Cusco: Gringo Belly Button Ring

Ahh Cusco....The Navel of Earth.

We knew we were headed towards Gringoland gold when we got to the bus station in Nazca to find a group of gringos playing guitar and drinking Iranian coffee. The bus ride was raucus until we hit the 90 degree corners and the toilet filled to about one inch of overflowing (combine this with slamming corners and you know what you get) and then people mostly just sat and tried to sleep.

Cusco is beautiful. As jaded as some of us can be, it is a wonderfully rich city with rambling cobblestone streets of redish stone and sparkling whitewashed stucco buildings. Streets are tight and one way and stuffed full of, yes, souvenir shops. It seems everywhere you turn there are more gringos than locals here. Llamas and locals flock to the streets hawking photos. You can´t even look one way without seeing alpaca this or llama knitted hat. Tours, tours galor. And yet no tours for Machu Pichu.

It is as we had been told, backlogged. More gringos than trail space. They allow 50 people a day onto the Inka Trail, and currently there are no openings until Nov.08. We had heard rumour it was this way, but two things were true, we were too lazy and unaware of our plans to even know when to book ahead, and we were too cheap. Trails range in price here, and so coming here has worked out because we managed to get one more in our budget for Nov.8.

Our plan is to head to Arequipa tomorrow and spend some time muking around Canyon del Colca and the area. We will head to Puno on Lake Titicacca and then back to Cusco. From there we will head it straight to La Paz.

We spent the day wandering the streets and taking in the market here. The market was somewhat different from the other markets we have visited, as it is a daily affair. An awesome market, you can get almost anything your heart desires, from cow fetises (different sizes), sheep heads (eye balls, teeth, hair and all), testicles, flowers, cheese (you can sample), giant bread the size of a steering wheel (breakfast tomorrow), shampoo, alapaca hats (of course), TP and on. Markets like these make you wish you had a kitchen, whatever spice, whatever fruit or veggie you want you can find it.. makes the mouth water.

Cusco has a plethora of churches and ruins, to explore and we will explore them when we return. Many of the buildings here are built on the foundations of Incan ruins and you can still see some wonderful Incan stone work acting as foundations for the Spanish buildings. Cusco, orginally an Incan town was discovered by the Spanish in the 1500´s. It was quickly looted and eyes were turned towards more important cities of Lima and the coast. Cusco was a small town until the rediscovery of Machu Picchu in 1911 and now there is no doubt about it, the tourists rule the roust.