Peru in Early January

To continue the narrative of what just happened I now take up to the extreme North of Chile where we crossed the border into Peru.  The border crossing was uneventful, other than at the bus station Jac was convinced that she had left around $200 USD in cash in San Pedro de Atacama (it was a MAJOR downer, until the secret underwear pocket in her backpack was found guilty in Cusco, ha) but the bus ride from Tacna to Arequipa, Peru was one of the most unpleasant we had.  Smelly busmates, crazy divers (crazier than usual, I mean) and the most boring and ugly scenery we had yet encountered made it not the most unpleasant but probably the second most unpleasant South American bus ride yet.  After spending around 5 hours in Arequipa, Peru's second largest city behind Lima and trying our first Peruvian empanadas (I've now had empanadas in five SA countries and it's a draw between Arg and Chile) we got on another bus to Cusco, the ancient capitol of the Incan empire, the Archaeological capitol of the Americas and the oldest continuously inhabited city in this hemisphere. 

Cusco is both a tourist mecca (for good reason) and a deeply important city to the cultural history of Peru and the Andes, making it a very fun and chaotic combination of cultures and even time.  Colorful gathered skirts and bowler hats abound as well as llamas and alpacas roaming the streets.  The city is sits on a foundation built by the Incas so walk down any given street and you're in the presence of Incan architecture and engineering (which is FASCINATING).  The huge market has everything from weird Andean fruit to wool leggings (very fashionable in the Andes) to $1 plates heaped with chicken, beans and rice.  We frequented the juice stalls every day where for a dollar you get any combiation of fresh fruit you can come up with, in a blender.  It was SO GOOD.  Oh we also found a pretty cool English pub to watch the Ducks lose, while meeting what must have been every other American in the city that day.

 Scenes from Cusco

Surrounding the city in all directions are Incan ruins, I think we saw about eight sites.  They were all fascinating and photogeninc (and packed) but of course, nothing compared to the big one, Macchu Picchu.  While the site itself did not dissapoint, it poured down rain (like, POURED) from 4:30 am (when we got up to start hiking) until around eleven, making for some not very good photos, wet socks and rather low spirits as it was also quite cold.  But as we started hiking up Waynu Picchu (the big mountain behind in all the famous photos, did you know there are ruins up there too?  We didn't, those Incas were so loco) the weather cleared up and as soon as we got to the top, the fog rolled over and we had just breathtaking views of the place.  And when we got down the crowds had all but left us (the weather I guess) so we were able to wander around at our lesiure and finally take some decent pics.  It was a perfect day. 

Scenes from Macchu


The next stop in Peru was Puno, a pretty lame town but on the shores of Lake Titicaca, sitting at about 12,000 ft.  I was a little underwhelmed by the lake at first, it was pretty dirty and sort of smelled weird.  Puno had a bustling market and illegal DVDs up the ying yang but all in all I was happy to not spend more than three days there before heading off to Bolivia, where Lake Titicaca was all that it should be.

The market in Puno