Cusco

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Machu Picchu yestarday! Excited for pictures? I bet you are but you're going to have to wait. I just finished transfering 368 shots from my camera and we've yet to pull any from Sams. With editing and uploading the photographic excellence it may be a few days as we are en route to lake Titicaca tomorrow. In the mean time we have been busy checking out Cusco city and we have a few images to unload. Cusco is a pretty big city and the highest one we've been to yet at 3400 metres. First impressions, the place is old, really old and for the most part it has aged well. On the way in seeing all the redish brown mud brick and tin roofs gave us the impression that we we're heading into some sort of sprawling ghetto city. But once we set our feet on the tiny one lane cobble stone streets it was easy to see the charm of the historic town. It is impossible to visit Machu Picchu without coming to Cusco and because of that Cusco is the most touristy and expensive place we've been to yet. But don't get me wrong you get what you pay for the food is good the hostels are posh and it's not as hard to come by good coffee as it is in other S.A. cities. Everyone here speaks english and you hear french, german and american chatter just as much as spanish. We've taken advantage of a few of the best tourist attractions two of them grand catholic churches which only allow photos from the outside. One of them was the largest Jesuit cathedral in South America decorated inside with cedar, silver and gold leaf. We are starting to enjoy the paintings in these places of worship more than anything. One of the most amusing ones was a Peruvian take on the last supper where in they decided that the Peruvian specialty Cuy was served. Cuy is a fire roasted Guinea Pig served with screaming little face and all, definately an un expected touch to a historic subject. We tried to get a quick picture but I think the security gaurd saw me pulling my camera out so he followed us for a while. Over all Cusco has been a bit of a challenge to acclimatize at so our adventures in the last week have been quite simple. Apart from the churches we visited an observatory which was interesting because the night sky in this hemisphere is quite different. They explained the constelations and we were able to Saturn rings and all through a large telescope. Anyway I hope you enjoy the photos and I will do my best to get the Machu Picchu pictures up soon.

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