Ps

There is free wifi signal on the hostal room- yeah !!

The puma city that is at 3400+m above sea level.

It's the end of our second day here in Cuzco and it's been a pretty chilled tried so far.

2 nights ago i ran into my travel buddy Kelly at starbucks in lima's airport at about one am. Then qe were both waiting for our vey early morning flights, hers at 5:30 and mine at 5:55. after getting about 2hours sleep in Lima's airport I was a plane to Cuzco! The plane ride was ultra fast because I passed out but even that was only another hour's sleep. Next thing I know we land and we deplane the cool way without the gates like how it was in some European cities.

Grabbed my bag and then going outside I ran into Kelly again! She was suppose to have an airport transfer arranged but instead it didn't show. So we both grabbed a cab to our hostel knowing we were probably paying more then we should.

After checking in we decided to head out and do a visit to some archeological sites that won'tbe covered in our little intrepid package. The funny part was when we were trying to find the damn bus and we probably walked around the atop foe about an hour and a half until we finally discovered it was this place we initially passed where a guy was hanging out of a bus screaming "pisac! Pisac !" we thought he wanted to sell us pizza cause the place was right beside a restaurant . The bus ride was 2.4 soles for about 20 minutes and we went to the highest of the four sites "tambomachay". This was our first exposure to the altitude as the site was 3700m above sea level . No matter how slow I went and how deep I was breathing my heart was racing to compensate for the lack of oxygen.

Later on we walked to another site about 10 minutes down the road to some ruins. There we negotiated with a personal guide to take us to the rest of the sites for 25 soles (we later find we missed one of the sites)- this was better as it would be a shame to just walk around and see ruins bug have no context. The most interesting fact was that Cuzco was built in the shape of a puma (one of the three natural gods; the other a condor and a lama). And the last site, sacsayhuaman , I'd the head and thx city the body (we find out the next day that the "sun church" our hostel was behind ( the " qorikancha" of great religious, ceremonial and royal sig) was the testicles and the main square (plaza de armas) is the stomach).

After he sites we hiked it down and then found ourselves in a local restaurant trying the local food (ginea pig!). The skin was super tough but the meat was somewhere between chicken and porc.

By about 5:30 pm we were beat (considering we only had two hours of sleep) and crashed at the hostel for a good .... 13 hours haha!!

Day 2 in Cuzco

Woke up to a simple breakfast and there we met the other intrepid travelers whom most flew in that morning. We met our guide armando and then we started our walking tour of the city.

The square was much more livlier on a Sunday as apparently every Sunday there is a parade -hard core!!

We then headed to a market in the center and you can probably by all you produce from here. We the group separated ANC were to meet back at the hostel at six in the evening.

Thx best part was the first section of like fifty different fresh fruit smoothie ladies trying to get you to sit down and try their drinks. We settled with a lady that had a bunch of locals at her station.

Funny thing is we initially thought "leche" meant peaches but it means milk ... Our mistake . I ordered the special which costed six soles and had almost everything in it (including maca ,raw unpasteurized honey, and a sketchy cough syrup). The thing I'd she made so much that she refilled my glass three times!

Afterwards we walked the rest of the market and picked up some fruit and nuts.

We then headed to the museo de arts ore-colombio. Which basically covered hitorical sculptures and art from various regions.

After we headed offvfor some more local food and found a restaurant that Served prarically a four course meal for 10 soles-amazing!!

After a late lunch we wandered the streets and headed back to meet with the group. Here we met our trek guides and they helped us set expectations. Three of us were doing the lares trek and the rest the inca trail. Our travel buddy joining Us on the lares trek is Adam -a dude from Australia that now lives in Florida.

They gave us a duffel to pack about 6kg of stuff for the porters to carry.

Afterwards Kelly and I went to search for some dinner and settled in this pizza restaurant full of kids (which we later found was a birthday party) and we sat at the parents table. There was live music and good food and tried the inca cols but the meal came out to forty soles which we felt we were ripped off cause ghrg charged us for the wrong sized pizza .

After dinner, wandered again came back to the hostel to rest (10 pm)

Jet planes and sleepovers in airports. It's like the euro days all over again!

Back on with the back pack but this time it's only for the standard north American two weeks and the first half of the trip is a trek in Cuzco peru and the second is a tourist trek in brazil. Lots of airplanes,airports and scenery but this time I've got the iPod handy to stay in touch and thank goodness for free wifi that has been an amazing access to info and handy with calls with the skype application.

It's such a nice and memorable feeling when you hear other languages other than English around you and I think if I tried to learn Spanish I could pick it up pretty fast as the French and Italian is coming in handy to recognize the grammatical and word similarities. Too bad next week I'll have to try to have my crack at portuguese!

Anyways 5 more hours till my next flight into cuzco and finally I can go explore!