At first impression I thought Cusco was a town. Cobbled streets and beautiful architecture falsely hightlight the city that looms all around you. The quaint old town has huge cathedrals and churches. Little streets that lead to nowhere alleyways, that lead to more dingy streets. Packs of stray dogs, (some as big as 16 dogs) patrol the busy streets and bark at cars as they drive past. The old town is mostly tourists and touts perfectly matched. Backpackers, holiday hikers, stoned hippies dressed in the westernised version of hippy Indian ,vegetarians in leather boots and head bands, people out to get theirs because they paid for it, and the usual mix of hooligan party travellers that have gained infamy of the last few years.

One of the most sacred places on earth some say. And yes I agree, the energy crackles everywhere. The town is geared to get you to where you want to go. Whether is high up on a mountain or high on cocaine which is offered to us at almost every street corner. (Peru now being biggest cocaine producer in the world)

We escape the madness a bit and take a trip out to the Sacred Valley to meet a new friend . Here they use the jungle medicine.
Ayaushca , iboga and san pedro healing halucnagenics that help people with modern day ailments like cancer and depression . They are currently treating a stomach cancer case with care and success.

Machu Picchu is on the list of things to do. He suggests we go to the local town of Santa Teresa. A sleepy hollow that is not as crazy touristy like Aguas Calientes .
We bus it out of Cusco and over the mountains into Santa Teresa. A literal one horse town. One street with very expensive western food and one street with cheap local meals. We have our tickets and take a taxi to the closest walking point to Aguas Calientes. And then a bus up to Machu Picchu.
The 2 hour walk is scenic and you see just how beautiful the county truly is, mountains on either side of the railway tracks that we walk on. Bright red, yellows and oranges of the flora eveywhere, lots of rainbow colored butterflies. When you reach Aguas Calientes its like someone started a town size Jack in the box. Pan pipe music plays loudly through speakers in the streets brightly coloured displays in many shops selling cheap and not so cheap tourist trinkets each claiming their authenticity . Its like a huge amusement park . The busses have the monopoly so you wait in long queues to get to the top. Or walk the 2km up. We opt for a queue and a $12 bus one way that is not included in the $50 Machu Picchu ticket.
When you reach the station it has almost a carnival kind of atmosphere . Like you are waiting in line for the big dipper or the roller coaster. Tour guides warbling on all around you. Tourists everywhere over 2 thousand people . We go up because in our experience the more you climb the less people there are.
We hike for about 40 minutes up to the sun gate. Once you are looking down on Machu Picchu you can see the enormity of the citidal, it is spectacular. And finally you understand why people flock here. We worked it out, on average $6 000 000 alone just on entrance fees. Huge rocks on top of each other. Smartly done, very little gaps in between some houses. The bigger the gap inbetween the lower down on the social scale you are, the poorest houses lower down. Holy places with stone gauges for the seasons. Acoustic rooms built as an earthquake early warning system. A society far ahead of the knuckle draggers and war mongers.
Worth the effort. And the 8 hr hike.

We head back to Cusco for the last night before we head to Colombia.
We land in Bogata after a 6/7 hr flight.
We arrive hungry and tired. The passport control tell us we are denied entry.
Between when we bought tickets and us land visa regulations changed and we both need visas to enter. They march us into holding cells. There we are kept without food and blankets so that our airline can transport us back to Peru. At some point I ask the immigration officer at the desk to speak to a supervisor so I can ask why we are treated like criminals and I am promptly locked up separate from the rest of the crowd and all cellphones are confiscated from everyone. Well for a few hours at least till the Airline gets us out.
So with very little money (us having to spend our last cash on a 3 day bus ticket back to catch our connecting flight back to Buenos Aires) as we cannot now catch it from Bogata we search for a solution and workaway comes through with some volunteer bar work in Mancora. A surfing/seaside village up the north coast of Peru. So we work 6 days a week in exchange for a bunk and 2 meals a day where we will spend the next month waiting to catch our bus back to Buenos Aires and finally our connecting flight back home. It will be a warm South African Christmas.