The City of Cusco and Panchito mio.

The City of Cusco and Panchito mio. Our first morning in Cusco was quite Alpacaish. We had a great breakfast (did we tell you that the fruits are amazing over here? Sweet passionfruit is our favorite…) and then we had an Alpaca meeting in the beautiful courtyard of the hotel. Every morning from 9:30 to 10:30am there was a lady coming with her baby alpaca boy, named Pancho or Panchito in the nick name form, to meet with the guests. All over Cusco you’ll find these ladies walking the city with their baby alpacas or baby sheep as this is one of the main tourist attraction. The Andeans love these animals, so they are really good to them, this is for sure. A lot of times we saw them cuddling their alpacas when nobody seems to be around. So back to our hotel courtyard. The lady was named Bonifacia (nice!) and her boy Pancho, I already introduced. Needless to say, that Bonifacia instantly felt in love with Jonathan, the same with me and Pancho. We tried to communicate with her – again in Spenglish – and it worked out. She told us, that she loves the alpacas and has seven of them at home. All named Pancho. We met Pancho, the VI. The guy from the hotel told us that Bonifacia is well-known all-over Cusco as the Alpaca-Woman as she is only living with these alpacas, so not married. We spent more than one hour in the sun with her and Pancho and could partly overcome all of our Heidi-dog missing feelings when cuddling the alpaca boy. Again, these guys make so cute noises. I was allowed to feed him with the bottle and this alpaca or Pancho morning actually already made my day. So lovely to interact with these animals. And you know, the both of us are animal lovers, so perfect for us. Around noon we started our walking tour through Cusco, as said, the former capital of the Inca Empire. It is a lovely city! We were again pretty lucky with the weather, although it was cold, when the wind blew. Jonathan unfortunately felt a little sick somehow showing some signs that there might come up a flu. Nevertheless we went to a beautiful place named Qorikancha, also called The Temple of the Sun, which had been the most important temple in the Inca Empire. The whole construction survived several earthquakes which is actually quite impressive. We continued our city tour and all throughout Cusco, the Inca walls are instantly recognizable due to their large, interlocking stones without cement. By the way, all the very important buildings in Inca empire had stones with a curved surface, you are going to see this a lot in our pictures. We spent our whole day in Cusco walking the small city. You need to know that Cusco downtown has only 500 inhabitants but the Cusco surrounding has over 1,5 million of inhabitants. The whole city is almost spotless clean and you also see people doing cleaning a lot. Do not get us wrong, please, but for a South American City really surprising. Also, Cusco is said to be very safe as we were told by Yvoni from our hotel Spa. Jonathan enjoyed an Inca Deep Tissue Massage and I had a manicure (of course, I mean you cannot go to Mr. Machu Picchu without red nails, can you?). Well, chatting with Yvoni, a real inhabitant of Cusco, was really interesting. She told us that things had changed about 10 years ago, especially for women in Peru. Nowadays, they also want to study, to travel and to work, so thinking and behaviors are changing. They do not want to have children that young but rather see the world and earn their own money. She told us that she was very happy with the touristic development as this brings a lot of possibilities, especially for women. She needs to work 9hours a day, she explained, having 30 days of vacation a year, allowed to consume 15 days off every half year. She said this is quite good and was happy to work at the hotel. After our little wellness experience and the lovely chat with Yvoni, we had a first Cusco Pisco Sour in our hotel bar and then headed to our restaurant for that evening. We chose Marcelo Batata who was also known for his cooking classes. The food was again excellent and maybe some words about Peruvian food in the Southern part. People here love to eat meat, especially Alpaca, Pork and Guinea Pig. Yes, Guinea Pig, the Peruvians love it! Yvoni told us that she is cooking it every week. They eat it grilled and you also see it as street food a lot. Jonathan did not try that – with respect to his former pets. After a (regular) beef and vegetarian meal we went back to the hotel, seeing the wonderful hills that Cusco was surrounded by all covered with thousands of little lights. It looked like stars, that were shining on us. Another specialty Cusco has – these lightened hills that shine so bright during the nights. Jonathan again felt not better and first time we thought, hopefully this is not because of the altitude sickness and we hurried up to come back in our oxygen-enriched Inca wall room.