The birds (as Hitchcock envisaged it)

We got up quite early (Sleeping next to the main lobby and the telephone tends to cut your sleep in all ... perhaps I should learn to whistle a handshake again, thus blowing out the phone ... evil grin) and showered (Again one of the heating devices was taking care of the hot water, but obviously this one paid attention in school) and went out for breakfast.



We settled for some empanadas (meat and cheese) and some pastry and ate them at (You will never guess ... the PDA). Sitting there, you could see entire flocks of pigeons flying from one side of the park to the other, searching for food (These are not pigeons, they are condors in disguise). A scene as Hitchcock would have envisaged it. Of course, we stirred things up a bit by buying pigeon food.



We returned to the hostal, paid our bills (in dollars, Peru seems to be all about dollars in contrary to other South American countries) and headed out (A real good hostel, we can even use the facilities in the evening after having checked out). 5 minutes later, we were again a the bakery street for some more empanadas (Much too the enjoyment of the bakers). We headed to a local mirador, but were a bit dissapointed with the views, so we headed out the next one (El balcon del Cayma). It seems Simon Bolivar had his breakfast there, but this was even more dissapointing (Simon Bolivar may have been a great liberator, but he did not have a clue about miradors). You could not even see the city nor El Misti (our favourite volcano). We sat a bit in the park (enjoying a Inca Kola, I so need to go in rehab when I get back home). We had a little discussion about Inca Kola being part of the Coca Cola company (It has to be, a drink this popular).



We walked back down again and found us a internet place to lookup some stuff : the difference between Llamas and Alpacas, who owned Inca Kola (The Coca Cola company has a 60% participation ... I love it when I am right).

After our internet session, we headed for food (again the chinese) and went shopping for food for on the bus and took some pictures of the plaza at night.We collected our bags at the hostel and the hostel owner called us a taxi and hugged and kissed us goodbye (so friendly, most often you will find the friendliest people in small off the grid hostels).

The taxi driver took us to the bus terminal and again on the way out, I saw a shop selling churros (third time, Damn). Suddenly the taxi driver mumbled something about the airport, so we said bus terminal (What the fuck) and entered the bus terminal, only to discover this was a different one. It seemed there was another across the street, called terrapuerto (That was what the taxi driver was mumbling). We crossed the street and checked in our bags and waited for our bus (as always we were surrounded by people trying to sell us water). Since people for Lima were boarding first, the lady at the desk watched our bags as a hawk and everytime one of the porters wanted to take them, she snapped they were ours (ruling her desk as her own kingdom). We paid the bus terminal tax and started boarding.

The security with this company was even better than cruz (They even took our fingerprints, perhaps to identify us should the bus crash ;). We were seated in the front and tailgaited the cruz del sur bus a while, but lost her in the mountains (clearly more powerful engines). Since a crappy movie was playing, I went to sleep around 9, and the bus was heading to Cusco and starting the highlight of our trip : Cusco and surroundings and meet up with some fellow backpackers.