Beautiful downtown Cuzco

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Hola amigos,
It is with great joy that I write to you from Cuzco, Peru. This is my 3rd visit here and each time is more wonderful than the last. This time my travel pal, Val, and I are here by ourselves with no tour guides, no schedules, no big special events or ´have tos' to run to every day. We truly are perfecting the new art of 'slow travel'.

We have rented a sweet apartment in the heart of a noisy bustling neighborhood full of barking dogs, high decibel screeds from trucks with loud speakers, every manner of corner street merchant and lots of kids running around. We love it! The apartment itself is down a narrow alley off of the very busy Belen Street. We are one flight up and have 2 bedrooms, 3, count them 3 full baths, a sweet living room, dining area and full kitchen. It is a bit like camping but since it is for a little less than a month I can survive.

Pilar, the daughter of the owner and her brother, Roberto, picked us up at the airport and thankfully lugged our bags up the stairs. Then she took us shopping at the local 'super mercado'. It is good to have a local show you the way things are done since every country seems to have a different system for weighing veggies, or tallying up bread and rolls. We now know what to do and won't annoy the busy 'amas de casas' who shop there daily.

One of the first things we had planned to do was sit at the Plaza de Armas and enjoy watching the people move all around us. This is how we learn a lot about local cultures everywhere we go. Within seconds we were swarmed not only by pigeons but by shoeshine boys, boys selling post cards or paintings, by girls selling jewlery or clay pots or carved gourds, well, you get the idea. After many. many' no gracias' they left us alone. It is a fascinating place to people watch as students come by on their way home from school dressed in many different uniforms. young parents stroll by with their babies, tourists of all ilk come by from the flip-flopped disgustingly dirty (and usually Am.) college students to the khaki covered German tourist with 3 or more camera slung around his neck. Who needs a parade?

We start school on Monday. I haven't been for 2 years and expect to be placed in the basic elementary class- if they are kind that is.

More later,
Love, Carolyn

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