Day 22

After a 'night' (a few hours) in an overpriced hotel room, we went to the airport again. This time the destination was Cuzco. We spend 5 hours on the airport because it was hard to get there later than we did. The plane left at 08:00 and at 09:30 we arrived in Cuzco. This small city lies at 3400 meters above sea level. Nina had blue lips, but it turned out that that was from the cold airplane and quickly went away 🤭 we took a little, full bus to the center (1 sol pp), instead of a taxi (10 soles). We walked around a bit, but we felt the air was thinner and went to eat and drink something. We are not staying the night in Cuzco, because we went so quickly up, so we took an effectivo (a car filled with people. A shared taxi so to say) to Ollantaytambo. This lies at 2700 meter. It is a cute town, with pretty small inca buildings and streets. It is also very touristic, because it is on the way to machu picciu. The mountains are pretty and so high! And lots of inca ruins on the way up.
Our host picked us up at the main plaza of ollantaytambo and showed us a bit of the town. We had to walk about 20min to the place we are staying now. We saw a small hummingbird and also a small baby snake. So cute! At our arrival we got offered a cup of coca tea, which was helping a bit against the tiredness and the thin air here. After drinking the cup of tea and a bit small talk we went in our room and got some rest. We walked to the town to get some groceries, but there is not much here. Lots of chips and chocolate, and maybe some buns and cheese 😅 so that will be our dinner today. We also found some spaghetti and pesto, and hope we can make it here tomorrow. Fingers crossed we will find some tomatoes tomorrow!
The salty chips are also good for our bodies here so high up, because your body starts to make more urine, and the salt helps to keep water in. We have to drink a lot of water against altitude sickness. On the way to and from the town we saw a lot of dogs and cows on the way.
It is much colder here (15°) and we finally are happy that we didn't leave our winter jackets and sweaters somewhere behind! (They were very annoying because they take up a lot of space 😅) our host and his volunteer made a fire in the yard and started to cook giant white corn of cuzco (choclo), that only grows between 2600 and 3000 meter. Ther kernels are quite big and it tastes really nice. A bit like sugar mais mixed with white beans. Then it was sleeping time.
PS: we saw a lot of llamas on the way to ollantaytambo ❤️Baca lagi