A Bit of Cusco

The day after the inca trail and the big night we slept in and took it easy indulging at our favorite restaurant, "Jacks" (the most amazing food at massive portions all for about $9NZ) before heading for the massage salon. The main profession in Cusco must be a masseuse as you are hassled everywhere you go for a massage. This makes for a very competitive market. You can hustle them down for the best bargain saying the other lady just offered it for half the price.  We both received a massage for over an hour for under $10NZ which fueled our new addiction. Revitalised after our amazing massage we head for the markets picking up some wicked goodies to bring home. We had an easy night as everyone was still recovering and we had a big day planed for tomorrow.
The next day we were picked up to go white-water rafting 2hours out of cusco. We piled into three rafts and hit the rapids. We had an awesome day on the water before heading back to cusco for our last night with the gap tour. We started at the hostel with our 1.1litre bottles of beer and a bottle of Peru's favorite, pisco to go around, before heading to our favorite ruckus club for one last night with the group. With similar antics from two nights before, it proved to be an awesome finally to an amazing 2weeks. The next day the group began to split their separate ways to continue their trips around south America. It was quite sad to say goodbye as we had become so close, but really good to know we now have contacts around the world we can keep in touch and meet up in years to come. 
Half the group left on Saturday and the other half had another day or two in cusco like us. We were pretty sore after the previous day of rafting  and the big night so it seemed like a good excuse to get another massage. 
The next day we decided to head up to have a look at the saxsaywoman ruins above the city. Like most of Cusco, any inca buddings were ravaged by the Spanish. Some striped down and used as the base of the main building around cusco, the walls of saxsaywoman were ripped down and the stones were taken else where for the Spanish buildings. At a fraction of the original height, the ruins are still extremely impressive. Unlike all the inca walls we had seen, these stones were much larger in scale and the colossal stones dwarfed us. Each stone fitted perfectly into the next and locked each stone in. A perfect example of the amazing Incan masonry work. We explored the ruins and admired the view of cusco city before we headed back for our next experience. We had managed to get tickets for the local football match. The cusco team faced relegation so the tickets were in high demand and people were lining up for hours to get them. We decided to pay the 300% mark up ($12nz per ticket). We arrived to the stadium and realised what we were about to experience. Policemen were on horses and thousands of football crazed fans flocked the streets. We noticed people were trying to climb the barbed wire fences to get in while we searched for the right gate to enter as we had tickets. We found our gate and joint the line of 2000thousand people trying to get in the same gate. The line was very civilized until charges were made at the gates by 100odd fans without tickets. These charges would happen at 5minute intervals and each time 10people would sneak through. We had tickets so we thought we would be sweet, what we didn't realize is that once the stadium is full, it's full, regardless of who has tickets. We were on the homestretch to get in when the guards yelled something in Spanish which outraged the crowd as they tried to close the gates. The crowd including us made a run for the gate but were denied entry by the massive steal doors and cops with batons. We eventually worked out that the stadium was full as outraged fans waved their tickets about yelling and some crying. The crowd did everything they could get gain entry but they wouldn't budge. One lady got up in an officers face smacking the door behind him yelling derogatory terms in Spanish. After that didn't work she retreated back to arm herself with stones which she threw at them. The police remained calm and were not too phased by the woman's behavior to our surprise. An officer approached her telling her to calm down and she responded by stealing the officers hat and running away. She was tackled then helped out by a few of her supporters but eventually taken away in the paddy-wagon. Along with the crowd we learnt this gate wasn't opening after an attempt was made by the angry crowd to break it open. It looked like it was about to burst before reinforcements came to break the attack. We realised out tickets were now useless to went to explore the other gates. Around the corner we found another few thousand outraged fans causing even more havoc that required the police on horses to maintain the crowd. After anger and force didn't succeed, people reverted to cunningness as a bunch of boys created a small hole in the fence behind one of the stands. A few slid through right behind three officers backs while they were distracted by another attack on a nearby gate. Everyone was persistent but like most of the supporters we had no luck. Frano tried his luck bribing one of the guards not to her amusement. While we didn't get in, we sure had an experience not getting in. Experiencing that was something in itself. It wasn't until the last 15minutes where another attack on the gates were made we had our chance to get in. We made a ran for the gate and were finally successful. We could see why they weren't letting anymore people in, the 40,000 capacity stadium was at at least 50,000. We admired the atmosphere of the stadium and watched people letting off firework bombs in one of the stands as the cusco team saved themselves from relegation with the 2-1 win. After the game we walked back to town takin in the experience. We met the others for one last dinner as the remaining group members were off on a night bus and an early flight in the morning. 
We had a bus from Cusco to Lima at 8pm so we enjoyed our last day of Cusco seeing a few more sites and finishing off our market shopping. 
We booked our 22hour bus ride with a random company to save a bit of money. We didn't realise how 'random' it was until we got to the bus station. The whole thing seemed quite unprofessional compared to the other two mainstream companies we had been with. We finally boarded the bus a bit nervous about the whole situation but we booked first class so  had extremely big nice seats that almost recline flat. As we were leaving cusco the bus slowed down to jogging pace and we heard a few men outside the bus. Frano had a look to see what was going on and saw a few men running alongside the bus with the bag compartment open throwing in some large suspicious looking sacks. That hopped back on board and left us wondering what the hell was going on. A little of edge we managed to get to sleep and have the best bus sleep to date due to the nice seats. Halfway through the night we stopped and we saw the same men get out and take their sacks out of the luggage compartment. We slept a lot easier after that. We are almost in Lima after 20hours of driving, despite the weird bus ride and discovering we were driving south for quite a long time to our north destination, it has been the best bus ride so far. So lets hope we get our bags when we hop out at
Lima!