Andean Mountain Bike Adventure 8

After my Skype with Erin, I wandered down to the Plaza Armas, in the centre of Cusco.
Even walking there was amazing. This is such an ancient city. I walked past carved stone doorways – imagine the stories if they could talk. The narrow cobbled streets have just enough room for a one-way car road and a narrow footpath on each side. Surrounding the plaza are flagstones worn smooth by 500 hundred years of foot traffic and the whole place just oozes history. The plaza itself is beautiful and is the beating heart of Cusco. It’s big enough to breathe and what’s nice is that the grassed parts are not fenced off, like many other towns. I really like it and with 500 year old churches on 2 sides, there’s a real sense of place.

I walked all 4 sides and what a change this place is from the places we’ve been staying in. Usually if I see a ‘gringo’, it’s a case of ‘which Bike Dreams person is that?’ as we’re the only non-Peruvians in town. Here in Cusco it’s Gringo Central! I perused the menus of the plaza tourist restaurants and they had all the usual suspects, only at 4 times the price. I ducked up a side street and not 10 metres from the plaza, ate in a little place for Peruvians. No English menus, in fact no English anything, but I know my way around a menu now, had some Spanish banter with the staff, and got what I wanted, and a juice too and for a quarter of the price just a few metres away.
Tomorrow we have a tour of the Sacred Valley before catching the train to Machu Picchu in the afternoon. We’re staying overnight, but that, dear readers will be my next blog.