the new inner tube & goo in, tyre & wheel back insitu and some routine maintenance done. I know this is slow but I was at 4000m altitude and still a tad surprised:

And it wasn´t the uglist place to break down:

After a tentative start we were back on our way and as a reward the road slid down into a chocolate river bottomed valley; we must have been on Wonka´s own touring road for it was a beautiful and relaxing ride all the way into Cuzco:

I filled Sir Humphrey up with some low octane fuel and followed Emily´s instructions to Ecopacker´s hostel where I was promised from the guidebook motorcycle parking. They had none and twice directed me to secure parking where there was none. My shock finally coming out I bemoaned my treatment to the receptionist who had enough English for me to think complaining worthwhile and found myself a small and relatively inexpensive hotel that would look after my beloved Sir Humphrey and was built on Incan stonework. After a shower and the discovery that whilst working on Sir Humphrey Apollo had noticed my T-Shirt´s upness and my trouser´s slight downness and had given me a sun burn slag tag which bit start to smart:

A quick pootle around town revealed a pretty old town, guinea pigs on the menu and a very nice trip organising lady who has, in exchange for 265 US dollars booked me on a full day trip to Machu Pichu with personal guide the day after tomorrow. I know its not cheap but how could I come here and not see it? So tomorrow is Cuzco seeing day and roast guinea pig eating day thanks to providence. Tonight is pizza and wine time and thinking how much I look forward to the most basic of pleasures; of sitting on the sofa under a blanket with the woman I love.

TTFN,

A lucky bugger