17 May – Cusco

We arrived in Cusco to a glorious sunny afternoon – then the sun went down and it got very cold very quickly. We had hoped that as we had descended a few hundred metres from Puno that the nights would be warmer.

Cusco is a lovely city albeit full of tourists (and it is low season apparently). We have managed to do the Sacred Valley tour which was great fun although it tested our endurance as we walked and climbed many steps and steep paths to get to some of the sights. Today, we have explored Cusco´s many sights and some of the churches. It does seem odd having to pay quite a lot to visit each church -they are run like monuments. Sadly we have found them to be very ornate in a disappointing way and also completely lacking in any reverential atmosphere.

We have also managed to find 3 outstanding restaurants albeit serving western style food. The trouble is we have both put on acouple of pounds in weight!!!

We have changed our itinerary slightly reducing our planned time in Lima. We will still visit Easter Island and arrive in the US 4 days earlier than originally planned. Quite simply the more we looked at the Lonely Planets Guide and talked to people, we did not see how we could fill the time in Lima. So we checked the flight schedules and found that an extra flight to Easter Island had been added since we booked our original tickets. Luckily, we managed to secure seats and change the other flights accordingly at no extra cost !!!!.