The free breakfast at our hotel went until 10:00am which always makes me happy (I love breakfast and I love free breakfast even more!). Flying Dog had a great spread of coffee, toast, oatmeal and tons of different cereals. Unfortunately as much as I wanted a bowl of cereal, I can't get over the fact that they do not refrigerate their milk and so I settled for oatmeal instead. After breakfast, we walked around town for a while checking with different travel agencies to see who had the best prices for a two day trip to Machu Pichu and a 4 day trip to the Amazon. Everyone said that Puerto Maldodano was the best jungle tour from Peru but unfortunately the local gold miners were on strike and were blocking the tour buses from entering that area so we had to abandon the jungle tour idea. We did end up booking our Machu Pichu tour and decided to go with the bus instead of train. The bus only cost us $130USD for a two day, all inclusive trip vs $250USD for the train.
After we had our plans sorted out, we met a walking tour group in the Plaza del Armas hoping to get a little historical info on the city. I really love Cusco- there's something about it I find so beautiful and charming though I'm not 100% sure why. Unfortunately we didn't learn much history from our guide since he admittedly had ADHD and was all over the place but I did learn about Tupac Amaru who was the leader of the indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish in Peru. Apparently Tupac Shakur's mother was a member of the Black Panther Party and renamed him Tupac Amaru Shakur after the Peruvian revolutionary. I found that very interesting, lol.
Our tour guide took up to a music shop where they played the local Peruvian instruments for us. It was interesting to see, especially the instruments that had been used even by the Inca people. They had made some maracas out of llama toe nails and even a guitar out of an armadillo shell.
As we continued the walk, we did get some great views of the city from the hill side. We kind of wanted to abandon the tour since we weren't really learning anything but decided to stick with it since it was only a 2 hour tour.
The tour ended with a lesson on how to make Pisco sours. I still can't believe that they use raw egg whites in the drink...somehow it tastes frothy and good but it is still strange.
After the tour, we went on our own tour of the city checking out the parts of the city we hadn't visited yet. After checking out Qurikancha, the Incan temple to the sun god, we stopped at a bakery across the street for some chicken empanadas...mmmmmm.
After some more walking around, we headed back to the hostal to get things ready for our trip the next day to Machu Pichu. We would be leaving our big bags in storage at the hostal so we needed to pack our day packs with just the necessary essentials: flashlight, toothbrush, change of clothes, rain jacket. After we were ready to go, we headed out to get some Indian food at "Korma Sutra". It was almost impossible to find even though we had mapped it out before we left and had the address. It should have been less than a 3 minute walk from our hostal but we got so lost we had to circle back to our hostal to look at the directions again. Even on the second try we wandered around for a good 10 minutes before finally finding the place. But the effort was well worth it. It was an adorable little place with an open kitchen so that you could watch your meal being prepared. The food was great and we are always thrilled to mix up the kinds of food we are eating so that we don't get too sick of anything.
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