We are the anointed ones

A strange title I know but I will explain a bit later.

Arrived in Cusco after our trip to Machu Picchu booked into another amazing hotel - very old - and has been several things including a monastery and a bank. As mentioned before, Cusco is at a very high elevation and we noticed that the simple task of breathing became difficult again. That evening we had a dinner and Peruvian traditional folklore music show which was magic. The pan pipes plus another couple of instruments that I don't know the names of (but look like a ukulele and large recorder) were expertly played, particularly the haunting melody known as The Lonely Shepherd (of you don't know it - Google it). Beautiful! There were also male and female colourful masked dancers (like the one on the Vistadome train) and Brad was asked to go out and dance with one of the girls. A bit of a fish out of water but he actually looked like he knew what he was doing. However, the dance went on for quite a while and as we were not yet acclimatised to the thinner air, he found himself getting exhausted and another minute he reckons he would have passed out.

The next morning we had a walking tour of the main area of the Old Town of Cusco which included the sacred site of Koricancha (an Incan sun temple) and a Baroque church which was massive, as well as a food market which Brad said would be fined and shut down if it was in Australia. Still, it wasn't as bad as the markets we saw in Vietnam. ... at least these did not have flies all over them.

The rest of the day was free time so we decided to do a bus tour with 4 other people of our group so we could get some views of Cusco from up in the hills from the Statue of Christ (it seems many South American cities have a Christ statue - just not as big as the one in Rio. What we didn't realise was that it also included a coca leaf ceremony. This is a type of blessing (I think, not real sure ) where a Peruvian Sharman gives you 3 coca leaves (these are the ones that help combat altitude sickness) and chants over them and you while waving a condor feather, then we burn them and he collects the burnt offering and waves the smoke over you. Smells a bit like eucalyptus leaves. Don't really know what it was all about but it was interesting.

Next day a big drive to Lake Titicaca - the highest navigatable lake in the world - but more about this next blog.Read more