4 days in Cusco

Plaza de Armas

After the manic travelling from Lima to Cusco, we were pleased we had 3 days in Cusco to acclimatise and just generally chill out. We realise the title of this post says 4 days, the 4th was the night after we arrived back from Aguas Calientes.

Cusco is beautiful. It really is, the old town is well preserved, the streets are cobbled, there are dodgy bits but which city doesn't have these areas? 

Hotel Ninos

We stayed at a place called Niños II, which is the 2nd hotel in Cusco run by the amazing Jolanda van den Burg who moved from The Netherlands about 15 years ago to help underprivileged kids in Cusco and has lived here ever since, Angel has bored many a fellow traveller with Jolanda's incredible story (and Ellen has had to sit through it each time). You can read about her here (so we do not bore more people), but needless to say staying in the hotel and eating at the hotels delicious restaurant contributes to this brilliant cause.

We ate at several restaurants, had some juices - no alcohol before the trek! - and did loads of browsing through the markets. 

Angel did get a bit of a dodgy stomach on the second day so we took it easy and it cleared up by the following day - the day before the trek, luckily. Generally in South America antibiotics are very easy to buy without prescription so we bought some, just in case. 

We went into the Cusco Catedral and saw the Peruvian interpretation of the last supper, complete with guinea pig as the centre piece dish! 

There were a few kids selling their stuff (pens, llama key rings, prints etc) and we pretty much spent our daily budget one day buying things from the kids. 

It was sad to leave Cusco, but we must travel on, next stop Puno, by posh train.