Blogs from Cusco, Peru, South America - page 437

We went from Puno to Cusco with the lovely posh first class bus company, complete with a toilet, beverages of coca tea and coke, a buffet lunch, and an entertaining tour guide! The inca ruins were intriguing, as was the Jesuit church filled with a combination of Andean and Christian art. Even more so was a stretch of towns: - Land of the bread bakers - Land of the fried pork - Land of the guinea pigs Now, we handled the bread bakers just fine. Apparently all the bread sold in Cusco is from bakers who get up at 12 midnight, to bake the bread and have deliver it by morning. And sure, land of the fried pork was ok too. The town was filled with restaurants with fried pork, not too much else. Then we ... read more

We awoke at 4am to get an early start on machu picchu day. on previous days we had woken at 5, so this wasn{t supposed to be too terrible. well, i felt like shit. chrissy did as well after her night of 6 trips to the woods to unload gallons of liquid excrement. it is incredible that she was able to push through all 42 km of the hike feeling as terrible as she did. anyway, we were ready by 4:45 am with some breakfast and coca tea in us. i still felt terrible, but excited to finally see our long awaited destination. they wouldnt let us leave camp until 5:30am, so we chewed some coca and the fat until then. the rest of our troupe felt similarly exhausted, sleep deprived and excited; its nice to ... read more

Day 2 is known as "challenge day". you actually only hike about 8 km, less than the 11 km of day 1, but you go from around 10,000 ft at the campsite up to 14,000 ft at the "dead womans pass". it was a lot of climbing. we took it slow, chewed a lot of coca, and got through it. this was, in my opinion, the most beautiful day. the scenery on the entire hike is very dramatic, but day 2 really was nice. the entire way up was just breathtaking, and i{m sure that my photos will not do it justice. as we climbed it got colder and colder, but with all the hiking we were sweating constantly. i layered my clothes with some long underwear, t shirts etc and managed not to feel too ... read more

cuzco is a beautiful town. it reminds me of the old beauty of prague, only cheaper and with a latin twist. all the streets are paved with cobblestones and it just has this great energy which has made the first few days of our trip wonderful. they cuzqueños (people from cuzco) have treated us very well even though it is a tourist town swimming in gringos. the only annoyance are the swarms of children selling finger puppets and quechua women with llamas offering to let us take a picture of them for a sol (30 cents). all in all, cuzco is a must visit; a wonderful place. and guess what, the lights never go out here! we are living in heaven. we went out drinking a few times here. they ahve people handing out free drink ... read more

After our little detour to Queens we finally arrived, a day later than expected, to Cuzco. The flight from JFK to Lima was long and i ddin´t get much sleep. LAN does have good service though, the food was good and there were plenty of movies and video games to keep me occupied during the long night of little sleep. Lima was hot, but we only had a 3 hour layover there, thank god. we were accosted immediately upon emerging from customs, but enough ¨dejame en paz¨s were sufficient to shoo them away. the flight from lima to cuzco was the best flight i have ever been on. it was beautiful. we saw incredible topography, and even some snow capped mountains. this part of peru looked very sparsely populated and virgin, very unlike what i remember ... read more