Quick Cusco update.

Somewhere in all the posting, we lost a day and forgot to talk about our LAST DAY WITH RAUL, which is sad.  Because we have a long day ahead of us (flight out is at like, 11 pm ish?) we're taking it a little easy this morning, and I can post a couple of pictures.  I wish we could have spent more time in Cusco!  We'll have to come back...

We got a bit hailed on at the big Inca site above Cusco, so we headed down to the market early.  It's divided into sections.  This is the "innards section:

Note the partial horse faces?  Yeah, this may be cultural insensitivity, but I'm going to officially declare that a little bizarre.  Even Raul was like "not for me, thanks."  I wish I remember what word he actually used, because it wasn't "morbid," it was much funnier.

Less morbid: chocolate with Macchu Picchu imprinted on it:

We were sad to leave Raul!  He declared that we had excellent energy and we should not think of ourselves as tourists with a guide but rather friends with a friend and we were to come back and meet his wife.  I have a picture of the three of us at the Inca fortress (pre-hail) that I will dig up eventually; he said "two flowers, one cactus!" as we posed.

He continued to be hilarious, in other words.  I gave him an excellent review.

Dinner overlooked the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, with views of the lights of the city rising over the mountains.  The restaurant had live music, which clashed pleasantly with the marching band that was inexplicably playing in the plaza below and may or may not have been associated with the wedding that was happening near the fountain.  Fortunately, the tourists who were holding hands in a circle around the fountain and chanting (?!) that afternoon (while we were eating the chocolate) had dissipated.

I ate alpaca (finally!).  It was tasty.  In fact, the one food we've missed out on on this trip is guinea pig.  You know, if they would just BEHEAD THE DAMNED THINGS I would have considered it more seriously, but I just don't think I could have enjoyed it as they are typically presented.  I also finally had a pisco sour:

Which tasted more or less like a margarita, but don't tell them I said that.