Cusco, Peru

After more than 2 years in Peru, I finally made it to Cusco! Despite what the news has shared with you about the flooding, Cusco has remained unaffected by the flooding - it is the surrounding small towns that have felt the brutal affects of mother nature. Macchu Picchu has been closed for the past week, and will continue to be closed for the next 2 weeks - 2 months, depending on when they can get the train tracks back in line. Talk about bad timing for us to make Macchu Pichu the last big bang on our trip. Well, a good excuse to come back to Cusco.

So we have been exploring the town, which is almost void of tourists, and gives us the advantage to bargain big when it comes to hotels. We are staying in a really, really nice colonial hotel on the main plaza which usually costs $65, but for us, $20. We have been able to visit some amazing ruins around town and in the Sacred Valley. Although there is this huge sense of guilt when you travel for tourism to disaster stricken places. On the tour bus we passed by the Urubamba river where houses were completely destroyed and families were shoveling out the remains of their houses. It was really heart breaking. One of the bridges in the valley was also destroyed, so we saw part of the sacred valley and only some of the ruins. Pisac and Ollantaytambo were the highlights. In fact we liked Ollanta so much, we stayed a night and got lucky the next day. We headed to a very authentic Quecha festival up in the mountains ( a nice 2 hour hike) and witnessed a sea of red ponchos and amazing color and movement. A festival that happens once a year and we happened to be there. It was like we were in a documentary film about this colorful Quecha community. Sometimes we get lucky.

Believe it or not we are ending our trip in Puno (yes, for the third time. WE LOVE PUNO). We want to get our last taste of the big bang that is the Candelaria before we fly into Cajamarca on Monday.