who cares about pluto…

We left Puno by bus for Cusco. The six hour ride being enlightened somewhat by intermittent views of mountains and new towns, and bingo! I declined to play, and when it turned out the prize was a ticket back to Puno I wasn’t too upset I hadn’t played. Many buildings in Peru look like the one below, with reinforcing sticking out all over. It was suggested to me that this is for monetary reasons: in some places buildings aren’t taxed until they’re finished.

Arriving in Cusco we had the rest of the day free, and went out for dinner as a group in the evening. Some of us took the opportunity to try guinea pig, which was definitely different, but not really worth having again in my opinion.

The next day some of us went on a tour through the Sacred Valley, a historic and beautiful valley near Cusco. First stop for the day was a Llama and Alpaca farm, where we learnt the difference between the two, and some different varieties of each. We also got to feed them, which was enjoyable for llama, alpaca, and person alike.

Further along there was a cute little kid I couldn’t resist taking a photo of. This is exactly what I got my big lens for.

Next stop was a market, where I bought a few more bracelets (pulseras), and a little keychain thing. We went on and had some lunch, before going to the ruins at Ollantaytambo. These are the typical terraced ruins made from incredibly large pieces of stone, which are beautifully constructed into millimeter perfect walls. There were also many little aqueducts through the lower levels, all made of stone and still functioning perfectly.

Finally, we stopped at one last set of ruins as the sun set. These looked beautiful in the setting sunlight…

We returned to Cusco late in the evening, having had an excellent and informative day, thanks to our knowledgeable tour guide Carlos. The rest of the photos are here.