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When in Rome!
It had to be done - Guines Pig for dinner. I like the little tomato hat Kate - Our next stop was Cuzco a city in southeastern Peru near the Urubamba valley of the Andes mountain range. It is a gorgeous city surrounded by beautiful mountains and picturesque architecture. The journey from Ica was a long 16 hours but was actually not too bad. We did the over night journey and by the time we had watched a couple of rubbish films on the bus and slept for about 8 hours we had almost arrived. Cuzco really is a beautiful city and we decided to get there a good 3 days before we stared the Inca Trail as the city lies 3380 meters above sea level so you need to have time to acclimatize so that you don´t get hit by any altitude sickness. As soon as we hit the city i did feel a little bit short of breath and had a banging headache so i am really glad that we had days to get used to the altitude before trekking in the mountains!!! Another thing about Cuszo is it gets cold!!The days are nice but the evenings get pretty nippy. A little bit of a shock after the 30 degree days in Costa Rica! The
hotel we stayed in was really nice and situated right in the centre next to the main Plaza de Armas. The Plaza is surrounding by hundreds of restaurants overlooking the main square and the Cathedral a great place to sit and watch the world go by.We even managed to stumble across a celebration of the Saints in the square where they had a massive parade with music and crowds of people. The parade had Peruvians carrying these huge wooden statues of saints to various Cathedrals around the different districts of Cuzco- it was quite something and they looked really heavy!!!!! Great to see and soak such a buzzing atmosphere- it was great.
The first day in Cuzco we spent just looking around and soaking up the atmosphere. I, typically had a bit of shopping to do as i hadn´t really brought with me any suitable clothing for out four day trek. Before arriving in Cuzco i was worried that i wouldn´t be able to find anything but luckily for me pretty much every other shop is a hiking shop where you can buy and even rent any of the equipment that you need for the trail-phew. So i stocked
up on Alpaca soaks, hats, gloves (apparently the nights get really cold) and we both managed to rent feather sleeping bags for some thing like 8 Soles (1.20) a day- bargain!
The second day we decided to go White Water rafting. Steve had never been and it was something he really wanted to do so we booked up a day tour. The tour only cost 20 pounds and was brilliant. I have already been rafting before in Thailand and on that trip i was the only one of around 20 people to fall in so this time i was really determined not to. We had 5 of us in the raft and our instructor ´Max´and it was so much fun. The water was FREEZING but luckily we were all wet suited up. It was such incredible scenery and the rapids that we attempted were level 2-3 so pretty exciting (and for me a little scary). We rafted for around 2 hours and i was so chuffed coming to the last rapid of the day that i hadn´t fallen in. I had had a few near misses but so far so good. So feeling a little more confident we paddled
hard into the last rapid and went flying out of the raft. Luckily so did everyone else in the boat, Steve only managing to cling on because his foot was wedged into the raft and he was able to pull him self back in. I unfortunately went fully in and had to be rescued by the safety Kayak-doh!!! i swallowed so much water, i was not happy but it was still fun all the same. Steve says it was the highlight for him-how rude! I think though Steve has found his new favorite sport. You can choose to go on 3 day rafting expeditions which is something we will definitely look into in the future- maybe not this time around but hopefully we can find some in NZ!
The evening after the Rafting we had booked ourselves into a restaurant that was recommended to us by a local. In Peru Guinea Pig is a delicacy and according to him this was the place to go so we pre-ordered a Guinea Pig to share between us for that evening. When it came out i couldn´t believe it. I was expecting just the meat which we could try but they brought
a fully formed, roast guinea pig to our table fully dressed with a tomato hat and biting down on a carrot!!!!!! needless to say it was a little too much in its form for me. Luckily once we had taken the photo that chopped off the head but it still had its little feet and claws on the plate-hmmmmmm. Steve chomped down on it and quite liked the meat but somehow i don´t think it is something we will be ordering again in a hurry!- yuck!
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JRG
non-member comment
the best trip ever
whilst the rafting looks quaility. the guinea pig shots and kate in the bed are best of the trip so far.