Made it into the motorbike town of Porto Maldonado late last night!

The journey was quite gruelling but fun too. We flew down from Manaus to Porto Velho, then slept in PV airport till our morning flight to Rio Branco inside a wagon circle of baggage trolleys. Rio Branco was another hot, sticky town, bigger than I expected. We got the bus into town, then another bus to the Rodoviera where we discovered it was almost as cheap to get a taxi to the border as it would to get the 5 hour, no aircon bus journey. Somehow we squeezed all our bags and the 5 of us into one taxi, and drove to the border town of Assis Brasil (after getting our passports stamped at the federal police station in nearby Brasilea - me and Christian had lost our entry/exit slips and were told off by the police man). That leg was on decent roads and took about 4 hours.

The next leg was again by car. The guy makes the trip every day once a day when there are fares. His car was a corolla hatch 4WD and he drove it like a rally car. Luckily it was a wee bit wider than the previous car, but it still got a bit much with the 4 of us in the back. This leg took 5 plus (wait for the reason for the plus!) hours, screaming along dusty dirt tracks. Whenever we were less than half a mile behind someone, we'd be in their dirt cloud and visibility was almost nothing, yet the guy would rarely slow down much, and would overtake trucks on uphill sections. There were one or two, or maybe more, times when our lives flashed before our eyes!!!

We got there in one piece though, and arrived on the other side of the river from Porto Maldonado at about 9pm. There was one of those little 1 car ferries running (more normally run in day time when it's busier), and we were 2nd in line. Then the truck in front of us tried to drive on from a stupid angle, and to make things worse wouldn't stop when the ferry guys shouted at him to and ended up nose first in the river with only the boat stopping him slipping further in.

Much ado ensued, and after the combined efforts of perhaps 15 Peruvians and about a 45 min wait, they finally got the truck on the ferry. By this time a second ferry had come, so our driver easily drove our car up onto the ferry and before we knew it we were across, hot, sweaty and covered in thick orange dust!

Today was an early 7am start, so we could buy our bus tickets for Cusco. We ended up wandering around one of the markets which was great, first proper experience of Peru. Oh and we also used one of the many mototaxis jetting around, which are 125cc bikes with a windscreen and a trike back with a back seat for 3 passengers and a canvas canopy to keep the sun off. Everything is cheaper here, not just in terms of the exchange rate - Miguel and Deri got chicken with some nice rice and one of the jungle potato-fruit things for just 4 Sols, which is less than a pound, and the serving was pretty generous. After a small breakfast (well, mine was small - coffee and a banana!) we all got some fruit juice from one of the many juice bars in the market, which cost 50c and are served in a plastic bag with a straw!!

Very happy the bus journey doesn't in fact take 3-4 days (LP guide bombs out again), more like 15 hours. So should be in Cusco tomorrow!!!

Here's to 2000 varieties of potatoes. I like being in potato country.  ¶ 8:06 AM