aaaand we're back!

It looks like blogger's been down for the past few days, and kinda erased all of my formatting. Oh well...

Since I haven't had much internet access over the past few days, there will be a quadruple post coming up. (whoa there)  So upon arriving to Cuzco by plane, I awoke to see mountains everywhere. To paraphrase Neil, one of the Dukies, "walking from the plane was one of the coolest experiences I've had." We soon arrived to the hotel, and explored the city - the architecture is amazing, and the city as a whole is simply breathtaking. I'll do my best to upload a slideshow of Cuzco when I have better internet access (y más tiempo). The city is fairly large, pretty urban, maybe like a smaller city in China. Every 5 meters in one of the main plazas, you can find people selling postcards, paintings, dolls, knockoff ray-bans, etc. It's not uncommon to some cities outside of los EEUU I guess.

A building near the main plaza in Cuzco

As always, exploring a new city is exciting, and Cuzco is just excellent - there's so much to do! ProPeru took us on a trolley ride that went around the outskirts of Cuzco, and we ended up at the Cristo Blanco - a giant white statue of Christ that overlooks Cuzco. From the top, the view is breathtaking. Also, there are llamas. everywhere. It's awesome. Then this past Friday, we went to go explore ruins close to Cuzco, like Saqsaywaman. Calling it one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen cannot do this place justice. The highest point of the ruins were at about 3800 meters, so these sights were literally breathtaking. The mountains, the sky, the sun, the moon - all are so visible and crisp!

Inca Ruins near Cuzco

 

Speaking of the sun, it's incredibly strong here - sunscreen is just about a must. Since we're at 10,000+ feet above sea level, the sun is closer by a significant amount. The high altitude is not that problematic, except when you're exerting yourself. There's less oxygen at this altitude, and you definitely notice it when climbing stairs - you get out of breath much faster and can feel light-headed at times. The weather in Cuzco is kinda cold - it is winter here after all, and if you think of Durham in the fall, that's about accurate. It's about 60+ in the daytime, but can get pretty cold at night (50s and below). Hopefully this gives a general idea of what the Cuzco experience is, and there's definitely a lot that I glossed over, but I'll come to it later.

#isthisreallife #perurocks