Ciarán & Elaine's Travelog

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Cusco

Urrgh my head hurts so badly. Altitude sickness is giving us major headaches, feels like someone´s been jumping on our heads all night.

Got up and went straight to the bar in the hostel to watch the Ireland v Cyprus match. Seems to be a huge crowd of Irish staying here but the guys that run the place were having serious problems getting the match over the internet. We were watching it on an Israeli website and listening to it on RTE1. Both of which were full of interference and most of the time we couldn´t make out what was happening.

The hostel that were staying in is an old Spanish style villa with a courtyard in the centre and all the rooms around the perimeter with lovely old balcony. We reckon it´s a good few hundred years old and has only been renovated into a hostel since July. It´s owned by a couple of Irish lads, a kiwi and an Israeli and there´s a really great crowd here. They have everything you´d need in a hostel, bar, tv room, internet, book exchange, kitchen and they serve dinner and breakfast too. The rooms are really cosy, probably because the walls are about 4 foot thick!
It´s great that the hostel is so nice because we´ve decided that we´re going to stay in Cusco for about 2 weeks.

Cusco is a beautiful Inca city. The main city centre is in the basin of a valley, surrounded by high mountains. The view is amazing day and night.
The architecture of the city is very Spanish and most of the buildings have been up since the 17th century and going even further back there are ancient inca walls and ruins still standing right in the city centre.
The main plaza is surrounded by churches a cathedral and beautiful buildings with balconys overlooking the cobbled streets.

There is so much to see and do here. You could spend months wandering up and down the little roads and alleys. Lots of indiginous arts and crafts and so many bars, restaurants and other smaller plazas.

We´re really looking forward to a couple of weeks exploring the place and also want to go to Machu Picchu and on a three day rafting trip while we´re here.

1 Comments:

  • Wow, you two are really having the time of your life!!
    The places sound fab and I love reading the about your adventures. You will have more tales in a year to tell the kids, then a normal joe soap will have in a lifetime!!
    Keep updating us as you go....

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:25 AM  

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