Right. Well I’m recovered now from my ordeals with guardia. Completely better, no trace of nausea or anything. Also just removed those awful dashed (if you’re using IE) or dotted (if you’re not) borders from around the posts. Cleans up the page nicely, I think. Took ages, too, using crummy notepad.

Today we arrived in Agua Calientes. Ailis’ parents’ friends said that it was very nice, but they were obviously lying, cos it’s quite messy. Actually, who am I to talk about the state of a place, it does have a really nice, friendly atmosphere, if a little expensive.

The first thing we did was to eat. Ignoring the bad omen, we chose to eat in a place called Cafe Manu. Careful readers will remember that this was the name of the other cafe we ate at which took ages to serve a very disappointing dish.

Well, here, the food was extortionate, and rubbish. So there’s another place to avoid. If you come to Agua Calientes, avoid Cafe Manu. Lonely Planet says it’s good and cheap and blah blah blah, but it’s not, and the service is included obligatorily, which means there’s no pleasure in giving a tip.

Afterwards, we spent a really nice million years in the actualy hot waters (which is what Agua Calientes means in English). They were a collection of murky watered pools, full of people, but not too full. Each pool differed in temperature, which was fun. Also, the bottom of the pools were covered in gravel, which was fun to discover. We intially thought we were in the toilet pool, since the Peruvian-looking guy that got out as we got in looked like he was laughing at us as if he knew something we didn’t. It turned out he was just a shy person from St Albans, so all was well.

The water tasted gross, but a good game of throw the gravel on people underwater was had by all (well, me: my victims weren’t so impressed (Ailis)). After stopping off at the hotel (which has no roof, and in the reception area the windows aren’t in; it’s a bit like “Don’t mind the rooms that aren’t built yet, yours is fine!”) we went on a little walk. It was very nice, and on the way back a police truck beeped its horn at us and offered us a lift. It was properly quality! They were really nice about it too, and kept playing cow noises through the loudspeaker, much to the consternation/confusion/amusements of the locals/tourists.

A little more about the hotel… It’s S/. 20 a night, but we’re not paying because the tour company, United Mice, agreed to book us transportation and lodging when we informed them the we couldn’t make the trek due to my and Alex’s illness. How nice of them! Well I guess we did pay them a lot… But it’s still good.

Right, I’m gonna have to go now, cos I’m bored of typing :D If people send me emails, I will reply to them! That’s a request for more emails, actually ;).

Oh, btw, go to tblogs.bootsnall.com/shawn, it’s the blog of a guy we met in the hostel in Cusco. He was nice and chatty, and I was promised a naked picture of him on a nudest beach, so it’s well worth the visit. Since you probably can’t tell that I’m joking: I’m joking. But there is a picture of him on a nudest beach, apparently.