Ailsa and Andy’s Travels: Day 9

The sun shone again, today was a day of exploring Cusco. After breakfast, we spent some time talking to the loveliest lady (Kelly) who comes to the hotel each day with her little Alpacca. She told us much about Conchita the Alpacca who is two months old. We also spoke about her traditional dress which she told us is bespoke to each village. She was a fountain of knowledge and it was lovely to speak to her and find out a bit about her life.

We spent the day mooching around museums, picturesque city squares, a Church, shops and local markets. Unbeknown to us, today was a festival day : “Feliz a Comadres”. I think, it’s a festival of Godmothers (or something to do with women!). Musical bands seemed to pop up randomly throughout the day at various different locations, and wherever the bands were, dancing soon followed along with the squirting of foam all over everyone! It was a very lively affair and much celebrating by local people seemed to go on.

I left Andy unattended for all of 20 seconds twice today and both times when I returned he had been accosted by local women! The second time he was up dancing and taking part in the festivities 😁🕺!

We visited 3 museums; a modern art museum, a local history museum which was fascinating and had some incredible Inca artifacts but was also quite sad as it depicted how the Spanish had come across in the 1500’s and persecuted the Incas. By far my favourite, however, was the Choco Museo! I had the most delicious hot chocolate I’ve ever had. A little pot of melted chocolate came with a little jug of hot milk and you then mixed them together yourself, it was heavenly! We then ventured upstairs where we sampled lots of different chocolate from different regions of the Amazon and Peru. AMAZING!!

Andy was on a mission to find the Post Office, which we did. It’s very tricky to find post cards and post boxes when abroad. I don’t think you could say it was like a post office at home as it had a stall in it with a hand made sign above it which read “Aceite De Cannabis” - which translates to Cannabis oil, they don’t sell that in Pulborough Post Office!.

We’ve seen many dogs whilst in Peru, 99% of them sleeping in the sun. Today, we saw one which was actually awake, in fact it was on a mission heading somewhere with great confidence and determination. It trotted past us as we were walking along a street and when it approached the junction it stopped, looked both ways and waited for the whistle of the traffic policeman before safely crossing the road! That was one street savvy pooch.