The next day we were doing our last shoot with the gang. As Peggy was STILL no better and we would be delayed even further the boys HAD to head back to Lima for work commitments. We arranged a plan and they were to fly back to Lima and then meet us in a week or so in Cusco for the wedding. We dropped Peggy at the mechanic and after lunch we collected her again, (apparently fixed and ready to tackle the road to Cusco) and she stalled twice on the way just to the photo shoot. We were at the end of our tether with her and had given up all hope of her getting any better so decided to just put up with the problem!
We made it to a building which was pretty derelict and in the process of being refurbished by Raul Flores, one of Luis’ family.
During the shoot we danced in the dirt, walked, kissed and posed for the cameras, we were maybe getting a little better at it by now?! You would think so but its really the photographers that just have so much patience with us and amazing world class skills!

Before long all the light had gone and the night was pitch and we were done with the pictures for this part of the adventure. We weren’t ready to say goodbye to the team yet so we offered to cook them all a farewell dinner. We went back to Luis’s apartment via the supermarket and whipped up a mushroom risotto and washed it down with a few bottles of wine. We had a great laugh and were going to be lost without Freddy and Luis once they had gone the next day.

After we said our goodbyes the next morning we dragged ourselves back into town to do some last minute touristy things. There was a Dali and Goya exhibition at the monestary that I was desperate to see so we did that and then (as we had enjoyed it so much the first time) we went to Chicha for our lunch. We weren’t starving so we just shared an Alpaca burger and it was sooo good. Alpaca tastes like a mix of beef and lamb and has half the fat of beef! It was really good and perfectly cooked in lovely relaxed surroundings. The restaurant had an evening more formal area and a lovely sunny outdoor square for lunches! It was all kinds of great all over again!

Once stuffed and all touristed out…which in Arequipa is difficult as it is so beautiful to just wander the streets…we set off towards Cusco, on the road to wedding 21!
We drove for 3 hours through beautiful scenery which changed a kaliedascope of colours before our eyes. We stopped on the side of the road once it got dark, wondered what we would wake up to and fell asleep watching the stars.

When we woke up and opened the curtains to check our surroundings the next day we were parked next to a snow capped mountain with a lake reflecting its glory beneath it. The Alpaca (and Vicuna which are similar but wild and more deer-like) roamed around the edge of the shallow lake and stopped to staring at us stare at them.

Once we had taken in our fill we ate breakfast and went to set off and of course, what is new? Peggy wouldn’t start, It was bitterly cold so we checked her radiator and sure enough it was frozen solid. We sighed a sigh of pure relief and warmed up some water to get us going.

Back on the road for another whole day we followed an old railway track, pondered at where on earth lone people walking in the fields had come from when there was not a house or dwelling in sight, we watched the seemingly 150 year old women tending to their sheep, cows and alpacas and gawked at the mountains as we drove over them, around them and through tunnels under them.

As they day turned to night Peggy started to fail again, we were climbing ever higher as we neared Cusco which stands at 3300m which is 10826 feet and THAT is high! We put it down to the altitude and the air getting ever thinner and luckily stumbled across a man who was willing to work on a Sunday evening and help us out. We told him the problem, gesticulating all the while and explaining what work had been done already. The next job on our list was replacing the starter resistor so we went to buy a new one ($90) (and a bottle of antifreeze) and took it to him and watched as he fitted it…using selotape and a hammer.
Once it was well and truly bodged into place we asked him what we owed him and he asked for a donation…which made me think that he really probably wasn’t actually a mechanic just someone who tinkered with cars on a weekend! Anyhoo, we paid him and got on our way yet again.
We stopped again in the middle of nowhere once it got dark, in a rather good place to shoot a zombie movie! There were several small round huts all with newspaper on the windows and an eerie silence all around…in the dark! Of course when we woke up we were in a souvineer park in front of an old tourist attraction! We certainly can’t be accused of having a lack of imagination!

That day we completed the last leg of our journey and rolled happily into Cuzco to find it absolutely jam packed with people, all of the roads were closed and the ones that were open were of course one way. We followed our instuctions from the police that were directing traffic up a narrow one way cobbled alley which suddenly went dramatically uphill. Of course, we stalled and held up all of the traffic while we talked Peggy into starting again and getting us up this verticle hill! Whilst being deafened by a thousand car horns and being shouted at by the police we finally talked her into it and over we went. We nervously followed the traffic through tiny narrow streets and eventually found ourselves on a quiet street where we parked up and calmed down!

It had been several days since we last had a shower and we needed to check our emails so we booked into the cheapest hostal we could find and locked Peggy in a safe carpark. We showered and shivered in our room as we checked our emails, the cold was bitter and biting and we brought the heater in from the van and snuggled up in our single bed!
We caught up for 5 minutes online and decided to go out and wander the streets! What a beautiful place! The streets were alive with colour, singing and dancing as people in traditional dress paraded in the cobbled streets beneath the stunning ancient architecture.

The carnival atmosphere was contagious and we decided to go and have some food to celebrate. We had read about an Indian restaurant and looked everywhere for it but without success…BUT we found the next best thing, an English pub! Alex got his curry and I tucked into roast beef and veggies in the warm surroundings.
We wandered back to our hostal and looked forward eagerly to spending a few days in this beautiful city,  enjoying the upcoming Inti Raymi celebrations, meeting up with the gang again and getting prepared for our next wedding!