Cusco

The next day I felt so much better, we went for breakfast at one of the neighbours’ house who was nice enough to take us in. After breakfast, we decided to visit Cusco, we walked up to the centre of Urcos where you catch the bus. The square in the centre has a beautiful small church and lots of stalls selling food and clothes. We caught the bus to Cusco the only problem was we weren’t sure when we had to get off so when we saw signs for Cusco we got off the bus, BIG mistake. We definitely weren’t near the centre of Cusco so we began to walk and walk following signs that said historic centre for at least an hour until we decided to ask somebody who told us to catch a bus to San Francisco.

Finally we made it to the centre, Cusco being a main city is very different from Urcos. Lots of tourists around but so beautiful at the same time. The buildings are amazing, we decided to walk around and discover what the city had to offer. We found a pizzeria to have dinner and then carried on looking around. When we finally decided to head back there was kind of the issue of where to get the bus back as we had got off way to early before. Luckily, we had a map that told us there was a specific stop for Urcos. It took us ages to find the bus stop as it was really hidden but finally we found it as it was getting dark. When we got back we went for tea at the same place we had breakfast and then we went back to our apartment. I must mention how cold it is here, during the day it is really hot, I burnt my face and neck on our walk into Cusco but once the sun goes down that’s it, it can go down to 0 degrees.

The main square in Cusco

On Sunday we decided to venture to Cusco again as the day before we didn’t really do much there as we were tired from all the walking just to get there. This time we got off the bus on the right stop but you still have to walk a bit to get to the centre. Most of the main road had been cut off and there were loads of people riding up and down on bikes. When we got to the main square it was packed full of people it seemed that there was some sort of parade on. We decided to walk up to Cristo Blanco, a statue kind of like the Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, that looks over Cusco. Now, walking up to this statue isn’t the easiest thing ever, you have to walk up lots and lots of stairs and I had to stop and rest at least 5 times but once we made it to the top the views made you forget all the suffering. After taking pictures and taking in the views we spotted some ruins not so far away so we decided to walk over and we found some llamas, they didn’t even care we were there so we were able to get really close to them.

We had a great weekend and can’t wait to get started with work on Monday to see exactly what we’ll be doing as we still don’t know what to expect xx