Pisac

Didn´t get much sleep last night due to our room´s position right on the edge of an alleyway across from another guesthouse. In order to get into the guesthouse, you have to ring the doorbell ("ding!") and then they buzz you in ("Bzzzzzz"). So, all night long, Ding! Bzzzzzzz. Ding! Bzzzzzz. That and the altitude (about 10,000 ft.) made for a lousy night´s sleep. We grabbed some breakfast and then hopped a bus for Pisac, a small town in the "Sacred Valley" about an hour outside of Cusco. The mini-busses here are awesome - we paid before we got on the bus (about $0.80) and we even got an assigned seat number.

Had lunch in Pisac, which was holding a¨"market" that day - more of a tourist thing. Exclusively a tourist thing, actually. Anyway, the town is located in a pretty deep river valley, with Inka ruins situated right above it on the top of a mountain. You can hike up, but it is four KM pretty much straight up, so we decided to take a taxi. Found some Dutch people to share the cab with (Dutch tourists are like fleas on street dogs - everywhere). Ruins were great - massive terraces, walled of with stones about 10 feet high. Every promitory seemed to have some kind of structure on it. It is mind-boggling, the amount of stone that went in to these things. Eneded up walking down, which was still pretty difficult. Took the bus back to Cusco (not quite as nice as the one to Pisac - my ass still hurts from the "seats"). Had an Alpaca steak for dinner. Quite tasty - looks and texture where like pork, but it had a slight gaminess, like lamb.