City of the Sun

After all we went through in quito, we had mixed feelings about leaving but nevertheless we flew to lima, spent 10 hours overnight in the airport and arrived in cusco at 7am monday morning. we slept all day and then explored the city tuesday. Cusco is beautiful--so rich with history and stories. the streets are cobblestone and its very hilly and very touristy. in some ways it reminds me of mexico, lots of churches and cathedrals, with everything centered around plazas. cusco is at an altitude of about 3,400 meters, so walking up and down the hills here is no walk in the park. quito is not exactly sea level at 2,800 meters, but believe me when i say that you can feel the difference the second you step off the plane. the air feels thin, as well as dry, and its strange to feel out of breath allll the time. Cusco is a fascinating intersection between colonial latin america and indigenous/incan culture. i dont know if its the majority but many many people speak quechua, the language of the incas that still has no written language. the biggest festival here is in june, celebrating the sun, an extremely important symbol in incan culture. peru is known here as the land of the sun, with cusco as the inti (sun in quechua) god's center. in fact, the peruvian currency is the sol, or sun in spanish. in addition, the city flag of cusco is a rainbow (identical to the gay flag), as representing all colors of light. the gateway to machu picchu and the inca trail, cusco has a large indigenous population but also is completely dependent on tourism, and it shows. women and children walk around in traditional peruvian dress carrying lambs or leading llamas soliciting pictures. people stand outside nearly every store, business and restaurant encouraging their food, products or tours. now there are tacky christmas lights everywhere, and plenty of the signs are in english. but nothing can obscure the beauty of this city--houses painted in bright colors, intricate carving on the doors and balconies, narrow streets that offer views of the mountains, and people that are neither overly friendly nor hostile, but rather keep to themselves and are more than willing to interact if you start a conversation. the food here has been great so far, although the fact that cusco is so touristy really hikes up the prices.
as lucy and i walked around tuesday we stumbled across a small vegetable market. what was interesting was not that the vegetables and fruit were so different from what i am used to, as was the case in ecuador, but rather that the same fruits looked so different. peru has more native varieties of potato than anywhere else on earth, and believe me when i say that many of these potatoes could never be recognized as such by a non-peruvian or non-potato-expert. every size and shape you can imagine, all different colors...very cool. the pineapples were smaller and redder on the outside, the apples were longer, the carrots shorter, the corn was either black or had ginourmous kernels, and when i picked up a white vegetable with purple stripes about the size of a large tomato, i was informed that it was a cucumber! it turned out to be deeeeeeelicious--sweet, in fact, and tasting very much like melon. so great. we went to bed fairly early that night in preparation for our four-day, three-night inca trail adventure the next day.