Perhaps the high point of our trip, we attended the Festival of the Virgin Carmen in the remote village of Paucartambo. A 4-hour bus ride from Cusco over a dirt one lane road, the small town comes alive 3 days each year with quantities of beer and competing teams of elaborately costumed dancers each a parody of the elements that are part of the daily life and history of Peru. They represent drunken landowners, the judicial system, Amazon indians, Spanish conquistadors, devils, Chileans!, French aristocrats and more... some 16 groups in all. Our tour was punctuated with a further, arduous, 3-hour bus ride, along with dozens of other vehicles, to watch the (rather normal) sunrise over the Amazon in Manu National Park.