Cusco

My friend, Mike, came down here for two weeks to travel and it worked out perfectly because now I'm finished working at Extreme so I can finally travel to all the places I've been wanting to go. Also, it's great because Brandon a fellow teacher in China and now Peru also has his family - mom and brother- down here, so the 5 of us are traveling together.

We hung around in Arequipa for a couple of days just walking around the city center and the markets. There's this one expensive ceviche restaurant only 2 blocks from where I live that I've been wanting to go to the entire time I've been in Arequipa but haven't because it's so expensive. So now I actually had a reason to go. I got tacu-tacu with fish and it came with a mishmash of seafood that I didn't see on the menu, and I'm glad I didn't because I wouldn't have ordered it but it turned out to be really good.


Then when Brandon's family got in we all went to Cusco on an overnight bus. I had taken the exact same bus  over the Semana Santa break and what cost me S/60 then only cost S/40 when it's not a holiday. Oh well. We got in early in the morning and walked around the city center...kinda just what we had been doing in AQP but in a different city.

Cusco is sorta in a valley  and so you can climb up the hills and over look the city. It kinda reminds me of Prague with all the red tiled roofs, but then it just reminds me that that in the 1600's Cusco was taken over by the Spaniards and so the city should look European.

The markets are kinda interesting to walk through. There are a lot of strange things to buy like dried alpaca fetus.



There are a lot more Inca sites around Cusco other than Machu Picchu. Sacsayhuamán was the  Inca ceremonial site of Cusco. You can see the remains up on the hill from the center of the city so we all walked up the hill and spent the morning wandering around up there.
The Inca are known for their advanced knowledge of architecture and their use of such large stones. We really felt miniature next to those giant stones.