Cusco is wonderful. It’s got pretty much everything: beautiful architecture, nice weather, friendly people, and a surprising amount of delicious vegetarian food. Here’s a view of beautiful Cusco from the San Cristóbal church.

The only drawback is the altitude, about 11,000 feet above sea level. In fact, this will be a shorter post because we’ve had a bout of altitude sickness. Garett in particular had a really hard time adjusting and had to spend a decent amount of time in bed. But after a couple days, we were able to explore a little.

Here’s the crowded main square. There are so many tourists from all over the world here, definitely more than we saw in Lima.

And the main square from above.

One of the ways people alleviate altitude sickness here is chewing coca leaves or drinking coca tea–they had the tea at our airbnb for us. It’s illegal in the US actually. The other picture showcases a lovely avocado rose on my salad. The avocados are so good here.

We also had a market right down the street with all sorts of places to eat and things to buy. I love this picture of it.

The rest of the pictures were taken at various museums; first, we went to a museum dedicated mostly to pre-Colombian Andean culture. I took a few pictures of things I thought were cool. I mostly like the wooden one because you can really tell she’s an old lady. Then there’s upside-down jug face man (what could it mean?) and a sweet owl bowl.

The post-Colombian art is mostly religious. The Virgin Mary, called the Virgin of the Andes, wears a mountain-shaped skirt which I love. I’ve never seen that anywhere else.

We’re off to Machu Picchu tomorrow and I am so, so excited! It’ll get its own blog post.