Cusco; rocks and cheap booze

Cuzco nightlife is amazing. Thursday night me and Fagner went out and had a lovely meal, went to a cocktail bar with buy one get one free all night, then went to a club called Mama Africa. Was a brilliant night out, Mama Africa was full of tourists, indie music and cheap booze, danced all night before throwing in the towel at about half 4 and collapsing into bed. Poor Fagner was going on his Macchu Picchu trek at half 6, I think I may have ruined his life. (Whirlwind)

Did the city tour on Friday with an English guy called John. For £3 we got a 4 hour guided tour around all the main Inca sites. First was the Koricancha, a temple-come-fort, then Sacsayhuamáno (pronounced 'sexywoman') its an Inca temple shaped like a snake on top of a mountain over looking Cuzco. We also visited the temples of Tambomachay, a temple fot important religious ceremonies, Pucapucará, and finally Q'enqo which is a labrynth made of rocks where the Incas mummified their bodies. If was a brilliant tour, very interesting learning about Inca traditions and what happened during and after the Spanish colonisation. BUT... after 4 hours looking at rocks I began to think the Incas simply had nothing better to do rather than lug rocks into the middle of nowhere and arrange them in nice patterns, I guess thats what people did before playstations and tellies were invented!

Friday night we ate in a little cafe that was full of local people and no tourists, had lomo saltado in epic portions followed by a Pisco Sours then bed.

On Saturday we went to San Pedro market, a traditional indoor market selling everything from handbags to live frogs. We had fresh fruit smoothies, mine, strangely enough, had beetroot in it, and was actually suprisingly delicious.

For lunch I ATE GUINEA PIG!! It's a speciality here but I can't understand why! Was pretty nasty. It came with its teeth, eyes, feet, toenails - everything - attached, and it was really hard to actually find any meat. It was all fiddling with bones and gross stuff. The actualy taste wasn't great either, really strong tasting chewy red meat. I'm glad I tried it though.

After lunch I went to San Blas in the afternoon for a coffee, it's the oldest neighborhood in Cuzco and is up a very steep hill. There's (yet another) temple and lots of handicraft artsy stalls.

In the afternoon in the main square there was a parade of typical dancers, all in traditional dress. It was very interesting to watch. Some of the costumes were quite even scary - creepy masks and feathers!

Next stop: my trek to Machu Picchu! Wish me luck, I'm gona need it!