Welcome to Cusco

Well we made it safe and sound to Cusco, this city is like 11,000 feet high. So getting off the plane you are gasping for breath, what fun. We arrive at our hostel, LOKI, and it's a huge building built in the 1400's, this place is OLD and ironically the wireless Internet connectivity is almost as old, which does not work. So I worked my networking magic and and could still not get it to work, HUMPH! this is on hodge-podge network, i=I did however get the cat5 network cable to work in our room after plugging in a few switches. HURRAY!!!!!

The altitude sickness is definitely gonna hit you HARD! This is not a fun time, you feel dizzy, short of breath and almost wanna throw up. I took my prescription meds (paid full price in the states, but its available here for a FRACTION of the price, oh well) and the meds kicked in, it causes parts of your body to tingle, yeah tingle, its a little wired, first it was my fingers then my toes then the heel of my feet were tingling . In fact they are tingling now as I write this blog. They offer us the cocoa tea that really does work in helpping ease the symptoms. It is a very flavorfull tea that definitley has helped with our ailments of altitude sickness. They keep an endless supply of the tea and an oxygen take due to the 1 in 20 chance od even an athelete getting mild to severe altitude illlness.



This town is AMAZING its sooooo old, this building the Loki hostel is over 400 years old! http://www.lokihostel.com/cusco/the_house/history amazing history and archetype. There are soooo many pics we have taken and I can't upload them all but we will try!!



We are gonna tray Cuy tomorrow (Guinea pig) :-)



So we are having lots of fun and then lots more. here are some pics!!!!

Protest in Cuzco over the incredible hike in prices due to tourism. We being tourists having breakfeast at the Plaza de Arms where a bit captivated and a little uneasy at what may happen. Maggie bravley srtormed the crowds for pictures and believe it or not they gladly led me ahead of the crowd to do this. The Andean culture is very friendly and I do feel it is unfair of the inflation of costs due to the escalation of tourism in Cuzsco!!

This is the main plaza where the protest happened but this is awesome shot Lane got with a bunch of pigeons flying around. They almost looked like they where having their own little protest.This is one of the many amazing churches in Cuzco. St. Theresa's Cathedral

This the view from our room!!!! yeah it was that cool. There is a cubbky hole in the window that is nice to ssit in and look over Cuzco out to the Andeas. The temperature here is very sunny and around the mid 70's, but dropps very cold in the evening.

This is a shot from the plane, this was the Andies mountain. very , ,, brown. So glad we elected to fly instead of a 22 hour bus rid of this brown landscape. With very dangerous and curvy mountainside streets.

Well that's it for now, we are off to Machu Picchu, tomorrow morning early!!! We will be blogging from Agues Calentes tomorrow hopefully!!!

Chow!