Cuzco, Day 2

Whooowee that was one long bus ride. Typical of long distance travel in South America, I was resting oh so nicely when a bang and a pop jolted everyone awake and the bus came to a sudden stop. (Haha I made an unintentional rhyme.) Good thing they have mechanics on all the buses - it took an hour to repair whatever the problem was before we could go on our way again. It was a good thing, in a way, cuz it meant I had one bathroom break on a 12 hour ride.

So now I´m in Cuzco and man it´s a great city. It`s very touristy, but after beeing all by my lonesome for over a week I welcome all the gringos, the Enlish speakers, the camera flashers, and the many many trekking/hiking/adventuring shops. Cuzco is also the archaeological capital of Perù, so it`s gorgeous and walking down the streets you can find old walls from the Inca period. Beautiful architecture and landscape + many friendly English and Spanish speakers I can talk to = I could live here quite happily.

I`m now at I think 3 999m altitude, so I find myself out of breath walking some of these steep streets, and though it`s pretty nice during the day, it get frickin cold at night. When I was writing in my journal last night I was under 4 layers of wool blankets and still needed my alpaco wool hat to keep me warm.

Yesterday I ran into Jen, a girl I met previously at the hostel in Lima. She was talking to Berndt, a guy from Germany, and we three spent the day together, seeing the sights and talking about our travels. Yay for friends!

Today Jen and I are going to take a mini trek a couple kms away from the city to see some old Inca ruins. I can`t wait! It should be good practice for the Inka trail next Tuesday.

I´ll write more later but for now I´m out of time. By request I´ve gotta write about the food here! Next time...