Cusco Day 1

Saturday April 1st we arrived in Cusco. Our flight got in at 5am so we were beat. The hotel we stayed at picked us up from the airport. Luckily they had a vacant room so we were able to check in early and get some sleep. We so needed sleep.

Our hotel was really cute. It also had hot running water 24 hours a day, which not all hotels in Peru have.

 After we slept for a few hours we got up and headed out to check out the city. Cusco is almost 12,000ft elevation so we wanted to walk as much as possible to prepare for our trek.

We started by going to the market. It was crowded and smelly but it was fun to look at all the stuff they try to sell tourists. We were also hungry so we got some fresh juice.All the amazing fruit reminded me of Taiwan (oh and the smell).

 I got a mango carrot juice. It was really great.

 It felt good to finally be in Peru.

 We spent the afternoon getting familiar with our area of town and stopping to look at the different markets. It was hard to be in the markets because we were constantly bombarded by people trying to sell things. It is the way of life there but very different from my approach to shopping. There is no such thing as just looking around.

The colors on display were absolutely amazing. I quickly fell in love with all the beautiful material. While walking around we also discovered Churros. This was a very important find!

Churro's were my favorite Peruvian food.

After lunch we decided to walk up. We could see a church way up on the hill and so we decided to try and find it. Cusco is built on a hill. There are tons of steps everywhere and so it was a really good workout. It was definitely worth the view.

 It rained a little bit each day. Peru has two seasons the rainy season and the dry season. April is the tail end of the rainy season and so we wore our rain jackets everywhere. The view of the city was amazing.

 This cute little girl and her Llama were dressed up. You can pay them to take their picture. I paid because the poor girl was getting drenched in the rain and she was pretty cute.

I tried to catch a picture of the steep steps we walked up. This picture does not do it justice so you will have to trust me. There were lots of steep steps.

After our little excursion we found a place for dinner and then headed back to the hotel. We were exhausted. It ended up being a great first day.