Peru - Cuzco

It was when I was 22 year old. With another Japanese in college, we flew from New York, and spent in Peru for 10 days. My schedule was as follows

0th Flew from NYC

1st Lima
2nd Cuzco
3rd Ollantaytambo
4th Machuppichu
5th Cuzco
6th Puno
7th Uros Floating Island
8th Lima
9th Few back to NYC

About Cuzco

High Altitude Sickness

Historic City in the high altitude (above 4000m). So first of all, I suffered from the high altitude sickness. It was severe as I kept waking up at night for the quick heart beat. If you are lucky like my friend, you wouldn’t suffer much. But if your heart beats much faster than usual, never run and drink coca tea. Although coca sounds scary, the unprocessed coca tea is totally fine and the best medicine for the high altitude sickness. I had to drink at least twice a day from the 5th onwards. Even walking was suffering for me, so in Cuzco, I walked much slower than the usual. 

The City walk

Despite that, I still walked Cuzco a whole day. As Cuzco is recorded in the world heritage as a whole city, the road and buildings preserved the stone built architectures with a historical design. So the walking in the city itseld was fun.During the morning, we were touring the main city of Cuzco.  Perhaps the main part, we saw the stone that has 14 edges. During the Inca era, natives' ability to construct housings using stones was known to be superb. No space between any other stones attached next to this stone, thus no glue necessary. 

In the afternoon, felt a little more used to the thin air, we ended up walking up to the hill where the statue like the one in Brazil was. The church (the picture above) was on the way to the hill. From that, the view to oversee the town of Cuzco was beautiful. The sky was so close to the land, perhaps because of the high altitude. So clear and blue, as you can tell, the night stars were as if falling on the earth. 

Shopping 

Cuzco is relatively cheaper than the other areas in terms of souvenir. Those who are good at bargaining should visit the market here because you can purchase goods at 1/4 price of areas like Machu Picchu Village.  

Lunch: Alpaca Meat

Better to see than the explanation, Alpaca meat, as it appears, was tasty. It tasted between Lamb and Pork, juicy and not so smelly. Potato salad was nicely decorated and as you can see, was delish.  

Dinner with a traditional Dance

This restaurant offered a buffet, and while eating, traditional dance was performed. I do not remember how the dinner tasted exactly, but the music and dance performance was fun to watch.