Dec 16: Getting to know Cuzco.

I spent yesterday walking though Cuzco and I really like the town, it's pretty cool. I also spent way too much money, but I got some pretty cool stuff. It took me more than two hours to make it down the half mile or so street from our hostel to the plaza.

There are so many shops set up along the way and Ii think I must have visited all of them. I broke my own no-buying-souvenirs-for-anyone-until-I-get-back-to-Chile rule and bought my friend Lulu a bracelet made of alpaca hair because she's a huge alpaca fan and they have so much alpaca stuff here and it only cost five soles. I also bought myself an alpaca sweatshirt, since it gets cold here at night, a painting because I like the artwork here and a scarf because I liked it, though I'm not sure how often I'll wear it.

Other than the bracelet, because I didn't really care about paying $1.66 for it, I got everything I bought much cheaper than the first price I was quoted, so that was pretty cool. Saving money rocks, even in Peru.

I looked at paintings at several places throughout the day. There appears to be about the same 50 prints available in this city, and about half of the people selling them claim to have painted each picture themselves.

I also got my disgusting and falling apart watchband replaced with one this guy on the street made for me. He was able to use the parts from the old band to make it. I went with black and gold, Vandal colors, though the gold looked better by itself so I kinda wish I had chosen green, but I still like it. Everyone I've talked to so far as noticed it and complimented me on it, which is weird because I didn't know people noticed other people's watchbands.

It started raining while I waited fro him to finish it, so we took a taxi to his apartment so he could finish it. His apartment was really tiny, like a one-bedroom apartment with just a mattress on the floor and clothes lying around with no other furniture, other than a small TV.

His girlfriend is from Australia, they met while she was traveling South America on month six of eight. She went home for two months later, stayed for six then moved back here a year ago. She's staying here until he gets an Australian visa.

Their apartment is at the base of what was once a great Inca military fort that now lays in ruins. As he worked, she told me she can look out her window and see structures still standing that the Incans built across the street then look at the top of the same window and see the gap between her the window and ceiling.

Her words matched my thoughts about this town exactly.

During the day, I took a tour of what looked like a huge church but is really three churches built side by side that are connected. Which kind of sounds like one huge church to me.

I got a tour from a girl who traces her heritiage back to Inca roots. I learned a lot about the churches, but more importantly, I learned a lot about the area's history that left me with a better understanding of the city.

The churches reflected the most unique thing about this area's culture. Unlike when what is now the U.S. was conquered and the natives, and their culture and way of life, became all but instinct, the culture here is equal parts the native culture mixed with the culture of the conquering Spaniards.

This was reflective in paintings, such as a version of the last supper that showed Jesus eating the Inca traditional meal of guinea pig as the man's face who betrayed the Inca Empire sits in Judas' place at the table.

The cathedral in the middle is the second biggest in the Americas, second only to the one in Mexico city. It took more than 100 years to build, at what point do you decide it's compelte? Like, what are the last finishing touches on a building that took more than 100 years to build? I can actually look out my window and see the building as I write.

Everything in the building is really grand, most of it carved by hand that required the utmost attention to detail, to which no detail was overlooked.

There was a lot of huge paintings made of canvas and oil pieced together to produce larger-than-life images. The one I remember most was painted after an earthquake duplicating the city in the middle of the earthquake. The painting was painted in the 17th century but I recognized the scene because the image of the 17th century match the images of today. Other than the types of flowers in the plaza, the city has stayed the same since then.

I visited another church across the street next. There, I met this girl, Cindy, from New York City who went to Columbia, while I was waiting in line. We toured the church together but I'm not sure we went to approved tour site spots as we climbed what looked like abounded bell towers and saw the falling apart basement.

After that, we decided to check out this temple on top of a hill we could see. When we climbed the huge hill, we discovered the church was closed for restoration. On the way back down the hill, we ran into the couple who made my watchband, so the entire hill wasn't a lost.

Next we went to the temple of the sun, where Inca stones were on display. All the rocks are squared and are pegged or have groves so they fit together like pieces of a 3D jigsaw puzzle.

The temple was way nice by today's standards. It's more amazing when you realize it was built by hundreds of years ago.

After dinner, I walked down to the Internet café. As I was leaving, I deiced to see what the city looks like at night and headed towards the plaza. I ran into two German girls and a guy from Italy that were on their way to meet some friends to get a drink and they invited me to join them.

We met their friends, from BA, at McDonalds. Though I ate like 60 percent of the soup we had for dinner by myself, I was stil hungry and got two burgers there, though I never eat at McDonalds in the States.

From there, we went to this place and got soup and spaghetti for four soles, or $1.33 US and some beer. I just couldn't seem to get full and only stopped eating because my mouth was tired of chewing.

Then we went to a club for the rest of the night and cointiuned drinking.