Cusco, Peru, South America

I had another fairly quiet day today, but that’s good considering my next four days should be pretty intense. I went to Pan-tastico for breakfast today and had the best breakfast since I’ve been in South America. I had eggs, good crispy bacon (!), pineapple juice, italian bread that was sliced and grilled with peanut butter and jam on the side, and pancakes! It was awesome!

I met up with Karin at 10:15am so we could go on the other tour put on by the same company. I ran into Jimmy and Kris, who I met in Trujillo, so that was cool. They just finished their Machu Picchu trek, and they had great weather, so that’s got me hoping for the same. The tour today wasn’t as good as the one yesterday, but we still got to see a couple of parts of the city that we hadn’t seen before.

We went back to Pan-tastico (I know!) for lunch, and it was awesome again. It’s definitely one of my favorite eating spots I’ve found since I’ve been in South America. After lunch we went to the cathedral on the main square. The tour guide had told us that it was a really impressive church, and there were a few paintings to look out for. It cost 25 soles ($9), to get in, and it was not very impressive. There was a lot of stuff in there, but it felt very cluttered. The most famous painting we were meant to look for was The Last Supper, but we were told that in the middle of the table was actually a guinea pig, which is a local delicacy. We found out when entering the church that we weren’t allowed to take pictures, and then it turns out that it’s not actually a guinea pig after all. It’s some sort of native chinchilla.

At this point I said bye to Karin and I went to check the post office again to see if my package came. It hadn’t. Hopefully I’ll run into Karin again after our Machu Picchu trips. We have a similar path that we’re heading on, so it would be nice to know someone along the way. I’ve spent the rest of the night getting my small backpack packed for the four day trek. I have an early start tomorrow morning, so I’m going to try to get to bed early tonight. Whenever I try that though, it never works…