After epic battle for our seats we paid for but somehow they were remaining vacant we finally  managed to get our seats and 6 hours later we arrived to a town called Ayacucho in the middle part of Peru.
It's already a third day since we are more than 3000 meters above the sea level and so far we're coping fine. When we arrived a small headache was bugging us but Nurofen did its job and we were able to pay full attention to our hosts. We spent our first night in Ayacucho in  a home of a local police family. On the bus from Cusco we bumped into a guy called Hubert and because from the beginning he didn't want anything from us and was happy just to chat to us, he gained our trust. Later he told us he works as an anti-narcotic policeman, showed us his badge (looked real enough) and when he invited us to stay at his auntie's house we were more than happy to accept. The house was occupied by all generations of Hubert's relatives. His auntie cooked us chicken soup, grandpa was asking where are we from over and over again and two young cousins were eyeing us from behind a little gap between doors. Hubert's brother Fernando (btw. cop as well) was fascinated with contents of Mort's bottle of vodka so we decided to widen Peruvian horizons in the field of east-european culture. This exercise proved to be very valuable later on in the night when it helped us to drift into the realm of dreams in conditions that would make sleep otherwise impossible. The room Hubert gave us had windows facing the yard, where a funeral feast was going on through the whole night, accompanied by bizarre sounds of an organ that was played by someone either utterly incompetent or heavily intoxicated (or both).
The next morning Hubert's auntie and cousins greeted us with a breakfast consisting of french baked potatoes, slice of cake and a cup of delicious tea. After we digged in our food heavily drunk uncle arrived (copper) and while we were trying to explain that there is no war in Czech (using his words- we don't do 'Paf Paf') we also found out that today is autie's birthday. This occasion was celebrated with some local wine and then we were off to the town to explore and to get some presents for this wonderful family. Our main objective for the day was an archaeological site about 40km away due north. We found a minibus and started to move up the hills. When we arrived we found out that there are no descriptions in English (and none in Spanish either) so we left the place with little new information. In the evening we saw some local kids performing traditional dances on the main  square and then to our amazement screening of 'Dancing in the Rain' on the yard of local library. After the movie (which was great, shame for the cold and mosquitoes) we picked up Hubert's older cousins and went to a disco, drinking and dancing to uncompromising hits of the 80's (remixed with Latin beats) until early morning.

Now a bit of logistics:
Originaly we were supposed to move to Cusco today (hub for trips to Machu Picchu) but it was soon explained to us how things are in these ends. Our map indeed showed a thick yellow line zigzaging from Ayacucho to Cusco we thought a nice road, butin reality it was a gravel/dirt track, where time to time a bus would jump few hundred metres down the road (verticaly) and even if we were to be lucky and make it to Cusco, the journey would take at least 24 hours!! Unfortunately trains are unheard of in these ends so our only option is to take a bus back to Lima and then a plane to Cusco...

Now few small remarks:
- Peru is a land of Popcorn! That makes me (as a popcorn maniac) feel like I'm in heaven, although my imaginary dietician wouldn't be extatic that I munch 3+ sacks of it a day o:)
- Blue eyes better than gold! Seriously! Mort is like honey for the bees. Now I'm making fun of him, because he turned a color of a boiled lobster, but until this happened the local mothers were serving him their daughters on the plate like there was no tomorrow. As Hubert told us blue eyes are a highly priced artifact...
- Peruvians don't smoke! At least tha vast majority of them. That is a total contradiction to south-east asia, where everybody smoke. Looks like every pull is much more felt up here in the mountains...
- They've got quite a lot of local cuisine here in Ayacucho, but still the most common dish remains fried chicken with fries and Inca Kola :)

Take care and next time hopefully Cusco and Machu Picchu!