Day 3: Planning for Cusco

Today was a pretty crazy day. Had the usual breakfast of bread and mystery juice. While we were eating, Lonnie and Theresa showed up which was pretty cool. Theresa was sick with Typhoid so she was telling us her story of being in the hospital and all that. In short, hospitals here are cheap but really crowded and a little sketchy. The important thing though is that she got the medicine she needed and she feels better. Today we met a German named Milan who seems pretty cool. He´s traveling the world by himself and will go to Cuba in a couple of weeks. He told us a story of how a random family treated him out to breakfast and introduced him to their neice or something.

Getting our whole trip to Machu Picchu organized was a little difficult but we eventually got it. Lonnie hooked us up with a travel person in Cusco to get a package to Machu Picchu for only $110. The people at Lima were asking for $200 so I´m really happy with what we got. The package we got includes a place to stay, a meal, the train ride to Machu Picchu from Cusco and a guide from the base of the mountain to Machu Picchu. Geo and Marie helped us get a bus ticket from Cusco to Lima on Cruz Del Sur which is supposed to be a really nice bus agency. In all, our whole trip in Peru is set which is exciting.

Thankfully I haven´t been sick from food yet and hopefully it will stay that way. Peruvian food is the best! Today I had Lomo soltado which is pretty much stir fry. There was also this fried banana which they have in the Philippines also. The others didn´t really like it but I did. Peruvian food is influenced by cuisines from Spain, China and other parts of South America which is probably why it´s so good. I can´t wait to try the other kinds of food over here. Also, people in Peru really like pollo. This is perfect for Ana because she has food allergies but she likes chicken a lot. Hopefully we can travel around together in the future!

We also visited Iglesia de San Francisco which was really cool. It was filled with a lot of artifacts and stuff from a long time ago. The church is still being used now and so there are still people that go in the chapel to pray and attend services. We got an english speaking tour and our guide looked and talked like dracula. He would talk really mysteriously and also look up it in a weird way haha. It was kind of creepy actually because the church has catacombs which is pretty much a mass grave underneath the church. The catacombs at San Francisco is supposed have buried almost 25,000 people. We saw a lot of bones that were stacked on top of each other and also skulls. The catacombs itself was really huge and there was a lot of bones everywhere. There were also paintings on the columns that show how some of the saints were murdered (crucified, beheaded by an axe, etc...). In the second floor there was a really cool old school library kind of like the one in Beauty and the Beast.

That´s it for now really. Lonnie is leaving tomorrow and the rest of us will be travelling to Cusco for a 1 9 hour bus ride. Pray that we arrive there safely and nobody gets sick. I also got to talk to Ana on aim for the first time during this trip which was awesome.

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-Jason