Jason D. Barr

Since we had fallen asleep so early the previous night, I was, of course, wide awake at around 5:30 on Monday morning. I went downstairs to the lobby of the hotel, which also served as the dining room. I took the computer and was reading some articles I had saved for later and waited for Susannah to come down for breakfast. The hotel has a very nice continental breakfast; eggs and bacon, some local cereals, fruit, and lots of bread. We ate quite a bit, since we planned to do some hiking this day and attempt to further acclimate ourselves.

We set off up a hill heading north out of town toward some ruins called Sacsayhuaman. These are ruins of an Incan fortress , and were quite impressive. The massive stones used to put the walls in place were so perfectly cut and shaped that no mortar was used to hold them together. Scholars are puzzled as to how this was accomplished, since the Incas didn’t have steel tools. Pretty amazing.

After we had wandered around for a little while at Sacsayhuaman, we went across the valley, up to the top of a small hill where there sits the Christo Blanco (the White Christ), a statue of Jesus Christ that overlooks the valley that Cusco sits in. It looks much the same as does O Cristo Redentor that overlooks Rio de Janerio, but smaller (I think), with His arms outstretched, looking like He’s hugging the valley. Just as we were getting to the top of the hill, a bus full of local tourists rolled up to view the statue, as well. A chain-link fence prohibited anyone from coming in contact with the statute itself, but many of them were taking pictures standing just outside the fence. There were the obligatory hawkers, as well, selling the typical touristy-type stuff and religious artifacts that you didn’t normally see.

We spent a couple of hours total up the hill at the ruins and the statue, and then decided to head back down the hill into town. We went to the Museo de Arte Precolombino (link in Spanish), which contains exhibits of art on loan from a collection in Lima of many examples of craftsmanship from the Incas and their precursors in Peru. I’m not usually a big fan of art museums, but this one was pretty interesting. We’ve posted a bunch more pictures on our Flickr site, if you’re interested.

By this time, lunch was calling us, so we went in search of a place to eat. We settled on a bakery called El Buen Pastor, which is supposed to be the best in town. We had some really good bread and a soda. Both Susannah and I have discovered that the altitude really reduces our appetite and we don’t feel like eating as much (which is good, for me at least). The bread was sufficient to hold us until dinner. We went back to the hotel to shower up, and, since we had hiked a lot, we ended up taking another nap.

By the time we woke up, it was dinner time, and even though we weren’t very hungry, we figured we should go eat something. Our trusty guidebook recommended Pacha Papa as the second best Peruvian food in the city, but much cheaper and less frequented than the number one place. We figured second-best was good enough in this case, so we went there. Boy, are we happy we did. Pacha Papa was great. When we arrived there was only one other party there; a group of four people who had been with a tour group and decided to stay in Cusco for a little bit longer before heading on to the Amazon. They were very friendly and we talked a little bit; one was from Wisconsin and the other three were from Hawaii. A large stone oven was outside in the courtyard where we were eating, and the chef was baking bread in it to go with the meals. Susannah and I both wanted to try the dish that Cusco is famous for, roast cuy (guinea pig). However, we found that because it’s famous for it, every restaurant in Cusco that serves cuy charges about twice as much for it as for anything else. Since we couldn’t really rationalize spending s/60 (the Peruvian monetary unit is the Sole, and is marked “s/”), the equivalent of about $20, on something we could buy at a pet store for less than that back home, we decided to do something different. Susannah ordered a dish that had roast alpaca and onions, with some type of plant that resembled a banana, but wasn’t as sweet. I got some roasted pork with onions and sweet potatoes. We shared. Even though we weren’t really feeling hungry when we sat down, we both got up feeling totally stuffed. This meal was easily the most expensive we had up to this point, at s/80, or $29. South America seems to be one of the few places left that the dollar can still go relatively far, even though we’ve noticed that the prices in our two year old guidebook seem to be about half of what things cost today.

After this, it was dark and we were supposed to head back to the hotel so we could Skype with Porter, who was staying with my dad. We didn’t want him to forget what we look like in this week that we’re gone, so we were very happy to get to see him and happier still that he was glad to see us.