Lima to Cusco and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LACY!!

Happy to report that Katie and I made it safe and sound to Cusco! We had a really really outrageously early flight this morning (5:45AM!) up to the beautiful mountian town. We´ve settled into our hostel and took a mid morning stroll through the food markets. I took quite a lot of pictures which I will post later. The food markets always are strange to me. Usually they have the standard fruits, veggies, rice, spices, etc all nicely stacked up in little disply pyramides. This food market was no different. Then you get to the meat section.... that part usually makes me squirmish. The smell alone starts to get to me after a while (and yes, I actually can smell something... I don´t know what it is but I don´t like it!!) At this particular market there were full chickens, feet and all along with guinea pigs, cuts of meat I couldn´t identify, and some animal heads. Neither of us were really sure if they were lame, llama, alpaca or what, but they were little animal heads just waiting to be bought. That was a bit excessive for me personally. I understand it is a cultural thing and it is great they are not wasting any part of the animal, I´m also glad that I have a choice in eating it.



Tomorrow Katie and I are heading to Aguas Calientes which begins our trip to Machu Picchu. The next few mornings are all going to be really early so we are already trying to sleep as much as possible. We need to get up at like 4AM to get to MP early enough to get tickets to the top of the mountain. This also requires us to hike a bit, about 1.5-2 hours up to the entrance to MP. This in inself is not an issue, however; at elevation we are a bit worried. We already feel a little drained and we´ve only been here for 4 hours!!



I´m not sure what the internet situation will be for the next few days so we maybe a bit out of communication for a while. If that is the case I didn´t want to forget to wish one amazing Lacy Morris a very Happy Birthday tomorrow!