Cuzco!

So we made it!

After staying in Puno for about a day, and going to some sweet floating islands on Lake Titicaca (thanks workers strike!), we took a bus to Cuzco. On the bus we watched some Bride Wars, Seven Pounds (P.S. the title makes way more sense in Spanish - Siete Almas, or seven souls), and a hilarious made for t.v. movie called Her Best Move (featuring Luke from Gilmore Girls and Miranda from Lizzie McGuire). After the movies were over we had about 2 hours more of bus ride that was scary because we had seats right in the front, so we could see out the window when our bus had to swerve around rocks in the road. The rocks were put there by the people who were striking (actually agricultural workers, not miners, my mistake) to block transportation... apparently stopping work isn't enough to make an impact, which sucks :( But we got to Cuzco safely and found a hostel right around the corner from the one Dekel (I spelled his name wrong before, this one's right) met his other Israeli friend at.

Yesterday we went to a small town outside of Cuzco called Pisac, which was definitely worth the trip. It had a huge market where I got a few things (some gloves for our hike!) and a ton of Incan ruins up on the hill/mountain above the town. We got a taxi up and walked around with some friends I had met in Lima from Canada, and we had been emailing to try to find each other. We hiked back down to the town and then took the bus home, and had a great dinner at a restaurant right across from our hostel. I was stupid and didn't have enough money with me for dinner, so Sam paid with a combination of dollars and soles, which worked out okay, because they pretty much take dollars everywhere around Peru.

So today we're going to some museums and probably a few more incan ruin sites, and then we leave for our hike to Machu Picchu via Salkantay tomorrow morning at 4:30 am! We do take a bus for a little while, and don't start hiking until 8 am. I bought some good hiking boots today that are real comfy and weren't too expensive. I'm so excited to see Machu Picchu!!!!!

Chao for now :)