Cusco, Peru and Rafting

This is going to be a long entry-- sorry.

CUSCO:
We arrived in Cusco a little down and out after a tough few days, but were THRILLED when our hostel took us in at 5 am let us go to our rooms to sleep (and it didn't hurt that it was the nicest hostel of all time). After a little cleaning up, we went out to explore AMAZING Cusco. It is maybe the most beautiful city I've ever seen. It is chalk full of gorgeous plazas, all the buildings are old and well kept, and I still don't think I've seen any trash anywhere here. We had a blast exploring and gawking at everything, had a $2.50 four course meal to die for, went out a bit at night for quiz night, and then tried to get some sleep to prepare for our trek to Machu Picchu (next blog entry).
When we returned from Machu Picchu, much as we wanted to sleep, we got up to try to go paragliding over the sacred valley the next morning, and it was beautiful, but unfortunately no wind, so after a few hours of waiting we came back to Cusco and played around town for the afternoon (last minute shopping). We went for dinner and a much anticipated big night outtttttttttttt!!!!
Unfortunately the girls left Sunday afternoon. I was on my own again, so I went to meet up with everyone at the "Highest Irish owned bar in the World" for a "Sunday Session". It was a great night, and the next two days were more of the same just living it up in Cusco (LOVE this town).

RAFTING:
Rafting was a blast. We left Cusco early Wednesday morning and drove for a few hours on (surprise surprise) a dusty, bumpy, very scary cliff road, with a considerable amount of traffic in the opposite direction (as far as cliff roads go) and somehow we always seemed to be the ones blindly reversing. We had a great lunch down next to the river and set out for the first few hours of rafting. It was mostly class 2, 3, and 4 this day, and we got to our beach campsite around 6 pm and had a fabulous hot lomo saltado (one of my favorite Peruvian dishes) dinner, a fire, and turned in early.
We woke up the next morning all with a significant amount of bug bites (which I still had weeks later, and even have a few scars from on my legs), but we had slept well and it was another beautiful day. We put our wetsuits and gear back on, and headed out again for a full day of class 4 and 5 rapids. Because it had rained a bit over night, there were two rapids which were considered class 6, and therefore illegal for commercial rafting, so we had to walk a short distance on the shore while our guides worked extremely hard to get our boats down safely. Judging by how much they were struggling and the complicated techniques they used (having to throw the tow line to each other and pull the boats around), I am very glad we didn’t have to do that! We stopped for a great lunch, had a quick fire, got attacked by more sand flies (or whatever it was that was eating us) and had a great afternoon of more big (and somewhat scary!) rapids. We got to our second night beach camp around late afternoon, so we had enough daylight to play some games, have another great dinner and bonfire and party!
The last day we woke up early because we had a lot of rafting to get in, and it had rained again so the water was very high! We had a few flips and some unexpected swimming in our group, but luckily I only fell out once (and was pushed out once!). We had some more class 4 and 5s, and had to rescue a couple kayakers who were having an even harder time than us. We ended our trip late afternoon again, had a fantastic dinner waiting for us, and then drove a couple of hours back to Cusco.
Sadly, it was my last night in Cusco (and South America for that matter ) so naturally we had to make the most of it and had quite a night out!!