Is it nearly Christmas?

So its been nearly 2 weeks since our last blog, its been a busy time with both ups and downs. It started with mass for our dear friend Miguel for his passing away. The mass was held in the beautiful church of La Recoleta and a few of us went out afterwards to just chat and talk.
This ended up with me meeting a lovely couple from Oz who were having difficulty in finding things to do in Cusco so this time we may be talking a little more about the agency side of things. Anyway we sent these nice people off to the valley of Lares to do some trekking visit Machu Picchu, go mountain biking, rafting and then on for 5 days in the jungle, excellent. They are having a lot of fun and have not even made it to one of my favourite lodges yet, tomorrow off they go.
Now what does this mean for me, well for the biking means making packed lunches, good job my orange cake is a winner. On the trekking means I have to find guide, cook, horses and transport fortunately it all worked out. On Machu Picchu invloves running about getting a guide, train tickets, hotel and entrance tickets, fortunately I got them tickets up to Huayna Picchu which is great as only 400 people a day can do that. For the jungle its organising their lodge trip, getting air tickets and printing off boarding passes. All done excellent. Today I can leave them at their hotel so they can take off tomorrow to Tambopata.
In addition we also went off to our friend Jeff.s house up in the hills near Maras, we always take the bus and get dropped off about 2 kms from his house where we trek round the fields. On arrival his lovely cook Gloria always has something yummy to eat and I always to dinner, so we had pizza for 6.
His house is looking great. the wall is nearly finished and the only thing that seems to be missing is hot water, well that and actual water, he collects lots of rain water and in the dry season has to get it trucked in. Had a wonderful nights sleep and we were back in Cusco for 10am the next morning. Unfortunately it took longer to actually get home as all the University students were protesting about the price of combi (bus) tickets going up, so basically most of the roads were shut and we had to go round and round to get home, with a slightly irate taxi driver.
Well I think that all for today, remember you can find us on www.tikatrek.com and www.tikasoapperu.com