Awwwe! Cuzco, the famous Inca Capitol. The city is gorgeous set in the Andes Mountains with mostlly very traditional Spanish style architecture with portruding wooden balconies, plaster, narrow streets and Spanish tiled rooves. I feel a lot like Toledo, Spain was picked up and dropped in the middle of the mountains.

There are only two seasons here, the dry season and the rainy season, which does not bode well for our Inca trail hike next week. The temperature is also pretty cold even though it is supposedly summer here in the Southern Hemisphere. I have put on all my layers of clothing and am still pretty cool. I guess I should expect it since Cuzco is more than 10,000 feet above sea level. Many people get altitude sickness here, such as my Dad. Luckily, I haven't been affected...more just feeling the after effects from New Years:)

Anyway, the past two days we spent roaming the town and seeing the famous Incan sites. It really is amazing what they were able to accomplish. I will post photos soon. One place called Saqsaywaman (pronounced sexy woman!, easy to remember) had stones weighing over 95 tons and were transported over 30 miles without any machinery in the mountains! They also had a temple called Korikancha that had a wall that surrounded it, which was capped with four inches thick of 24k gold estimated to be about 450 tons! In other words, it was good to be the Inca, but sorry girls, the gold was reserved for the men and women could only have silver.

Tomorrow my family leaves Ian and I, and we are going to live with a family here in Cuzco for a week and attend a Spanish school. The family will go on to Machu Picchu on the train, and we'll follow a week later except on the trail. Hopefully, we'll learn a little more about the culture and maybe how to cook their favorite dish here, guinea pig...oh piglet! Apparently it's really good. I'll let you know.