After my adventures in the mountains last week, my journey around Peru (which is being made up as I go along) took me to the famous Lake Titicaca. After only 4 hours sleep, we took off on an overnight excursion to the islands on Lake Titicaca, which included visiting the floating islands made of reeds, staying a night with an indigenous family, and catching sunset from the highest point of the island.
All in all a good trip, and met some cool people. Now I´m in Cusco, and we spent the last two days around town. I´m taking off for my five day hike to Machu Picchu tomorrow. We were supposed to see some Inca ruins via bus today, but missed it due to a heavy party night with new friends yesterday. Maybe I´ll do it when I get back from my hike. My friend Katie who I met in Argentina has been traveling with me all this time, but tomorrow I´ll be parting ways and she´ll be joining up with another friend. She´s been great to travel with, and I´m wondering how I´ll fare with my non-existent Spanish. I can understand almost everything, but they don´t understand Portuguese at all. I´m trying to Spanishify it, and it works like 30% of the time.
Food so far has been pretty hit or miss, but incredibly cheap. I finally tried the ¨cuy¨ at the insistence of my friend Filipe back home. Cuy is Guinea Pig. Yes, that same pet you had as a kid, only de-furred and served extra crispy with teeth, eyes, ears, paws… all right there on my plate. It was a trying moment, but I ate it and now won´t be doing it again. It wasn´t that tasty, and the sight of it was pretty gnarly. I also tried chicharrones, which is essentially fried hunks of pig. Better than the cuy, but not something I´ll really seek out in the future.
Some other random news… Cusco is at about 10,000 ft, and my runs in the morning only last 30 minutes and I have to stop about every 2 minutes on the slightest of inclines. Also, I´m not shaving on this trip so after a week I´m starting to look pretty grizzly.
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Nice blog Craig, glad you enjoy Peru!
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