Hellooooo Peru!

Well, we made it to our destination...Cusco, Peru. It was absoulutely beautiful today. Warm weather, blue skys, and a slightly cool breeze. Perfect. We flew out of Lima at 10 ish and arrived here at about 11ish.

Cusco is at quite a high altitude, it is 12,000 feet in the main areas and goes up from there. Because of this, in order to acclimatize, they recommend that you take it easy, don't walk fast, and drink cocoa tea. It is basically hot water with cocoa leaves in it. Yes, the very same leaves that they make cocaine out of. It is really disgusting. I literally had to choke it down, and almost didn't make it. It basically tastes like you are drinking old, dead, and slightly rotting leaves. YUCK.

Finally! All the nasty tea is gone.

We took a little walk today to the plaza. There was an amazing and beautiful cathedral. Apparently when the Spainish came and invaded Peru, they wanted to destroy the most sacred thing to them, their religion. So in almost every land space the Peruvians considered sacred, they put up a cathedral. Stupid Spanish. But I do have to say that they did make some beautiful buildings.

The city is beautiful. I am glad we had a day to rest and acclimitize. The streets are all made of cobble stone, with tiny mosaic like pathways down the middle of them. They are very unique and beautiful.

Tomorrow we are doing one of our humanitarian days. I am anxious to see what it will bring. The people here are very friendly, and the clothes are beautiful. At the plaza, there are people selling paintings, pictures, postcards, jewelry etc. One little boy, who claimed his name was Tom Cruise came up to me and was asking me to buy a postcard from him. I didn't want one, and he of course just kept following me around. We went to eat, and he waited for me outside the restaurant. He just kept following me, begging me to buy his postcard. Finally, just to get him off my back I offered him one American dollar as my final best offer - something I learned that worked well in Africa. He said that his postcards were worth much more than that and wouldn't take it. He said that I had promised to buy one once I was done eating, which was, of course, a lie. He told me I was a bad person and not very nice, and then he turned and walked away. It made me feel a little bad, but what can I do? I can't just hand out money because I feel bad. On the way home, we saw these two beautiful people. They said we could take a picture with them for free...which is rare. We ended up paying them though, and they were very happy. Beautiful.