Cusco

There’s a street in Cusco lined with side-by-side restaurants, each with someone standing outside trying to lure tourists in. There are actually more people doing this than there are tourists or even available tables. As you walk through, menus will open in front of your face, and people start shouting about pizza offers, omelettes, and cappuccinos.

If this was all Cusco had to offer, we might as well pack our bags, get the promotional DVD about Cusco from the automatic video dispenser (yes, there was one in the airport), and watch it when we get back home.

Overall, Cusco is a nice city where you see only two kinds of people: those who constantly hassle tourists and... tourists. At least, that’s the first impression you get.

After spending some time around the city, the next impression you get is that every tourist looks the same. They all have the same type of stripy cotton trousers they got from the “local” markets in an effort to look less like tourists! (Dora and I each have a pair, and guess what; we look like tourists.)

We had three days to experience Cusco, which was enough for the parts covered by the tourist map but definitely not enough to experience local life beyond the main square.

As with our whole trip, this city had to be explored fast, and activities had to be booked even faster.

We wanted to do the “Inca Trail,” a trek that lasts four days and ends at the famous Machu Picchu. The places for trekking are limited since only a certain number of people are allowed on the mountain at any time, so we needed to book something quickly.

Unfortunately, we only had three days (we had to catch a flight back to Chile), but a crazy local guy—who, for some weird reason, was always around where we were, always offering random services—found us a “special” tour that does the trek in three days.

But there was a catch… (more about this in the next message).