Sunday, November 2: Cusco (Mark/Liz)

The next leg of our journey was to Cusco, so we took a Taxi to the airport and boarded our flight in the morning. The flight wasn't long, even with a stop in Juliaca. As we were walking out of the Cusco airport there were tons of taxi drivers trying to convince us to go with them in their overpriced "secure" taxis since they were parked inside the airport. We just walked outside the airport an extra minute or two and caught a different taxi for about a third of the price. One of the benefits of Liz being familiar with the area! The airport was actually in the boundaries of one of Liz's areas on her mission so we headed straight to the church building. Near the end of Liz's time in Cusco, the ward she attended was split so we attended sacrament meeting with one of the wards she served in, Barrio Los Alamos. We grabbed a mediocre breakfast at the nearest convenience store before going in.

(Liz wrote this paragraph.)
We got to see lots of people I knew while at church. Estela was there with her hubby Henry and their ADORABLE son Santiago. Estela was always willing to help us hermanas out and she is an excellent cook to boot! We sat with Hermana Francisca, who used to give pension to the missionaries and has always been a huge support to the hermanas, and with my former companion from my first transfer in Andahuaylas, Hermana Emma Farías. She is from Tumbes but moved to Cusco post-mission. Feelings are friendlier when you don't have to live with each other 24/7. :) We saw many others that I recognized but didn't have time to chat with everyone, especially since we only stayed for sacrament meeting.

With Estela and family

Hermana Farías

There was another American family there, picking up their daughter from her mission. They didn't seem quite as comfortable in a Latino environment as we are.

We walked to the bus terminal next to inquire about bus tickets to Andahuaylas. Once that was achieved, we took a taxi to our hotel very close to the Plaza de Armas (Liz was proud of her skills at negotiating down the price). The taxi ride made it clear that Cusco was going to be a very different experience from Arequipa - Arequipa is an old colonial city, but Cusco is ancient Inca city. It really is remarkable and beautiful.

The hotel was comfortable, and there were other tourists there, including some Arabic and German speakers. Once we were situated and our bags were in place, we were STARVING and spent far too long searching for a reasonably-priced lunch. Since Cusco is the tourist hub of Peru, things tend to be overpriced in the parts of the city close to tourist destinations. We also discovered that many restaurants were closed on Sunday which made us happy but was frustrating from a tourist's perspective. We finally found a reasonable priced lunch spot. I ate milanesa (which was very different from Argentine milanesa) and Liz had arroz a lo pobre, rice with fried plantains and eggs on top. It was decent food and satisfied our hunger.

After lunch we went out to enjoy the sights of the city, following the walking tour in our guide book. Our first destination was Qorikancha, the Inca temple of the sun. It's beautiful inside and out, and also sits on a vantage point that offers a great view of the city.

We scoped out the place where we would catch a van ride to Ollantaytambo the following day while we were there. We proceeded through our walking tour of Cuzco's narrow streets and stairways. One cool thing about the city is its walls, which are older, stone walls on the bottom, with relatively new adobe walls built on top of those. Many of the walls also have cacti growing on the top. The Incas did not use masonry on their walls, so it's really impressive how they cut the stones to perfectly fit together and stand for hundreds of years. One wall famously has a 12-sided stone in it. We took a picture with a man in an Inca outfit, with whom Liz was photographed years earlier on her mission. Our walk concluded at the Plaza de Armas, which also has several beautiful buildings, including the cathedral.

Piles of garbage like this are a common sight

The famous 12-angled stone

Liz before...

Liz after!

(At this point we recovered our journal, so it resumes as normal, with Liz narrating)

We took a break in our hotel for a few hours and then finished our day by visiting the Familia Flores Vaccaro - they had given me pensión as a missionary in Cusco. They now live on the other side of town so we took a taxi to get there and it started pouring down rain with lots of lightning to go along with it. The taxista didn't know exactly where their house was and neither did we, so the taxista let us out and we had some fun searching in the dark and for the house. We did eventually find it.

We enjoyed a pleasant evening with Hna Lurdes, Daniela, Gaby and Emy - unfortunately, Edwin was out of town. They fed us chicken and fries and we reminisced about my time as a missionary in their house. I love that family!

Observations:

• Pollo a la brasa is a common type of Peruvian restaurant featuring rotisserie chicken and french fries. Mark and I looked for a pollería but only found one on our entire walking tour. But once we were in the taxi outside of the tourist district, we saw as many pollerías as you see Starbucks in Seattle. Apparently tourists don't go for pollo a la brasa.
• All of the stores and restaurants that need extra help have signs out that say "Se necesita una chica." Why does it have to be a girl? Couldn't a boy be capable of selling goods or chopping potatoes? Sexist.