Warning this story contains me in some perilous situations!
Well, on our way from Cusco to Chivay i was extremely tired and was sleeping on the bus. We were at an altitude of around 4000m and it started snowing, I found all this out later but all i remember is waking up mid air as the bus we were in was going sideways over the gutter then skidding back to end up smashing into a cliff. It was a scary experience but we were lucky we had a good driver cause no one got hurt. We all piled out of the bus to look at our situation (which wasent good). We were in the middle of nowhere about 8 hours from cusco and 3 and a bit hours from chivay which is a small town with a completly writen off bus... and it was raining and there was lightning crashing around us. We all pitched in though and got a tent up for us all and a gas stove with coffe on the boil. Our tour leader went to a nearby town to get help and we all just sat around to see what was going to happen. When Liz got back she told us all that another bus was on its way to pick us up but it would be a good 4 hours till it got to us. Just after the crash, like little angels, a whole road work crew complete with hard hats piled out of the coach behind us and proceded to try to whinch the bus onto the side of the road. We got the bus hooked up to a big truck that was behind the other coach and towed the bus to saftey (the bus was sitting on the wrong side of the road on a blind corner) Once that was all sorted we started to play cards in the tent while outside it started to snow. it was lucky that we were on the cheap tour and were going to be going camping so we had all the camping gear. If we were to have only stayed in hotels we would have been in the snow with no cover or hot drinks. When we were all comfortable we got out some rum and had a few drinks to settle the nerves and dug in for the wait. We had to cancel our trip to chivay and we headed to Ariquipa instead. When we got there we were offered a free day trip the the colca canyon (which is right next to Chivay and the reason we were going there) which was good but it was a 12 hour round trip with only 2 hours looking at the canyon and spotting condors. The whole thing worked out fine but it was still an interesting experience that i had to share with everyone.
The next blog will be our time at the beach and the desert when i can be bothered to do more typing. Photos of the crash will be posted soon.
Speak to you all soon
