Get us out of Cusco!

Hey everyone,

So as you may remember Lynz, Jono and I came to the town of Cusco two days before our Machu Picchu hike. We stayed at this hostel called Loki, (the same chain of hostels that we stayed at in Mancora) and before we left to hike Machu Picchu we learned that you could volunteer at the hostel in exchange for free room/board/food. It sounded like a pretty sweet deal so we let the manager know we wanted to volunteer a few days after our return from Machu Picchu. Well our first few days back from Machu Picchu were pretty exciting mostly because Jono was still here, and we were still brand new to Cusco.

Our first day back we found a company that does white water rafting expeditions about two hours outside of town, so we hoped in a van and after a 10 min crash course in white water rafting we took off down a mighty stream....

I guess its not the wet season around here so what should normally be a raging river, was just a trickle of its normal self. Don't get me wrong, we had alot of fun, but there was definitely no danger factor involved whatsoever in this adventure.

So as kids do when the begin to get bored and have no adult supervision we started looking for our next big thrill. Well after talking to some locals who pointed us down a dark narrow alley we found what we were looking for! Now I must warn you this activity is frowned upon back home, so please only read on if you promise not to judge us for doing what we did that night....We ate the Cuy and the Alpaca! The two furriest, softest, warmest animals on this continent were on our dinner plate. We had been hearing about these two local delicacies our whole trip but had not come upon them until this night. Knowing it would be our only chance to experience them before Jonos departure, we decided on the Oven roasted Guinea Pig and the Alpaca (Llama) skewers! To our amazement, the Guinea pig came out like a true worrier, adorned with a tomato battle helmet and a fire pepper logged in its little jaw! The guinea pig was fully intact, including beaty little eyeballs and pointy claws!

The waiter gave us a few minutes to laugh, gag and take pictures before coming back and offering to cut it up for us to make it harder to recognize and easier to eat...

2 Min's later he came back, and it looked worse then before!!! Now the head was no longer connected to the body but rather placed next to the rest of him, still looking at us!

The Cuy was pretty awful tasting and there is hardly 2 ounces of meat on the whole thing, but at least we can say we tried it! The Alpaca was a bit better, it tasted like lamb cooked in those packets of 99 cent taco seasoning you can get at the grocery store on the ethnic isle.

So the next day Jono left town, but unfortunately for him and fortunately for us he forgot his IPhone in the hostel. Lynz and I got to make a day out of trying to figure out how to ship it to Lima overnight, so he could pick it up before his flight the next day. We got to run all over town buying boxes and tape and trying to find an overnight delivery company, all the while hoping he checked his email before flying home so that he would know his phone was en route to him! The good news is we just got an email from him letting us know that his phone did get back to him in time, the bad news is we have not found anything else to do in this town since then!

The past three days we have spent walking around waiting for our volunteering shifts to start at the hostel, but yesterday when the schedule came out, we were pretty bummed to see that each of us have four shifts, and only one is together! So basically Lynz and I are not going to see each other this whole week! If we had not befriended our managers already we would be packing our bags tonight to get the heck out of this town, but we don't want to burn any bridges. We have committed to working out this week at our hostel and then hoping on a bus first thing next Monday! We will update you again when something INTERESTING happens!