The street scene in Cuzco was really vibrant, everyone was really nice and friendly. While obviously primarily a tourist town certain parts of the city had their own thing going on. In addition to cars, people were everywhere on the sidewalks as well. There were lots of street vendors selling everything from lemonade out of a bucket, meat on a stick to carts and carts of candy and ice cream.
We ate lunch at a place called Pacha Papa's, which was recommended by our hostel as a place to get good local food, that was pretty safe. Even still, we had all heard a lot about the water and food and were being careful not to get sick. So, we ordered pretty safe dishes - margherita pizza and quinoa soup.
Jess and Luke were adventurous enough to try Peru's national drink, Pisco Sour. It is a cocktail of pisco (a white brandy), lime juice, sugar, bitters and egg whites. Sounds kind of gross right? I know but it almost tasted like a margerita and while very strong it was rather tasty. Too many though and you might regret some decisions and have quite the headache the next morning.
After that we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city and checking it out. Cuzco has a lot of public squares and plazas and we came upon a parade in one of the plazas that was for the Virgen del Carmen celebration, which is a combination of Andean pre-Columbian ceremonies and Catholicism where they parade around in masks reliving ancient gods and rituals that celebrate the virgin which represents the Mother of God and Mother Earth. The masks were a little creepy, but puppets freak me out so that isn't a surprise, but it was really pretty cool all the same.
The neighborhood areas were
really charming and were really interesting to walk around in. Narrow,
cobblestone streets, mud bricks houses, hole in the wall markets, lots
of handmade crafts, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment