Cusco (Peru)

Ola!

After saying goodbye to Costa Rica (and to another $25 each for leaving the country) we landed at Lima airport. Now the reason why I'm mentioning this airport in particular is that we ended up spending a lot of time in it. Since our flight to Cusco left at 6 am we decided to stay in the airport. Needless is to say that after a few hours we knew all the shops by heart, including all the available doughnut varieties at Dunkin Donuts (no, we didn't have time to try them all, even having allowed ouselves one doughnut every two hours).


Arriving in Cusco we definitely felt tired, though it is hard to say whether it was from the altitude (3500m), the cold (it is the the middle of the Andes) or the sleepless night. Fortunately people at the hostel welcomed us with a coca tea. This is the same plant from which cocaine is extracted and the indigenous people have been using it for centuries to fight altitude sickness. The US have tried to ban growing it several times but as the locals tell us, it is part of their habits to have coca leaf tea or to chew the leaves while working. Everyone has a coca bush in their back garden, it's a bit like growing basil in England. And its tea did wonders for us throughout our stay in Peru! We have some leaves left over, maybe we'll post them to George Bush!






A few hours of nice revitalising sleep later and we were ready to explore the city. Cusco is an amazing place, with a mixture of old Quechua ( the actual name of what the Spanish called Incas) and Spanish colonial arquitecture. The central piazza, the Plaza de Armas, is surrounded by houses with wooden balconies and the cathedral. On our second day we enjoyed a parade of people performing traditional dances around the Plaza. The Quechua world is full of colour, not only in their costumes (as you can see by the photos) but in their houses, their paintings, their jewellery! I loved it! And Cusco is full of little shops where you can by traditional products. My favourite were the alpaca wool things, of which we all bought socks and jumpers in preparation for the cool nights at the Inca Trail. Soft and cosy and nice... Hum... The only thing better would be to have an alpaca itself but I wasn't allowed one, humph.



After stocking up on warm clothes, waterproofs, coca leaves and snacks we went to bed extra early. The trail adventure would start on the next day at 4 am...

Vania