Cusco - Qusqu (in Quechua)

Following a rough night at La Paz airport, we were collected from Cusco airport and taken to our hostel to be greeted by incredibly friendly staff who served us mate de Coca tea to make sure we didn't suffer from altitude sickness.  After finding a particularly good restaurant and eating some marvelous food we went straight to bed.  The next day we were collected bright and early by Yvonne, a member of our host family and she took us to her flat which would be our home for the next week. We met Yolanda, the mother of the family and got another cup of Mate de Coca. Yolanda lives with her 14 year old son Yomar and Yvonne (Yomar's godmother) has been living there temporarily since October.  On Saturday we did a city tour where we visited the huge cathedral and three ruins around Cusco, Sacsayhuaman, Tambomachay, Qenko and the remains of the old Inca Sun temple Qorikancha. One day we hired a taxi for a morning and visited Tipon and Pikillacta, the remains of a civilisation before the Inca empire took over the area. On the way back from Pikillacta we saw a village that was partly destroyed by the heavy floodings. Lots of people were living in tents or what looked like tents. It looked really sad... We also drove through the town that makes the biggest loaves of bread and the town witha  local speciality: the cuy! (guinea pig).

Every day we walked into town and visited various museums, churches and convents, chilled out on the plaza and browsed the shops,  then we went back to the apartment for a big lunch and then headed to the Spanish school for lessons from 3.30 to 7.30. We have two teachers, one for grammar and the other for conversation.  They are both lovely and we feel we are making lots of progress.  In the evenings we stayed in and watch Avatar together or went out and ate pizza for Yomars´ birthday.  After our last lesson we got a taxi to Ollantaytambo even though we were repeatedly assured there would be collectivos (minibuses) going, they decided to pull the service due to a lack of tourists. But hey, all is better than the transport in Bolivia... So we took a taxi and arrived late in Ollantaytambo. We had no absolutely idea how it would look like in the morning. We only saw the high mountain peakes...