we didn’t have to wake up until super late today since our city tour wasn’t leaving until 1pm, so we slept in & i think i got my first full eight hours sleep this trip. so nice! lots of dreams about bowling with my brother & heidi & ana & i planning a trip to disneyland… exciting stuff.

anyway, after we ate breakfast, we decided to try to get me some antibiotics, so we went down to the pharmacy & bought cipro. just asked for it & got it. no prescription. we also got medical advice from the 12 year old behind the counter, but thank god i knew which antibiotic i wanted, because he kept trying to give me some other non-prescription medication. fuck that, i want the good stuff.

we had time to kill before lunch & the tour, so we walked around the square & ended up in a little shop. mom bought a hand carved gourd with the history of peru & the incan people & i bought a little hand carved gourd with hummingbirds & flowers on it to hold my jewelry. i know i should have bought one with more important historical images or whatever carved in it, but the flowers were so pretty! & it opens up! holds things! the little guy that made them carved his name in the bottom & put a pair of earrings in the gourd for me. free! nice.

so. the tour. we started in the cathedral, which has “more alters than you can shake a stick at” says mom & they’re all covered in gold. my favorite was black jesus. he’s the patron of cusco. apparently sometime in the 1500s or 1600s, they had 1000+ earthquakes in one year, until they took black jesus out & paraded him around the square. after that, cusco was earthquake free for a good, long time. everyone in cusco loves black jesus. so we’ve got that in common.

from there, we went to qorikancha, which was entirely covered in gold until the spanish came in the 1500s & took the gold as a ransom for atalwapa (the last ruler of the incas), & then killed him anyway. i told mom that i wasn’t too excited about qorikancha, but she said she liked it because we got to see the inside of incan rooms & more of their architecture. so there’s her explaination. i still wasn’t super stoked.

after that, we went to saqsayhuaman (prounounced like a french person saying “sexy woman”), which was another set of incan temples. we’re seeing a lot of those. but i really liked saqsayhuaman. green everywhere (it’s the rainy season here) & giant temple ruins.

then we took the bus to q’engo, another temple ruin. but! this one was just a giant boulder that was cracked/cracking & the incans used it to their advantage & built an alter inside. the guide said that andean people still come to make sacrifices at the alter today. he also told us how the incans used to perform their human sacrifices: they’d drug the person with hallucinogens, then drop them off on the mountainside in the snow to die. a lot more benign than i’d expected. i imagined altars with the incans killing people & pulling out their hearts. not so!

finally, we went to the temple of the sun (tambomachay) but i wasn’t really listening to what the guide was saying about the place. all i heard was that the water that comes from the fountains is supposed to keep you eternally youthful if you wash your face with it. i turned to mom & said “let’s get on that shit.” & she just kind of stared at me & blinked. i think she was tired. it was a long walk up the hill & she’s had altitude sickness since we got here a couple days ago.

anyway, we rode back on the bus & ate at jack’s cafe. again. our third time eating there in two days. the prices are okay (about $5 per person for giant portions) & the food’s pretty alright (american bistro kind of stuff), but the main reason we keep coming back is that the food doesn’t look scary. we’ve both been sick non-stop since our third day in peru & we’re not about to venture out & try new places & make things worse. so, jack’s it is. from here until lima.

we’re going to machu picchu tomorrow, leaving at 6:30am & not getting back until 8:30pm. bus, train, bus, machu picchu, bus, train, bus. i am so excited i can’t sit still.