Safe And Sound In Cuzco!

Well, we´re safe and sound in Cuzco! We flew to Lima yesterday and spent the night. This morning we flew from Lima to Cuzco. It was a shot flight, about an hour and a half. The terrain we flew over was quite impressive - lots of ridges and canyons. We´re checked in to our hotel, and we´re checked in with the tour company for our Machu Picchu hike and even at the hotel we will be staying at one night at the little town of Aguas Clientes right next to Machu Picchu. We´re taking it easy. Daniel is having the hardest time with the altitude, Michelle some, and I´m not doing bad at all. Still, we´ve already been doing some souvenir shopping. There are lots of people who try to sell you things on the streets - alpaca wool products, finger puppets, carved gourds, and (the one that surprised me) even CDs. :) Cuzco is pretty (in a historic foreign building sort of way) and interesting. It´s very touristy - there are lots of places sellign souvenir items, selling film and the ability to download photos off digital film and burn them on CD. There´s also lots of places changing dollars into sols (the local currency). Dollars are very popular - people tend to prefer them over sols!

Tomorrow we´re takeing a guded tour of the local area - some suins and a farmers market, plus getting an admissions pass to all the local museums. We´re going to be taking it easy here in Cuzco for the next few days to get acclimated before we tackle the hike on Tuesday.