Cusco! But More Importantly, We Found Alpacas

Cusco was a blast! After 3 days of excitement and activities, it's hard to piece together for you all in this post. I don't just want to ramble on, so I'll do my best to give highlights in a chronological order.

As we sit here in the Cusco airport, boiling very slow deaths, I recall our arrival at Cusco.

After leaving Machu Picchu, our train left Aguas Calientes (or Machu Picchu Pueblo) to go back to Ollantaytambo where we left our luggage. A lot of times, hostels know people are going to take the train to the ruins, which only allows one small bag. SO even if you've already checked out, they'll most likely let you keep your stuff in a locker. This is key, because after hiking up that mountain, we realized we definitely did not want all that weight on our backs working against us.

After getting our stuff, we took a shared mini-bus or "collectivo" to Cusco. It's basically a small van that waits outside the train station that charges you 8-10 soles for an 1.4 hour ride to the Cusco city center. It stars with a few people, then it picks up more on its way.
This is the best and cheapest way to get to Cusco from Ollantaytambo or any other neighboring villages.

The first day we arrived at our hostel, Pariwana Cusco, we tried to take it easy to avoid altitude sickness. So we basically just ate and walked around the town markets. The heckling was heavy here. Randoms offering you massages, deals at their restaurants, jewelry, and anything else around every corner. I recommend against even stopping, because a simple "no gracias" should be sufficient. Until they start shoving things in your face (including live baby alpacas), in which case I give you full permission to just shout "no!" In terms of haggling with pricing, a lot of markets will have the same stuff (and unfortunately they aren't always telling the truth about whats real leather, or whats 100% alpaca.  Very rarely will you find 100% alpaca anything at a market) Still, a lot of them do this to feed their families, so don't be too rigid. Just name the price that the item is actually worth and usually they will compromise with you. Or, if you say no thanks and walk away, they will usually succumb.

The markets in Cusco were similar to the ons we've seen in Aguas and Ollantaytambo, but we did find a very unique one in San Blas, which was about a 10 minute walk from the main Plaza de Armas. It's a beautiful spot to hang out, and the boutiques are a bit more upscale in terms of quality. The leather appeared to be very real, as it was more expensive. The store owners were also less into the haggling with prices, because a lot of stuff was handmade. I recommend it, because even though its not the cheapest, you can tell its genuine. For example, we ran into this local artist named Christopher Vergara Castelo who does mostly interpretive work with acrylics and oils, and his pieces are amazing. We chatted with him and basically heard how he began painting, where he paints, how long he spends on each one, etc.  If you're into authentic artwork, this is a really nice stop. It also makes you feel better when you buy locally and you actually meet the creator of the product.

Aside from shopping, we did a fair amount of eating. Or I should say, I did a fair amount of eating. Unfortunately Olivia wasn't as hungry as I, which didn't help my self-esteem at all. Our hostel had free breakfast, so we ate our weight in bread. We also mostly ate fries and chicken for some reason. If I don't eat chicken for a week after I get back, I'll be happy.
The "kitchen" in our hostel functioned like a restaurant. You look at a menu for food/drinks and go up and order it. You can pay up front, or they do this really cool thing where they add it to your tab that you pay when you check out. Honestly, we ate their most of the time because it was cheap and close. A plate of chicken with rice/salad or fries would be around 14 soles (which is a bit less than 5 USD) and a bottle of Cusqueña beer was 6.50 soles (around 2 USD).The hostel also had a separate room with an actual kitchen where you can store/prepare your own food. There were also hot showers (excluding the random water shortages while we were there), events every night, and a beautiful common area outside that let you get some sun while also maybe playing a game of ping pong. This hostel was a lot more inclusive than our other ones, as its very famous. Only 32 sole a night (roughly 10 USD) and you get a lot for your money. Because its such a famous "party" hostel we met a lot of cool people. I put "party" in quotes because they had activities and drinking games at night, but you were still able to sleep at night. This other hostel down the street, Wild Rover, is notorious for being crazy. We went there 2 nights in a row and we were glad to be staying up the street. Their parties are loud and go until 3am (so If you like sleep, I wouldn't stay here). The bartenders were drunk, the customers were drunk, the music is loud, and there are always people dancing on the bar without their shirts, including the staff.

In these kinds of hostels, it can be hard to make friends unless you're fairly outgoing. We had eaten and were just about to walk out of the hostel restaurant, when a guy at a table simply asked "do you guys want to play drinking games with us?" And just like that, we had 4 new friends. Alex from Australia, Melissa and Vanessa from Germany, and Dan from Israel. It's so cool to meet people from all over the world. I bore you with the details now, but we basically played drinking games while talking about where we're from and laughing/debunking the different stereotypes of our respective home countries. I need to say this for Alex's sake: They do not and never have said "shrimp on the barbi" in Australia. Alex said its that damn Crocodile Dundee movie that started it. They do say "croikey" however, for sure. We also met a guy from Nova Scotia, Ronnie, and two guys from London our last night; Stephen and James. That was really cool because with them, we got to try out each others accents and once again, confirm or deny stereotypes. They admitted that Harry Potter is pretty spot on in terms of language and what typical private schools look like in England (minus the magic and cloaks of course). Actually, they did say teachers wear cloaks once in a while, like on Parents Day for example. They also admitted the TV show Skins is fairly spot on as well in terms of British teenage delinquency. We had to teach basically everyone the dance to Cotton Eye Joe. We just assumed everyone knew it, because its been engrained in our memories for years. But as soon as it came on in the bar, me and Olivia ONLY started to do the line dance, and people just stared at us. We then had to teach anyone who wasn't American how to do the dance. The Canadians love it, because they have something similar, and our British friends Stephen and James though it was hilarious. They promised to bring it to England and make it the new dance craze. If it blows up there a year from now, we'll take the credit.



All in all, we continued to meet and develop friendships with these people. Though we were only there for 3 days, we learned a lot and hoped to show people from other countries that all Americans aren't what they see in movies and the media. We were accepting, fun, compassionate, and outgoing. We should all put our best foot forward when traveling, because its a great way to defeat stereotypes (though I did tell them the obesity thing and binge drinking were definitely true....I said put your best foot forward, not a fake foot forward)!


In terms of our own activities, we took a lovely nature hike the second day we were there. We wanted to see San Cristobal, which is the location of El Cristo Blanco, or literally the White Christ. It's a huge white statue of Jesus on top of a big hill. It's roughly a 2 hour walk up to the top from the city center (Plaza de Armas). You can take a tour bus, or a taxi then a horse, but those cost money. Also, we preferred to hike because We'll take any chances to work off all the bread we ate. It was a bit dangerous walking on the road #nosidewalks, but once we got to the actual trail, we were fine. Alos, if we hadn't have walked, we would have missed our chance at alpaca selfies! Check the facebook album and you'll see. We found random alpacas wandering free in the fields, which actually made us feel better than the ones we see being paraded around town in costumes #animalcruelty!
After we spent 20 minutes admiring, petting, and probably annoying the alpaca, we kept on trekking eventually got to the statue. There is an AMAZING view of Cusco from the top *Facebook album cough cough.* All in all, it was a 4 hour excursion there and back, but totally worth the work out. If you want a real challenge, and you're actually in shape, try jogging up there like our runner friends we met from the big apple; Kerome, Nick, And Sun.

All in all, we love Cusco. Lima is more of a New York city, busy, horn-happy kind of spot. It's nice, but I think our interests align more with the geography and activities in Cusco (and lets not forget about our favorite small village, Ollantaytambo).

Thanks for reading our blog and reading about our adventures, we really appreciate it :) Check back for one last post about our last night in Lima before our flight and personal reflections (they won't be too sappy, not to worry).

Stay fresh,

Señorita Fuerte and la Mujer Pequeña