There is only so much amazing scenery that you can take in.
After a while the plunging ravines and the towering mountain tops become your world and it is a frustrating part of the human condition that the wonders of the universe soon lose their hold on you.
We left the Hotel Ayullu after a good breakfast, packed up the truck and pulled away for the seven hour drive to Cusco - the start of the Inca Trail.
Two hundred metres down the road, the door to the back locker was flapping like a tea towel in the wind and Cindy’s tyres were smoking on the asphalt as she ground to a spectacular halt on the roundabout, sending auto-rickshaws and microbuses scattering.
We dived out to inspect the losses.
The back locker is the inner sanctum of the truck. Anything you cannot carry in the cab goes in there and its precincts are supposed to be inviolate.
The unattended open door was unthinkable and Dave had drilled this into us time and again. The opportunist only needed a moment and they would be away with as much as they could carry. To drive off with the contents spilling out onto the road was the equivalent of leaving the keys to our own personal Fort Knox hanging on a sign saying ‘Rob Me’.
Diving headlong through the smoke, there were rucksacks disappearing in all directions.
Keanu would have been proud of us as we twisted and kicked, ducked and chopped at the seething mass of robbers. Blades whistled through the air and bullets ricocheted off walls as the battle raged. Sharif came off the side-lines and promptly took one for the team shortly after Sophie reminded him that there is no 'me' in team - unless you re-arrange the letters.
When it was over, blood ran freely in the streets of Puno but the bags were safe.
I put a sticking plaster over the deep tear between fantasy and reality and we paraded Sharif's inert form across the roundabout on the shoulders of the crew before climbing back on board Cindy.
We pulled away from the shattered ruins of a once proud town.
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