Cusco

Cusco is awesome. we arrived yesterday after over 24 hours of travel. I finished one novel and 1 hour of sleep. As we flew over the Andies yesterday morning I could hardly stay awake but I was amazed with these mounains. They are very remote, unihabited for the most part, also very dry. Just snow capped peaks and dry barren terrain. I can not wait to see the cordillera next week. We leave for a 4 day trek on the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu tomorrow. This is also very exciting. Cusco is busy and there are many people and resturants everywhere, but apart form eating food I find there is not much else to do, im glad the food here is cheep. We spent yesterday catching up on sleep and later met some argentinians in the plaza at San Blas. San Blas is a district of Cusço on a hillside and know for its artists and good bakeries. Our hostal is located here two blocks from the main square. It is very easy to walk anywhere you would want to go. This afternoon we took a hike to an Inca ruin called sacsayhuyman(sp) on top of a hill overlooking the city. It was a short but steep hike and we got a guided tour of the place from a local pçeruvain student from the university. She was studying tourism and english. This place has much of both as there are tourists everywhere an many of them are european, british and a few americans that all speek english. From these ruins you can see the surounding mountains, which are composed of huge antiform and synform strata and also devoid of vegitation so you can see all of the structure. It´s stunning! The Inca ruins are very impressive also by the way. tonight we will likely check out some of the numerous pubs and night spots. The beer here is also quite cheep, about 1.50 USD for a peruvian brew called Cusqueno. It tastes something like bud but maybe a little better. The weather here is very mild and pleasent with temps in the 70 during the day and 40 at night. also, Austin has been measuring the cloud temps, which come in at about 2 dergree F. for those who know what that means. Austin has downloaded some of his pics to his website found at www.mostlyweather.com. Check them out if you are curious. I will write again in 4 days and tell ya´ll about Machu Pichu. Chiao!