Cusco

Friday morning I got up and got a cab to Cusco. It took about 1 1/2 hr to get to the edge of town. My driver tries to make an illegal left turn right in front of 2 policewomen. They turn him around and pull him over. He pleads with them for 10 minutes to no avail. Finally we are back on the road driving in circles as this guy doesn´t really know where the fuck he is going. An hour after getting to town I am dumped off 100 yards short of my hotel. What a dumb ass.
  The hotel is really nice. Its on a one lane dead end cobble stone street overlooking the city. My room is beautiful,with large windows offering a panaramic view of the city. The modern decor has a color scheme of white and orange and the room has a bright and airy feel.There´s even a small flat screen TV with 100 channels mounted in the corner.
   The neighborhood, San Blas, climbs a hillside above the colonial part of town. It´s a maze of stairways,narrow alleys and one lane cobblestone streets with 2 way traffic. It´s the oldest part of town,dating back to the Incan era. A ten minute walk brings you down to the colonial center, the Plaza de Armas. After a relaxing lunch on a little patio a few blocks from the hotel I head down the hill.
  Cusco sits in a high valley at 11,150 ft. The town of 450,000 sprawls down the valley and up the surrounding hillsides. It was the capital of the Incan empire. The Spanish came an razed the town down to the foundations. Here they had to stop as the stones were much too large for them to move. The whole old part of town is built on gigantic boulders,pieced together perfectly without mortar and still as solid as the day they were built. I arrived a the square just as another procession appeared. This is a group of elementary aged kids accompanied by adults all dressed in costume. The band is laying down a funky Brazilian rythem and I follow then to the middle of the plaza where they circle up. Its a group of underpriveliged children and their adult mentors. The separate groups take turns performing little skits. One group names off animals and gets the crowd to join them in imitating their sounds. When dog comes up I give my best Chihuahua bark, much to the amusement of the crowd. After about 1/2 hour the cops run them out of the plaza and I continue exploring downtown. Its the Friday evening of the Fiestas Patrias and the streets are packed with people strolling around. The colonial area is beautiful, with whitewashed houses topped by red tile roofs. There are little squares and churches scattered every few blocks. I found a little cafe and had a delicios meal of pork chop covered in elderberry sauce mixed with the local hot pepper riccoto. Elderberry tastes like a cross between blueberry and cranberry and is so purple it´s almost black. The spicyness of the pepper blends with the sweetness of the berry to make a very delicious taste. Most of the bars are around the Plaza de Armas and a few alleys behind it. I go into one that  has  English beer on tap and watch the torch lighting. Then I had a little pub crawl . One of the bars is "El Duende" the elf. My friend Duane, whose idea this trip was, is nicknamed Duende so I have to stop here. It´s right by a cool bar with live music so I stay and watch the band. They are kind of generic rock but I haven´ t seen any live music, aside from hippies beating bongos, since I arrived in Peru.