I am in a place called [Ollyantaytambo] right now, Paul is ( I think ) doing the Inca trail. I am not 100% he is doing this because the people who were supposed to be taking him there this morning never turned up so the last I saw of him was when he was heading off to the travel agent to complain. I dropped in myself later on to see if they could tell me what had happened in the end but all the person in there could say which I understood was "Amigo, vamoose" which I am taking as a positive sign.
The journey to Ollyantaytambo was fun, first I had to find the bus station and thanks to an old man for correcting the mistake the silly travel agents I had initally asked for directions I eventually found the road the buses left from. Then I saw a bus so logically I asked if it went to where I wanted to go, after much Spanish jabbering they seemed to be saying that it didn´t and didn´t think they were having too much sucess explaining to me where the actual bus stop was so in the end they asked me to get in and drove me to the correct bus stop.
The ticket cost about 3 soles which is an utterly negligble amount of money for around 150KM travel. The buses themselves are basically small minibuses which the drivers fill up as full as they can get and then stop off every 10seconds to pick up yet more people. The scenery was wonderful but there were some interesting smells coming from my fellow passangers and their large packages. I had to change buses at a place called Urumbaya and I had no information at all about if or when or where the connecting buses went from but luckily as soon as I arrived there were thousands of people shouting "Ollyantaytambo" and pointing to their buses so it was quite easy. I was the only "gringo" on the bus and some children at one of our stops enjoyed pointing this out to me for a while.
The reason I have come here is firstly to see the ruins of an Inca stronghold, secondly because it supposed to be a very nice place ( it is ) and thirdly because there is a station here on the line to Machu Pichu where I want to go on Saturday or Sunday. Knowing there was a station here I imagined it would also sell train tickets but so far as I can see tonight it wasn't. They won´t let you into the station without a ticket so you can´t buy one on the train so I am bit stuck. Unless I can greatly improve my Spanish overnight or find someone who speaks English or I will have to go back to Cusco and buy the ticket there which is bactracking really and a bit of a pain. Actually it´s not so much of a problem if I go to Machu Pichu on a Sunday instead I suppose.
Going to see if the food here is an improvement on the food everywhere else, I have seen only pizza resteraunts here so far which is an encouraging sign.
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