WASH YOUR HANDS!!!
BOIL YOUR WATER!!! A LOT!!!!
and Peruvian muggers are the nicest thieves you´ll ever meet...
apparently Matt, who is Australian, was exceedingly scared while traveling through the US, and he knows that muggers never just take your money and run in Australia.... but apparently here in Peru, muggers might take your money, but they won´t be mean about it. According to a few accounts from travelers in his restaurant, one man was kidnapped, taken to his kidnappers house and the wife and kids fed him a delicious home cooked meal of Peruvian soup while the kidnapper raided his ATM.
Don´t worry mom, the moral of this and a few other stories was that Cuzco does have thieves, so watch your money, but generally it´s a country of exceptionally nice people, and we should all stay in groups and be careful (as always, and we do).
And after today I can attest to that. But I´ll get to that later....
Yesterday we all got up around 8 AM... it´s really cold in the morning, and split up into two groups. My group went with Alexei, our professor, who is awesome. We went on a walk around Cuzco and he taught us how to tell real Inka masonry from Colonial, modern, and reconstruction. After a few examples of real Inka walls still standing in the city, we walked around drawing out the walls that were left, attempting to reconstruct what the city would have looked like 500 years prior, before the Spanish arrived. We visited the Cusicancha, which is a ¨museum¨of an original Inkan Cancha... I´ll upload pictures as soon as i figure out how. But basically the Inkas built a series of courtyards, with rooms on each of the four sides. You could kind of equate this to small apartment complexes today. Anyway, the ruins were absolutely beautiful, and yes, I did get to pet a llama there.
After lunch (which was, as usual, strange looking but delicious) we went to Qorikancha. Which is supposed to be one of the most sacred places for the Inkas. Also beautiful, again, pictures when I figure out how to upload. After we all ate dinner at twonations, where we got our fine lecture from matt and some others from the TAs and Alexei.
After a great night´s rest we woke up again around 8 and left the hostel about 9. morning activities included a tour of a museum filled with beautiful religious art, followed by ordering a custom pair of bright teal blue handmade peruvian boots. So. Awesome.
the real adventure of the day however was our afternoon activity. We were told to get in groups of 4 and were handed a packet of old pictures of Cuzco. The mission was to find the things in the pictures and take pictures of what it looked like now.
In our search for locations we asked three seperate locals if they new where some of the locations were. All gave the same answer; a plaza a few blocks from the main one. We asked directions every few blocks and finally found a woman who told us to follow her, she was going near there. Her trek landed us several blocks away from where we were supposed to be, but right on top of a hill with the most gorgeous view of Cuzco and the outlying city ever. While we didn´t quite accomplish the goal originally set out for us, we had a wonderful time chatting with a few of the locals and taking breathtaking pictures (again, hopefully to come soon). All of them were extremely nice and very welcoming. We did have a mad dash down several stairs and across the plaza in order to find a cab and be back at the hostel in time for dinner though. Still worth it.
Anyway, hope everybody´s doing great. miss you all very much! I still have some reading to do so I´ll post again in another couple days.
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