Cusco, Peru first impressions

Arrived into Cusco on Sunday afternoon. Bit of a shock to land in a mountaineous region after being accustomed to landing in large open spaces in Aussie - the sharp left into he valley was a bit stomach churning! First day was spent mostly suffering from altitude sickness unfortunately - horrible headaches and short of breath but had some coca tea the next day and that set us right!! Stayed in a nice atmo hostel calld El Grial altho it was pretty noisy and the toilet was stinky even tho looked spotless. Woke to the sound of bells/siren at 7am. Thought the whole street was n fire or the police were raiding the biggest drug baron in peru - it was th garbage men who ring a siren as the streets are so narrow people ya cant put the rubbish bins on the streets.

Cusco is a lovely little town altho very tourist driven which is good for the locals. Touts everywhere trying to selll hats, finger puppets, massages (dunno if they have a happy ending!), paintings, etc which gets a bit annoying after awhile. The range of food and restaurants here is amazing - today we had lunch for 21 soles for 4 people (3 of us had the menu of the day which was soup plus a main of steak with rice - the soup had me full!) which is about 5 eur for us ALL! There´s also good pizzas, italian, mexican and basically anything ya want here. For anyone visiting Jack´s cafe on Chocheura, El Coccilora (cheap place mentioned above) on Calle Garcelisoa cnr with San Francisco plaza are tops so far and some pizza chain place which had yummy pizza altho the guy also gave us some evil local spirit/brew (think that contributed more to th altitude sickness then anything).

Have walked about the place a good bit. Its all cobblestone narrown streets, crazy taxi drivers i this tiny little cars, inca stone walls, spanish churches and museums. The market near San Pedro was worth a visit altho I hope they dont source the meat in restaurants there cos there is NO hygiene. Fruit there is ridicusly cheap - like 1 eur for 4 apples, 6 bananas and 2 oranges. Lots of weird looking spuds and unidentifiable things - think there was llama foetuses dried and hanging out to sell as well. Presume some local ritual. The locals tend to dress like westerners ie jeans ad jumpers but some of the women wear the full peruvian kit especially if they trying to flog ya something! Hiked upto Sachaysun (!?) ruins from inca times which the spanish thrashed so nooe is fully sure what is the story. Pretty impressive (once we got our breaths back from the 300m ascent) .

Also spent lots of time in South America Exlorers club which is brilliant source of info for treks, trips, accomodation, volunteering, spanish courses, etc. If your spending any time at all in SA probaby worth joining!

Colin and Tara arrived this morning so brilliant catching up with them. It rained again today so hoping it will clear up for the inca trail in 2 days time.