Blogs from Cusco, Cusco, Cusco, Peru, South America - page 17

This really is an amazing place to visit, but our exploration continues to be hampered by altitude sickness issues, particularly with Abbey. Yesterday, Pauline and Abbey had to ditch out of a tour we were on and head back to the hotel for some rest. The tour company arranged for a doctor to drop by the room, and he said that she is fine, but needs to rest a bit more. He also gave prescriptions for some medication that will assist with her acclimatization. We´re not going to look down our noses at a little bit of chemical help if it means that we can get around this remarkable city. I completed the tour, and it was a really interesting opportunity to learn about the history of Cuzco, including visiting several Inca sites. The tour started ... read more

Puffing and panting in Cusco. Well thats what your likely to do what with the steepness off the streets. The Walk Inn hostel was one of those at the end of a steep road. After two days we changed for one at the bottom of the road. Not for the steepness of the walk but for the total lack of water(only available between 4am and 9am),600m down stream we found a 400 year old building/hostel called Suecia, it was great, so much we returned after our 4 day inca trail. Terracotta roofs,steps, and loads of culture and history brings Cusco alive if you can cope with the 3300m altide and thunder storms that swept through whilst we were there. One site we saw was Saqsaywaman(sexywoman). Its an ancient fortified town on a hill up from Cusco,which ... read more

Sunday was a memorable day to end our our visit to Lima even though we disn´t see many attractions. The trip to the beach swimming and reading under a rented umbrella, followed by lunch in a streetside cafe will probably become our most lasting memory of Lima. Abbey and Harold got a little bit careless with the sunscreen, and have a few pink patches to show for it. The trip to Cuzco was uneventful, and we found ourselves in our hotel for noon. As expected, the move to 3,310 meters above sea level has caused some altitude sickness, especially in Abbey and we rested most of Monday afternoon and will lay low for this morning as well. It works out okay as Abbey´s catching up on her math. We´ve been drinking a tea made with coca ... read more

Rafting Cusco The weekend before my birthday Sam and I wanted to do some activities. The first was to hire some motorcycles to go up into the countryside that was a short but very steep 20 minutes away from the centre. The second was to go rafting again. From about the start of February the rainy season really started to kick in, this put us off getting bikes but we still decided to book the rafting as you get wet doing that anyway. One of the volunteers we were with at the school recommended to us to go with Swiss Raft, the only rafting company in Cusco to actually hold any health and safety certifications and thus the only one that is recognised by UK insurance companies. It was a little more expensive than the rest ... read more

We finished our first full week here in Cusco. After all the sight-seeing at the Inca ruins and salsa lessons, I was pretty worn out. It takes me about 2 hours to upload every batch of photos, so please enjoy. I didn't have time to make comments on any of them yet so hopefully I'll get around to it tomorrow. -R... read more