Week 1, Part 3: Cusco, Chaos and El Cathedral

Saturday morning we began the bus ride to Cusco, the town where we were to meet our host families and attend classes.  We made several stops along the way, including La Raya - the highest altitude point we would meet on our trip.  We also stopped at San Pedro, the Sistine Chapel of South America, according to my travel book.

The spitting alpaca at La Raya.

La Iglesia de San Pedro.

Finally, after dark and after getting lost and held up by construction, we made it to Cusco and met up with our host families.  My friend Jennie and I roomed together with la familia de Marcela Yabar on la calle de San Blaz y Carmen Alto.  Senora Marcela has seven children, but all but one of them live in the United States.  That night, Senora showed us around the neighborhood (it was freezing outside) and then Jennie and I walked to the Plaza de Armas (the center of the city) to find an internet cafe.

Cusco is quite a bit smaller than Lima and is primarily run by tourist-spending, since Cusco is the closest major city to Machu Picchu, one of the seven wonders of the world.  Cusco was the former capital of the Incan empire, but when the Spaniards took over they made Lima the capital because of its easy access to the Pacific Ocean for transportation and resources.

That night Jennie and I settled down into our new living space.

On Sunday, we went to Mass with Marcela at 9 a.m. at the Cathedral on the Plaza de Armas.  The mass was absolute chaos, with children and stray dogs running around and everyone talking over the priest.  The cathedral itself was beautiful with tons and tons of flowers, golden shrines, a pewter alter, and elaborate murals on the ceiling and walls.  Tourists were walking around during the mass and many people were crowded and standing in front of the pews.

For breakfast, Marcela made ham sandwiches with fresh papaya juice, coffee, and large corn kernels called "maito" that Peruvian eat like nuts.

That night a group of us gathered to purchase "Claro" cell phones with add-on minutes so we could all contact each other throughout the trip in order to meet up and in case of emergencies.  Those cheap little cell phones turned out to be extremely invaluable throughout the trip!  After that, we all went to Paddy's Pub on the Plaza de Armas for Cusquenas, fried food, and garlic bread.

Week 1, Part 2: Llamas, Alpacas and Cuy -- Oh My!

On the Wednesday of our first week in Peru, the group packed up and headed to the Lima airport to fly to Juliaca.  The Juliaca airport was tiny.  We had to climb down a mobile passenger ramp to get off the plane and walk into the airport where we took an hour bus ride to Puno, a small mountain town on the shores of Lake Titicaca (yes, we giggled at that name many times).

Standing in front of Puno, with Lake Titicaca in the distance.

The altitude in Puno was 12,500 ft., more than the sea-level altitude we had been used to in Lima.  Almost instantly our group started to drop like flies, experiencing common symptoms of altitude sickness: nausea, light-headedness, headaches, and passing out.  That night we were instructed to eat light so our stomaches would have time to adjust to the high altitude, but we ignored the warning for the most part and feasted on potatoes, guinea pig (called "cuy" in Peru) and chocolate con leche (hot chocolate).  It was a rather uncomfortable night for many people following the large meal.

Yummy yummy "cuy."

On Thursday we took a boat ride on Lake Titicaca to visit the Uro people, a group of Peruvian natives who live on rafts made of reeds and mud, called the "floating islands."  The Uro people make a living on tourism and giving tourists rides on their reed boats.

After the floating islands, we boated to the island of Tequile, where we ate a delicious lunch of Quinua (Incan barley soup), fish, and coca tea.  After lunch we took a 45 minute hike through the mountains on the island, then boated back to land for an evening of pizza and discoing.

Lake Titicaca from the Tequile Islands.

Our lunch of fish, rice, potatoes, bread, and Quinua.

Coca tea, which is said to cure altitude sickness.

The snow-capped mountains of Bolivia on the horizon.

The sun setting at the end of a beautiful day.

On Friday we drove outside of Puno to see the Umayo lagoon and the tombs of Sillustani, built by the the Incans and destroyed by gold-diggers.  

On our way back to Puno, we stopped by a small family farm that raises cuy.  Little did those poor little guys know they would meet judgement day in the near future during Inti Raymi, the Incan winter solstice, and when cuy are traditionally served for dinner.

You can tell he's a llama because he has shorter fur than his cousin, the alpaca.

Baby cuy!

It was that day that we heard about Natalee Holloway's murderer being caught in Chile after he murdered a 23 year-old Peruvian woman just five minutes away from our hotel in Lima on the Tuesday we were there.  Yikes!