Cusco, Peru

Cusco, Peru

Day 56...June 17, 2017, Marco the taxi man picked us back up at Ollantaytambo and hauled us back out of the sacred valley to Cusco. Cusco is a fairly large city and promotes itself as the tourist capital of Peru. Whether or not that's true is questionable, but it is the gateway to the sacred valley thus many tourists fly to here but then move on to Machu Picchu...as we did.

Our hotel in Cusco is "The Fallen Angel", a very eclectic and art-sy place that was well known for it's restaurant but then added six guestrooms upstairs. The structure was built in the 15th century. When we checked in, the young man showed us three of the rooms (the other three were occupied) and allowed us to choose our room which we thought was most thoughtful and probably has never happened before in our travels. We selected the one with a balcony overlooking the little plaza of St. Nazareth. The main plaza of the Cusco, Plaza de Arms is only a block away which is very convenient to all the food joints and watering holes.

The Fallen Angel  hotel:

Our room, yes that is a sink on top of an old TV.

View of the plaza from our balcony. 

Turns out, the entire city was in the midst of celebrating the arrival of the winter solstice on June 24th with continuous festivals, parties and parades. This made for a most interesting look at Peruvian life.

The festival.  Some of these floats were just down right scary! 
The floats:

There were two days of dance competitions that were a lot of fun to watch.  The colleges had their different areas of study compete and we were thrilled to see the accounting department dance... yep, 30 nerds with calculators and general ledgers doing their best twerking.

The plaza during the day.

At night  the plaza was rocking with music playing and fireworks show late into the night.  It was jam packed. 

Bill even found time to get a hair cut. Best one he has received in a long time....

and Andrea found time to cuddle a llama.

We took an open-top bus tour of the city that oriented us to the place and then the next day did another tour to some Inca ruins in the area and also the Inca salt mines nearby. It seems that the Incas harvested salt for bartering purposes with other cultures since there was no currency at that time. On both days, the tour included the obligatory stop a local craft store where the hawkers pressured us to buy their stuff. We could have done without it but it's always part of the tour and not optional.

Statue of JESUS on mountain top in Cusco. 

Inca ruins

Salt Mines

Tasting the salt water

Workers mining the salt

The food in Cusco was outstanding and is known for such. We ate at The Fallen Angel restaurant one night and it was easy to see why it is so well known there.

The dinner table was an old bath tub, covered with glass and fish swimming below!.

Our romantic dinner setting

Cusco is 11,000 feet above sea level. By comparison, Denver, Colorado is 5,000 feet. Consequently, altitude sickness is very common. Walking up steps is a challenge and even laying in bed, one can feel the sensation of gasping for air. Beware.

In summary, Cusco is a cool place and worthy of a stop for a day or two. We are at the Cusco airport awaiting our forty-minute flight to Puerto Maldonado where we will spend four nights at a lodge down-river in the Amazon basin. Sadly, this is the last destination before we start the trek home.

The people of Peru:

We wanted to dive into this but were warned about eating from street vendors if not a local. 

These ladies were weaving clothing from llama fur and then dying it different colors
 using native plants, bugs and food items.

Peru is known for its potatoes and corn, they have over 55 varieties of corn.