This was something new – it was the first of three days where we had nothing planned, and had no idea what there was available to do in or around Cusco. Unfortunately James had started suffering from the altitude sickness again after coming back up to Cusco’s height after having spent two days slightly lower at Machu Picchu.

I took this opportunity to spend the morning reading a book as I’d been reading “The Andromeda Strain” for a while on the plane to Cusco but had not had chance to read any more since. By the evening I’d finished reading it and the day had pretty much passed by without leaving the hotel room so I thought I’d go down to the restaurant and try some more Alpaca steaks.

When I returned to the room I heard a lot of noise coming from outside. My first thought was that a fight had broken out so I went over to the window, but struggled to see what was going on. I then heard loud bangs getting closer and closer. My mind flashed back to seeing police carrying assault rifles around the square earlier. Is it gunfire?

As a crowd of people started to move passed the hotel, and at first I wondered if there was a riot. I then realised the noise was from firecrackers being thrown around a marching band. My best guess was that it related in some way to the Corpus Christii celebration.