Tourist

It was our housemate Tia’s last day, so we decided to pack it full of as many things as possible. One of these was the free walking tour offered in town. Even though we had already been here for two weeks, we thought we could use a refresher course on the city, and so we joined a tour on a Saturday and visited several restaurants, shops, and landmarks. Our guide Luis was full of energy, very fun, and showed us some great places we hadn’t been to before. We even got to try playing some new instruments at his friend’s house!

After the tour we went out to lunch, visited San Pedro market, and got hot chocolates at a small cafe our teacher had reccommended.

Today Patty, our host, arranged for us to go on a city tour. We met our guide just off of the main square and took a bus around to several different spots. Each spot was a different Incan structure, so we saw an ancient place of worship, a fortress, a place where animals (and possibly humans) were sacrificed, and our favorite, naturally formed slides that only the locals know about.

Our friend Amy told us that when we get to Saqsaywaman to have the Jesus sculpture at our back, the town of Cusco down at our left, and we will find a set of stairs leading to these slides. During our ten minutes of free time in these ruins we rushed to find the stairs, which were actually super easy to find from Amy’s instructions, and followed them up to a large array of different sized slides, filled with small children riding them over and over again. We practiced on a small slide, then I rode the biggest one, and we both rode a medium sized ones before leaving. It was so much fun, and we are so grateful Amy shared this information with us, as it seems no one but locals know about this spot.

We also met a wild dog that could have passed as a baby llama, and learned the difference between real Alpaca and fake. Essentially, real Alpaca costs hundreds of dollars, but is softer. Overall, the tour was fun, and we are looking forward to our next tour today.