I was left to my own devices for one night in Cuzco before the hockey girls turned up to join me for a two week adventure. Before Graham left he had given me a crash course in Spanish numbers to avoid me getting scammed. I threw myself into it and managed to order food, drinks and to buy postage stamps. I even understood how much the bill was. Progress!

The next morning I got up early and waited for Cath, Diane and Lou to arrive. I tried tracking their flight from Lima to Cuzco and was quite worried when it seemed to be missing in action. I was so excited when they walked through the hostel door at ten am, despite their plane still appearing to be in Lima. We were all surprised and relieved that Dr Diane had actually cleared customs with her giant bag of drugs. We were even more relieved a few days later when we all needed to take them for our various ailments.

The girls had been at the hockey annual dinner on the Saturday night and then spent 24 hours in transit. These girls are tough though so instead of having a nap I took them out to explore the town. They were all suffering slightly from the altitude, so we took it easy and stopped for lots of coffees and snacks.

The Chocolate Cafe

Over the next few days we started ticking off the food from the National Geographic list of Top Ten Things to Eat in Peru. Some, such as lomo saltado, were delicious. Others, such as cuy (or guinea pig), were less so! We bravely ploughed on though, helped along the way by a few pisco sours! Another favourite was a delicious alpaca steak cooked on a hot rock.

Diane was not impressed with the roasted cuy

Trying chicha

Anyone for breaded udder??

We only had two days in Cuzco before starting the more active part of the trip, so we all indluged in some retail therapy and bought every type of alpaca clothing on offer. We did most of our shopping in Gabriellas shop. She happens to be the best saleswoman in Peru so we all came away with a lot more than we had intended to buy. Packing was going to be fun…

Gabriellas shop

Just before going out for dinner on our final night in Cuzco, Lou and I noticed that there was a HUGE machete tucked under our dorm mates mattress. We didn’t mention it to the others until we got to dinner. It turns out that they had noticed it too and we were all a bit worried. We just couldn’t come up with any good reason for having a massive weapon in your bed! When we got back to the hostel we reported it to the staff, who came up to the room, looked under the bed and said, ‘In Peru we call this a machete.’ Our unanimous response: ‘We don’t really care what you call it, just get it out of our bedroom!’. After a bit of questioning it transpired that the other girl in our room was planning on doing a trip to the jungle and thought she might need it for that. After further negotiation it was agreed that she would leave it at reception. There was another tense hour while we waited for her to get ready for her night out and take it downstairs!

Eventually she left and we all managed to get to sleep, ready to start our trek to Machu Picchu bright and early in the morning.

• Cuzco