A good start to my week in Cusco - cold water in the shower because the gas had run out! (Later in the week there was no water at all for a few hours; apparently this happens quite often.)

I had 3 hours of practical Spanish lessons every day Monday to Friday, walking around the town with a lovely woman called Hilda, who gradually told me her story. The lessons were arranged through an organisation called FairPlay, who work mainly with single mothers, training them to be Spanish teachers. Hilda is a Quechua woman of 33, with a 12 year old son, Brian. She came from a very poor family up in the sierra, and was sent to work as a servant in Cusco when she was only 7 years old. She started work at 5 every morning, scrubbing floors, washing clothes and preparing vegetables. In the afternoon she went to school, then worked again in the evening, washing dishes. She only got to see her family about once a month, and told me she used to look out of the window hoping to see her father outside. Later she had a relationship with Brian's father, who once broke her nose. She told me about this when we were looking at wooden cooking utensils, and she said he used to beat her with them. Eventually he left and Hilda came to Cusco with Brian. She has worked as a hospital cleaner, and last year was a street cleaner, working very early morning shifts. She managed to train as a Spanish teacher at the same time as doing this job and caring for her son. She says he is very understanding about her having to work, but he gets lonely at home on his own. At the weekends they go for long walks in the country together; Hilda is very knowledgeable about all the local medicinal herbs. She is determined that Brian will not be poor when he grows up, and he says he wants to be a climatologist and work in Lima. Despite all this, Hilda is a cheerful, bright woman with a lovely sense of humour and is a very good teacher; she enjoys teaching and being able to go out and about and talk to people. She took me to the market, a weaving exhibition and the craft markets. One day we walked out of the town up to the "Christo Blanco" viewpoint, which overlooks the Inca ruins of Sacsaywuaman, andyesterday we climbed the spiral staircase inside the Pachacutec monument, which has wonderful views all round the city. I felt like a child sometimes when she pointed things out and told me their Spanish names, and congratulated me when I got things right! One evening there was a cookery lesson at the Spanish school, when we made a peculiar dish of green pasta that was served with potatoes and a cheesy sauce. That evening was quite a challenge, as I had to speak Spanish most of the evening to a woman I could hardly hear because of all the cooking noise, chat and music that was going on. After the last lesson, I took Hilda and Brian for lunch. Brian is very shy but we managed to have a conversation!

The old centre of Cusco is lovely, with pantiled adobe buildings, grand colonial buildings and very rich churches (the cathedral has an enormous solid silver altarpiece), and a lot of the original Inca stonework. The area around my hostal is very attractive, with narrow, steep cobbled streets, and I have a great view over the roofs from my room. I've just uploaded dozens of photos of the town, and of the Corpus Christi fiesta, whiuch was very noisy and colourful. It started on Wednesday, when the effigies of saints and virgins were carried from 15 churches in and around Cusco to the cathedral, where they remain for 8 days. The processions were accompanied by bands, banners and dancers, some of them masked, and preceded by fireworks. I wish I could have recorded, as well as photographed it. Thursday was the feast of Corpus Christs, and the saints and virgins were brought out of the cathedral for a lengthy mass on the steps, attended by the priests from all their churches, They they were paraded around the main square and taken back inside again. After this the locals started a binge! In one of the town squares a couple of dozen stalls were set up, selling the traditional festive dishes - chicharrones (crispy fried pork), served with fried potatoes and a salad of onions and leaves called hierba buena, and a combination dish of roast guinea pig (sorry, Heather!), chicken, cheese, sausage, a form of dried fish roe called caocao, and seaweed. All the restaurants were serving this dish as well. In the streets there were also stalls selling sugarcane, huge coconuts and custard apples, which Hilda said are only sold here during the fiesta, and cakes. Beer was available everywhere, and a lot of people stayed in the main square all afternoon and evening eating and drinking; others feasted at home.

There have been a couple of protest marches here against the exploitation of the northern rainforest. I had an email from the Foreign Office, warning travellers to stay away from the centre of Lima and possibly Cusco. The marches here were peaceful; Hilda and I walked alongside one of them, but there were armed police around. I met someone today who had flown here because her bus was stuck for 2 days in a protest roadblock that didn't show any sign of ending, on the road I travelled on from Puno.

The traffic isn't as bad here as Arequipa, but it's pretty chaotic, and the pavements are full of slip and trip hazards - fire hydrants sticking up, slippery stones, and holes, sometimes because metal covers have been stolen.

As in Arequipa and Puno, there are beggars and people trying to make a living selling things (often handmade dolls or paintings - one lad called out "Miss - remember me, Pablo Picasso"!) There are child shoe-shiners, and a lot of women and children in traditional dress leading llamas or alpaca, or carrying very young lambs or kids, charging tourists for a photo.

I've found a couple of really good places to eat. One is run by an organisation that trains young people and provides work or helps them to set up small businesses. This cafe serves good vegetarian food, all freshly cooked as it's ordered - it does a delicious quinoa and vegetable soup and a stirfry of mushrooms with peeled broad beans, long green beans and big kernels of maize. The other restaurant is listed in all the guidebooks, so there's always a queue to get in, and it does really good soups and brilliant veggie burgers with guacamole. More traditional Peruvian restaurants serve a lot of meaty things, including caldo de cabeza (head soup), and tend to serve two forms of starch with each meal, often rice and potatoes.

There are a lot of museums, but I've only visited a couple. I loved the Museo de Arte Precolombino, where the emphasis is on the aesthetic qualities of the work, rather than their history, although it is divided into different periods, The collection is mainly ceramics, and Mairead would be in heaven there. The craftsmanship is amazing; the works were created between 800 BC and about 1300 AD, but some of them could have been made today by a ceramic artist. Unfortunately photography wasn't allowed and the museum doesn't have a book about the collection, but I particularly loved a pair of vessels in the shape of cormorants, very graceful and simple in shape.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Chinchero, where I'll be based for at least 5 weeks, teaching English and living with a family. The village is about 40 minutes away by bus or taxi. There is no internet there, so I will only be able to blog and check emails every week or so when I come back in to Cusco at weekends.