Peru

We got up early for our day trip to the famous Rainbow mountain. Very shortly after departing, found out we would be spending 9+ hours in the bus to get there and back and the details at the mountain were different too. We decided to abort and managed to get half our money back

So we had a casual day wandering the city and lots of relaxing too. Found a really cool restaurant called Dr Beer and Miss Potato where alexa got chocolate waffles and i had omelette and tacos apparently :) All the music there was on Alexa's playlist and she was immensely happy about every aspect of that place, even the bathroom was cool.

From there, went higher into San Blas for some great views of the city. Took a lot of narrow cobblestone passageways/streets on the way down and came across some Bolivians with their pet alpacas with indescribably soft wool coats. I don't know why, but farm animals always try to kiss me when i bend over for a photo. Then continued downhill more, passing someone carrying a baby lamb and hidden markets and finally to the main plaza. You never know what you'll find in cusco as you wander around. Definitely worth it to venture off the main streets.

At the plaza found a brewery place overlooking everything where i had super cute tiny sample mugs the size of my thumb and alexa had an exotic fruit juice mixture. Before leaving the plaza, we quickly toured the massive cathedral which was amazing inside. And some jewelry shopping for alexa. Silver is really cheap here.

Then met up the abdel and family in the massive San Pedro market which literally has anything you can think of. After making a few purchases, unwisely walked through the meat area. Seeing the animal parts and smells were really overwhelming and alexa had to exit the market and eventually back to our apartment and rest a bit. I was pretty grossed out too.

Late afternoon, we walked to the stadium, met up with our gang, bought jerseys and went in to watch the cusco soccer team battle a lima team. Before entering the stadium, I got interviewed on tv shortly after putting on my jersey haha.. they loved that we were canadians cheering on cusco.

My first south american footy match! And oh boy, what a game! So many crazy scoring chances, 3 goals, lots of fouls, an ejection, and a massive brawl between both teams where the riot police had to run onto the field to break it up. I thought the riot police were there to repel the fans haha! And from start to finish, the stadium was soooo loud with both fanbases trying to out-scream each other. Cusco scoring the game winning goal in the final minutes set the entire stadium into a crazy celebratory frenzy. Amazing experience. What a great, mostly unplanned day.Read more