Advertisement
Published: September 16th 2006
Cuzco
This is the view of Cuzco from the dining area of the Loki HostelGreetings from Peru,
Beth and took the four hour train ride from Cuzco to here this morning. Aguas Calientes is also known as Machu Picchu Village, being that it is only a 30 minute bus ride up to the site. Our plan is to hit it up the bus ride early tomorrow morning and watch the sun rise of the city in the sky.
Aguas Calientes is a little town on a small river and surrounded by these lush green mountains the just rocket up almost vertically. I can´t imagine what it must be like to live here. There are apparently hot springs, hence the name of the town, but they have been described as a murky smelly common bath so we are gonna pass. We went to the museum and botanical gardens instead.
Yesterday was our first day of the trip and we spent it exploring Cuzco. We actually left LA on Wednesday around 1 pm but then we had to fly to Miami, then to Lima, and then finally to Cuzco so it was about 7am on thursday when we were finally done flying. The flights were awful. Planes got delayed and we almost missed our
Plaza de Armas
Meet Fracisquito, seen here from the balcony of the coffee shop. Some people have gnomes, we have an elephant Beth designed. connection but with a little line cutting and our first run in with St. Christopher of the trip we made it five minutes before they stopped boarding.
Cuzco was interesting. Weak adjective I know but I am really tired. The altitude is killer. After checking to Hostel Loki and finding the other girl in our dorm room was so ill she couldn´t get out of bed we went exploring. The market was first. It was all the standard woven goods, trinkets and the like plus what I guess you could call a farmer´s market. Oh man, can you say health code violation. They had skinless chickens just piled on the counter and you could definitly tell they had been there all day. Same goes for the beef, pig´s heads, assorted hooves and tounges, livers, and yes of course rocky mountain oysters. Surprisingly though the smell wasn´t so bad. Oh yeah and you can buy fresh pig skin by the kilo.
Moving on, we then went to the Plaza de Armas which is the city center. We found a nice little coffee shop with a second story balcony over looking the square which was quite nice. We had some damn good food at a random restraunt down a back alley. My innards are fine so far in case you´re wondering. The last, we hike up a ton of steps to some ruins that over look the city. The view was amazing. At night we met some Irish guys at our hostel who were, surprisingly enough, getting hammered at about 6pm. They explained to us the phase, ¨What´s the craic (pronounced crack)¨. We were sure they had some real problems before the explanation cleared things up. Unfortunalty Beth and I had to go to bed (or at least that was our excuese) before happy hour which is 10pm to 11pm and cosists of two double shots of vodka for 6 soles ($1 is about 3.2 soles).
Anyway, we are having a blast. I can´t believe I am going to be doing this for a year but now that I´m in it the stress has gone and it´s just one day at a time.
Now I am going to attempt for the first time to upload pictures and videos so if they aren´t up when you read this know I am trying. This travel blog has a ton of features, none of which I know how to use so bear with me. Hope all is well back in the homeland.
Peace out,
Aaron
Advertisement
Tot: 0.128s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0728s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mom
non-member comment
How cool
It all sounds so great! I love Fracisquito! Love, Mom