Last Day in Cusco

The month has come to an end. Its really strange because it flew by. The only thing I will not miss are cramped bus rides. I´m going to eat guinea pig tonight if all goes according to plan. The only other strange food I´ve eaten here so far is cow heart, which you can buy on the street, and alpaca meat, which isn´t that strange but really good.

Tomorrow we leave on our trek for Machu Picchu which means that our trip is essentially over. We leave at 4 or 5 am and get back to Cusco on Friday night. Saturday night I´m leaving to go back to Pisco, where I should arrive on Sunday around noon. Then its Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday back to Lima for our flight out on Thursday morning. It is going to go by fast. The bus I´m taking first goes to Arequipa, and then to Ica and Pisco. A few days ago a bus crashed going to Arequipa from Cusco and 13 people died, and since it happened so recently I´ll probably be safe because there aren´t often deadly bus crashes in the same location twice in one week.

We went to lake Titicaca on Tuesday and Wednesday since we got 2 days off for Peruvian Independence Day. The bus ride was about 6 hours and we arrived at 4 in the morning and had to wait 2 hours or so to be picked up by our tour people. They took us to a hotel, where we sat in the lobby for about 30 minutes, and then a bus came and they told us to get on. The lake was cool, but not cool enough to want to hear about, except for the fact that there are people who live on the lake on islands they have made out of dirt and reed.

Friday was the last day of teaching. One class bought me cake and soda and a scarf and a backpack, it was pretty cool. This was the class that I had had to teach by myself for 2 weeks since a lot of the professors left. It was tough, but a good time, and I got cake and soda and a scarf and backpack out of it so it was all worth it in the end.

The trek to Macchu Pichu is 5 days. On the second day we hike somewhere around 15,000 feet, really high up. It is supposed to be ridiculously cold the first two nights, and then hot and mosquitoey for the rest of the trek. From everything we have heard, it is supposed to be awesome.

Theres lots more thats been done and a lot more to say, but I forget everything as soon as I sit down to write. I´ll have better stories when I get back.