Cusco, Peru. Walking tour. Day 1.

7:45am. At airport waiting to board flight to Cusco. Water bottle was allowed. Nice to travel without fluid restrictions.

Since this is a journal, I'm skipping, but I guess I'm talking about Lima before we actually boarded our flight.  Breakfast was good. They had papaya juice and the watermelon was so red and sweet. YUMMY. There was a station where they made fresh eggs with the toppings of your choice. So good. Pancake was dried bread with syrup - interesting. Oh and then I realized the hotel had free wifi - yay to that! :)

And here I am at the airport writing in my actual journal and waiting to board our flight from Lima to Cusco.  The next set of pictures were from that flight trip.

Note: Salman mentioned air smelled like the cross between an ocean and a butcher shop. When I walked out of the hotel, I realized he could not have been more accurate.

I have to say the view from the plane is great but what can you do?  You can't really get amazing shots through 2 panes of the airplane window and the wing of the flight.  You get to see the mountains though.

I don't know when this was taken but must be closer to landing into Cusco.  You can see parts of the city here.

This picture to the left is my favorite from up above, because if you look closely, you'll see the terracing on the mountains.  On our trip we saw a lot of terracing.  That's just how the agriculture works down at Cusco and Machu Picchu.








IN TAPIKAYLA HOTEL


Views from Lima to Cusco were very pretty. This picture on the left was from the car ride to the hotel.  Hotel is up a very narrow street. Got my first taste of coca tea. What does Coca tea taste like? Hmmm. Salman thinks its a cross between soy rice and something that is delicately sweet. I don't know. Tastes interesting though. Boris picked us up from the airport and went over our plan for the next few days. It's going to be fun and I'm sooo looking forward to it. Glad we added an extra day at Pisac.


CUSCO CITY TOUR - starting at 3pm

After nap, we had light lunch, chicken soup and Boris took us for a walking tour. The streets are cobblestone, very eclectic and narrow. And the buildings on either side are neat - The walls and the ways the huge stone blocks come together. Apparently, the stones were ground down with stones, sandpaper and water to make perfect butt joints.

We visited 2 churches. The first one was clearly demarcated with the break in the Inca culture and the Spanish colonization. Very nice open ground between the walls.  See the picture below.

The second church was quite extravagant. I think Boris said cedar wood was carved and then plaster added to it and smoothed down. And then gold leaves were added and entire arches were gold. Very extravagant. Couldn't get pictures as it wasn't allowed. Boris has an accent and some of it is hard to understand, but it's not bad.


He showed us where to eat tonight and we had pizza. I normally don't care for pizza but this was amazing and really good. Soup was alright. Had fresh fruit juice. That was nice. Salman ordered inca cola and I tried some. It was good too. Next time, I'll order it instead. The internet connection here is VERY SLOW. I was lucky to logon this afternoon. I don't wish to logon just now as I'm journaling. Tomorrow, we're off to the Sacred Valley - day 1 is over.