Peru - Day 2 - Chinchero.

Our second day in Peru was pretty lengthy and packed, so I'm going to take this one location at a time. We woke up early and had the hotel breakfast, which wasn't good but it filled our bellies well enough. Jose and Jorge picked us up at the hotel and off we went!

On our way out of town we noticed a few interesting things. First, there are many houses built into and on the sides of the mountains. Jose, our guide, told us that the poorer people build the houses themselves, so it does happen on occasion that they collapse, resulting in injuries and even deaths of the families that live there. In the car we discussed how these same mountain views in the states would house only the rich for hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. I found it interesting. Farming of potatoes, beans, and corn can be seen everywhere, as well.

In Chinchero we saw some Incan ruins and a beautiful cathedral. The stones of the walls were all hand carved by the Incas. No mortar was used. It's amazing how perfectly the stones fit together. Farmers were still tending crops there, much like it must've been done hundreds of years ago. Like all the other cathedrals in Peru, no photos were allowed inside, so we had to settle for the exterior.

The people were very friendly, but quite honestly they were also trying to sell things. We ended up purchasing two alpaca scarves and some fried noodles. I wish I remembered the Quechua name for them. They tasted like slightly stale sweet cereal. The scarf is cool because you can invert one end, creating a hat, and then wrap the rest of it around your neck as a scarf. I think it will be very useful during the one month of winter we get here in Austin, hehe. The children were fun to watch and reminded me constantly of Mateo.