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Indiginous Family
I´ve been adopted by a mom with 2 other kids and 3 sheep. I should fit right in.I´m keeping this short and simple since not too much has happened.
5/23 We arrived at the airport 2 hours before our flight which was plenty of time to check in and still have to wait over an hour. Good thing we didn't take our bellboy's advice of getting there 3 hours ahead since it's an international flight. We arrived in Cusco after a stopover in Lima. After arriving and haggling for a $5 taxi we arrived at our hotel. We were immediately given Coca tea (made from leaves that is also used to make cocaine). This helps people with headaches and altitude sickness. Since we were at about 8500 feet in Quito for a couple days we weren't too bad since this is only 2K higher. We got settled into our bare room and headed straight to check in for our hike that starts tomorrow. After walking around the town and up about 100 steps we were both breathing like it was our last breath and felt a little light headed. After we figured out we wouldn't pass out, we found the trek place. They gave us a lot of helpful info and the bags that we could fill
with 6kg for our porters to help carry. After we returned to our hotel we rang Jason Triche's hotel where he was staying with Megan, Carrie, and Kim as well. We figured out they'd overlap here in Cusco for 1 day and hoped to meet up with them. Their hotel was only about a 10 minute walk away so we met and headed to dinner. We were hoping to have Cuy (which is guinnea pig named after the sound it makes before it dies) which is a dish the locals love, but only have on special occasions. We tried 3 places and they all said we had to have it one day in advance. We finally found a place who said they had it, ordered some beers and appetizers and settled in to wait for the meal. After about 2 hours we asked how much longer and there was a big miscommunication. Apparently while ordering she thought we wanted to just take pics of the guinnea pigs and never put in our order. We think it was the old bait and switch...tell us you have guinnea pig simply to get us to order beers. We finished the night with a
Big Long Street
This is mild compared to the rest of the city. few more drinks and then parted ways since the others were off to a different city the next morning.
5/24 Today we got up and headed to the main square for a parade we though would start at 9am. At 9:30 we gave up since it hadn´t started and decided to try and prepare ourselves for our hike with a practice walk up a hill to a stone jesus on the top. The height was supposed to be about 400 meters high. We got near the top and felt like we were doing pretty good other than the heaving breathing. I wussed out and didn´t go quite all the way up the last part of the hill but Stu did and I´m sure he wants it known that he is better than me.
The rest of the day was filled with a city tour of cathedrals, inca ruins, and textile shops that sold alpaca sweaters and blankets. I won´t do any justice explaining, but the way the inca's built their stone temples with rocks that butted up to each other perfectly with no need for mortar was absolutely astonishing.
After the tour we had reservations for dinner
Just like being in KC
Except we´re having drinks made with rum, egg whites, and who knows what else. since we pre-ordered our Cuy the night before. We started off with some mild soup before diving into our more adventurous roasted guinnea pig. It was not too bad. The closest thing we could compare it to was maybe duck...a little gamey and not like anything we've ever had before. It was not too bad...the skin was a little chewey and would have tasted much better if they'd have thrown the little sucker into a fry daddy. After having a full belly we´re back and getting anxious about our hike that picks us up at 5am tomorrow morning. We don't officially start walking until closer to 8am.
Wish us luck. We miss everyone and will post an update on Friday.
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Dave
non-member comment
Alpaca or shrunken head, please
Pu and Statty, please to be bringing me either an Alpaca hide or shrunken head. The trip sounds great and I love the commentary and pictures.