we'd found it difficult to find decent lodging online in cusco...i suppose it was because high season was in full swing...(that is, unless you count the $3 dorm beds that abound in the city). as you might imagine, the last quarter of our world tour has found us running out of steam a bit... we passed the same nasty cold back and forth to each other for half of june and most of july...and we've had a decidedly reduced appetite for filthy, smelly shared bathrooms and dorm rooms, and a decidedly increased willingness to step up our quality of accommodation, even if it means using the credit card! lol! heaven help us when we get home...
anyway, we managed to find a private room for 2 nights at the hotel arqueologico, then we moved across the street to the hotel el grial...really sweet little place for a whopping $18 per person. we were in san blas...a really charming section of the city, with tiny cobblestone stre
ets, beautiful colonial buildings, and tons of little shops and restaurants...uh oh...
on our first day out and about cusco, i decided it was my favorite of the cities in south america we'd visited...really beautifully set up in the mountains with wide open blue skies and well-preserved colonial squares, plazas, and churches, and tons of interesting museums...also, the city, having once been the capital of the inca empire, is surrounded by lots of archaeological sites that were important to inca civilization...of course, that also means much of it is built on top of and from the destroyed pieces of inca temples and schools and public buildings...sigh...boy those pesky spanish looters and thieves were really brutal weren't they?
we spent almost a week in cusco, relaxing, recuperating, eating good food and soaking up the sun...it was warmer there than it had been in any other part of our south american travels, though we still needed to layer up. we took a half day city tour to see some nearby inca sites, like sachsayhuaman (the running joke is "...not sexy woman") which was believed to be a ritual center & is still used today for annual festivals.
we had a wonderful time in cusco meeting people, and running into friends we'd meet in chile and bolivia. we found the people really genuine and friendly. raul, who worked at our hotel even took us out one friday night to a local peruvian club to hear samba and cumbia and afro-peruvian music...it was great fun!
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