Cusco - the city before Machu Picchu

Back from our Machu Picchu tour, we had hardly paid any attention to Cusco. So the next day we dedicated to exploring the tourist town. Besides many street vendors and waiters trying to get money out of our pockets, there are also a few places that are quite nice.

Baby goats are also sold as baby llamas 😲😵

One example is the Plaza de Armas, which, like in many South American cities, is well-maintained and surrounded by old buildings.

Mainly, it turned into a shopping day so that we could find all kinds of sweaters.

There are many tourist shops in one place 😝
By now, we had packed 10 Peruvian/Bolivian sweaters into our bags, hopefully we can get all the luggage to Bogota, afterwards the airlines are more generous with the baggage allowance 😅

In the evening, we had dinner with two of the people from the tour and went to an Irish pub (one of them was Irish - how stereotypical) for a drink and some rounds of various card games.

The next day, we wanted to see more of the city. We started with breakfast, which was already an adventure. Since the teachers were on strike, supported by the bus drivers, we were locked in a small café during our breakfast because the strikers were passing by and throwing old food at the doors.

We only heard them shouting and Tom saw through the crack in the door that people were running in the opposite direction. We were a bit confused by that.

The waitress explained to us that teachers only earn 1000 Soles (=270€) after 5 years of studying, while policemen receive 3000 Soles after 4 months of training.. it's understandable that this is somewhat disproportionate.

After the train had passed, we went to the chocolate museum. Here, there are free tours - tips are welcome - where you can see and taste various stages of chocolate production 🍫

For example, chocolate is also mixed with coca leaves and chili.

The latter was clearly the best. There are also tastings of chocolate spread and liqueur 🍺 🍻

Chocolate tea

Here, we treated ourselves to a crepe and a mini chocolate fondue,

before continuing to the Sun Temple.

Here, too, monks still live, like the nuns in the monastery of Arequipa. However, the temple is much smaller. Due to the strike, both the museum and the temple were completely overcrowded, but no buses left the city and therefore no tours were available.

In the evening, we took our bus. We still had to exchange our tickets for another company (which was more complicated than you think), but with a delay of 1.5 hours, we finally left Cusco for Nazca.

Next stop: Nazca, Peru