Around the World

On the last blog I made a slight error. Instead of going to Machu Picchu tomorrow we will have one more night  Cuzco (local spelling Cusco). This is not a bad thing, today Linda is doing quite well and I woke up feeling like crap. I think my heart isn't enjoying the reduced oxygen supply. In the late afternoon we walked down to the big central square near here. Once there, we opted for a city tour, which is dominated by cathedrals mostly built in the 1600's, but it also made a loop that took us to the tops of the hills that surround. If Cuzco is 11,000 feet then this was probably 1200.  The statue of Christ up there overlooks the entire city.

After the tour it was around 7:00 so we had dinner in a very nice authentic local restaurant. This was doubly nice because we could sample some local cuisine and avoid paying more than three times as much at the hotel. We saw lots of other options for tomorrow, even a Starbucks.

Hotel Monasterio is quite grand. As the name implies, it was once a Jesuit monastery built in 1690. All the art work in the halls and the rooms was painted by local Incas under the guidance of
the Jesuit monks.