Day 1

After arriving at 8 in the morning after hardly any sleep, we were picked up at the airport by our coordinator and taken to our hotel. The ride to the hotel was interesting because we were able to see the layout of the city and what it looked like. It was much poorer than I expected (having been to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile). Not that I expected it to be cosmopolitan, but I did not expect to see so many "houses" without windows, tons of random dogs, and general poverty without many buildings that were nice or somewhat kept up. Our coordinator checked us in to our hotel, which was near the main square of town and pretty nice. We settled into our rooms and quickly got back together to do some sightseeing and shopping. We had a great time looking around the main square and finding the local markets. The pictures cannot convey the stench of meat, fish, and other local produce at the "people's market." We did find some cool souvenirs.

We found a restaurant at the square for lunch and all of us tried Alpaca. It is very lean, cholesterol free, and delicious.

The company had a city tour set up for us at 1:15, so we went back to the hotel to be picked up by a sight seeing bus. We toured the main square's cathedral, which was very beautiful and interesting. The Spanish had oppressed the Quetchuan people and converted them to the catholic religion. The local people were trained to paint all the classic pictures of images from the bible to decorate the church. Those sneaky Quetchuan's took classic images and made slight changes to embrace their own bliefs. For example, the last supper painting features cuy (guinnea pig), the paintings of the Virgin Mary feature very large dresses that make their bodies the shape of the local mountains. (they worshiped mountains in their religion, so this image was in several of the paintings). We loved how they subtly stuck it to the man.

After the cathedral, we went to a monistary. Inside the building was some origional walls that were built by the Quetchuan people to honor their gods. The walls were amazing because they were made of huge stones that were hand carved without the use of metal. We also learned more of the history of the Quetchuan people.

We boarded the bus and headed up the hill for a tour of sachsaywaman. Pronounced "sex-ay woman" This is a huge zig-zag wall that was made much like the monistary wall. These boulders were even bigger and moved from much further away. Modern technology cannot figure out how the people built this monument. If you look at the pictures closely, you'll see that the stones fit perfectly together and yet they have no motar between them. They are perfectly placed, smooth, and rounded. It was amazing.

After that, we headed to a gift shop, where we got to try a coca remedy for headaches. The tour bus headed back to the square where we decided to get dinner. We were adventurous and tried some interesting food. Joshy got a whole cuy (guinnea pig) which looked like it was surprised to be cooked. It had an open mouth (complete with teeth), curled toes (with nails), and a crispy ball sack. Josh ordered a sample platter which had beef hearts and cuy. His cuy was exactly 1/4 of a cuy. They literally cut the cuy into a 1/4. He got 1/2 of the head, split lenghtwise down the middle. Again, Linze and I were staring right into the mouth of a cuy while we ate our tamer meals.

After dinner, it was time for bed! We settled in our comfortable rooms, showered, and jumped in bed.

Peru - Day 2