Peru Trip: Wandering Cusco

I'm ready to start recapping our awesome trip to Peru. You might be thinking why Peru? Well a couple of reasons... I visited Chile back in high school and stayed with a host family. It was a great trip with just a few other kids from my school. For some reason the rest of them all voted to not visit Machu Picchu while we were there. I couldn't believe why none of them were interested in visiting such an amazing and historical location when we were so close!! I kept thinking when would we ever get the chance to come back?! Well luckily I made that happen. And now Joe says I can stop being bitter about it.

Cusco is the largest city nearest to Machu Picchu. Our travel plans included staying in Cusco for about a week and one night in Aguas Calientes (small town near Machu Picchu). We chose April for two reasons. First because it was in between Peru's rainy season (November - March) and their busy tourist season (summer months... which is actually their winter, strange.) The other reason? We got the associate discounted rate at the JW Marriott Cusco. Score! Seriously working for Marriott has some great perks... that is if you take advantage of them and actually travel.

Disclaimer: I have to say it... not everything in these blog posts might be interesting to everyone, but I really wanted to make sure I recapped our trip as well as I could for our own benefit. This is the best way we can keep these memories in one place.

I honestly don't know when this first picture was taken, but somewhere during the long trip to get to Cusco. The flight plan was Charlotte to Miami to Lima, Peru and finally to Cusco. Well 3 flights and 12 hours later we arrived in Cusco at 7:30 in the morning. Judging by the looks on our faces, this is probably towards the end of our long journey.

Our arrival to the JW Marriott was amazing. More on the hotel later, I'm going to skip ahead to our adventures in Cusco... after we checked into the hotel and took a shower of course. Our first order of business was to walk to the travel agency's office. We did a lot of research for this trip ahead of time just like anyone would have guessed. A lot of planning was done through a travel agency I found online, Dos Manos (for those who don't speak Spanish... that translates into Two Hands). The lady I worked with over email for a couple weeks was so helpful! Seriously, I felt from the start that we were in great hands... two hands that is. Ha! Plus their tour pricing was much lower compared to a couple other agencies I priced out. We walked past the main plaza (which is Plaza Armas, more on that later) and up a steep road. Once at the agency office we got our travel vouchers for our tours and paid the remaining deposit.

Here was our attempt to show the steep road. Were we in San Francisco again??

And speaking of the steep road, we got really winded walking up it. The altitude really affected us which was weird because we both felt like we are in decent shape. Sometimes just walking up a flight of stairs or a road like this was tough! Thank goodness for coca tea. Like I mentioned, we had an amazing welcome at the hotel earlier... that included a hot cup of coca tea. The coca leaves help with the altitude and also keep you energized. Maybe that's only if you actually chew on the leaves, which we did not. That's what a lot of workers do when they're in the field all day, they never get tired. Luckily the hotel had complimentary tea in the lobby at all times.

Next we were off to explore the city of Cusco.  I think this first picture shows an original Inca road. You can tell usually by the drain running right down the middle.

We loved finding little walk ways like this. It gave us the opportunity to get lost, but really we never did get lost. Oh wait except for that one time where I took us in the opposite direction than the hotel. It didn't last long and thank goodness for a map! Whoops.

See the street sign in this picture? It looks pretty normal, we all know now not to make a U-turn. I have to point out the lack of street signs in Cusco. Seriously I think Joe only saw one speed limit sign and it was in kilometers per hour. I guess everyone just knows how fast they should be going? Only a few times I felt a speed limit would be nice, but for the most time the driving here was organized chaos.

It was very common to see women carrying a child on their back.

Then we stopped for lunch at Jack's. Joe had read about this restaurant before our trip and we stumbled upon it pretty easily. There is almost always a line here. The restaurant isn't very big and the demand is high. Luckily when we arrived for lunch we got right in and had a sandwich. Of course because there always seemed to be people waiting around you could find a couple vendors right outside selling who knows. Can't blame them for finding the hot spots!

To go along with our sandwich we tried one of the "must eat/drink" items while in Peru, Inca Cola. We saw people all over drinking it and now that we've tried it I can't believe so many people actually do drink it! Seriously, it tastes like bubblegum. Neither of us could stand it and we left the restaurant with over half the bottle left. We thought we were safe by ordering a Coke to go along with it. Once again we were wrong! The Coke in Peru is nowhere near the same as Coke in the United States. I think a good way to describe it is less sugar, more carbonation. Again, we left half the bottle untouched.

After lunch we took off again to wander the streets of Cusco. I love these walk ways!

This is actually a street where cars would drive by. It got so narrow towards the top that we actually had to stop walking, put our backs to the wall and suck in our gut (thanks to lunch) just so that the car could squeeze through. Crazy!

We rested on a bench at this park. There were plenty of parks like this with benches, trees for shade and usually a fountain. We got into a habit of packing an apple or two we picked up from the hotel (don't worry, we washed it off with bottled water) and pulling it out for a quick snack when we needed a break. The tap water in Peru is not very safe to eat so we made sure to avoid it and drank a lot of bottled water. I have a picture to share later to show you just how much bottled water we drank.

Near this park we stopped inside a book store and we bought a great map that included the city of Cusco, but also the surrounding countryside. That came in handy for the next couple days when we took tours of Cusco and the Sacred Valley. I plan on using information from this map to recap a lot of the historical locations we visited. Just remember anything in Italics is straight from the map and not from me. Oh look, wouldn't you know we actually spotted a bunch of popular books in English. Just in case a tourist needed some steamy 50 Shades of Gray to read.

As I should have expected, there were stray dogs everywhere. This one found a cool place to take a nap and get out of the hot sun. You can probably spot some other pictures along the way where a dog makes an appearance. For the most part they stayed away from us and never begged for food or anything. It was still kinda hard for me to see so many of them.

Back to us wandering the streets. I tried to get some detail shots of doors, windows, walls and the like. Some of these are taken just for my uncle Jerry. I knew he'd be right there with me and would appreciate these pictures!

See the rainbow flag in this picture? We saw these all over. No, it is not a pride flag like you might expect in the United States. It took us a while to figure out what it represented (mainly because we kept seeing it alongside the Peruvian flag and not only in the city of Cusco meaning it was neither a country or state/city flag.) Finally I Googled it and found out it represents the legacy of the Inca empire.  Trust me I'll go into lots more detail about the Inca Empire in the coming posts.

Once we figured that out, this picture made so much more sense. See, when the text on the statue or monument is in Spanish we just had to guess what it was for.

Then night came upon us. Hmm, that sounds too formal. How about this, it got dark early and fast. Although since we traveled overnight and didn't get much sleep on the flight we welcomed the early darkness as an excuse for bedtime.

But first we went to a pizzeria for dinner courtesy of a tip from the people at Dos Manos. The name? Chez Maggy... it's fun to say, try it. Now try it with a bit of an acent.

I'll be honest, we were a bit skeptical when we first found the place. To put it nicely... it was a dive. Maybe Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives should visit Peru! But we courageously carried on and sat down as the only patrons at the restaurant. All in all the service and food was pretty good. We found out later that Chez Maggy is actually more of a chain pizzeria in Peru. There was one other location in Cusco (which I guess is much larger) and one in Aguas Calientes.

We checked off one more item from our "must eat/drink" list... alpaca. Yes that is just like a llama and yes it is also kinda like cow beef. We took the cowards way, though and had it on pizza. The meat was a bit tough, but the food turned out to be delicious.

Then we called it a night and went back to the hotel for some much needed shut eye. We had to be nice and rested for the beginning of our tours tomorrow!