Wednesday 18 January 2012

Copacabana to Cusco (and a Kitchen!)

This is going to be a fly by blog post, as we need to wake up at 3:30am tomorrow to catch a bus for our trek. I admit I haven't blogged in awhile because I was reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" (I know, I'm like 4 years behind on that one) and seriously, that book was like popcorn for me. (What? Popcorn is my drug.) Every time I should have been blogging, I was obsessively reading instead. Sorry.

In the last week, we have moved from the madness of La Paz to the cool beach town of Copacabana, on the banks of Lake Titicaca, and then across the Peruvian border to Cusco.

I can't spend too much time waxing poetic about Lake Titicaca, but it was very beautiful and impressive. It is MASSIVE, and feels like this insane, high altitude sea.

Copacabana (the original, by the way) is a colorful little Bolivian village with a beachy feel. We just hung out there for a few days, walking around and spending time at the beach, marveling at the beach-going locals.
Bolivians at the beach



From there, we boarded a relatively painless 11 hour bus to Cusco, which is a really cool city. It's a breath of modern fresh air compared to Bolivian cities (there's a Starbucks here! And we ate at McDonalds today, but let's not talk about that...). It's beautiful and interesting, but definitely feels much more tourist-oriented than anything we experienced in Bolivia. I want to post all of my Cusco photos after our stay here, so I won't cover them today.

The only thing I'll  show you today are our awesome street food experiences. We have been reveling in the insanely cheap and delicious meals that we are finding in the markets and on the street. We had one meal of mystery meat and rice that was so tasty that I didn't even mind the fact that it made me puke during our hike later that afternoon. It was THAT good. (I just realized how disgusting that sounded. Sorry to have gone there, but you should probably get used to it...)
The adorable lady we bought our vegetables from
Mystery meat on the street
Cusco food market.
Another highlight from Cusco was that we had a hostel with a kitchen in it and cooked our first home-made meal in three weeks. It was glorious and made us realize just how much we have missed making our own food. We played music, drank wine and cooked together just like we used to in Gingins. It was the first time we've really felt at home on the road and will definitely be something we will try to do more often going forward.

Speaking of going forward, tomorrow we are leaving for the 5 day Sakantay Trek to Machu Picchu (I don't feel like Googling the spelling...). We are really looking forward to it, however we are a little apprehensive about the altitude, as the hike will reach 4,600 meters or 15,000 feet! Ten bucks says I'll puke...

So, since you won't hear from us for another week, I'll leave you with a picture of an Inca wall in Cusco. Even though I have nothing to share about the picture, it took me forever to accidentally upload it with my terrible internet connection and I don't have the heart to delete it.
See you in a week, when I'll have way more pictures of Machu Picchu than you will ever want to see!

No comments:

Post a Comment