Ruins, ruins, ruins!....and alpaca.

Finished completely with the service part of our trip, the last few days were spent seeing the country. The day after Matinga was ruins day! We saw so much in one day, it was crazy. The first place we went was on the mountain just above Cusco and was called Saqsaywaman. Now, if you know the bunch of goofballs I went on this trip with, I bet you can guess how they mispronounced that name. It was a really neat place; they think it was probably a temple, but it could be a fort or something also. There was this spot where the rock had been so smoothed down that it was really slick and made a perfect slide. I'm guessing it was worn down by all the tourists, but I guess it could have been ancient. I didn't catch that part of the explanation. We spent about an hour there before climbing back on the bus. We headed towards ruins at Pisaq, but before we got there, we stopped at this llama/alpaca petting zoo type place. It was really cool. We got to go in the pens with them and feed them straight from our hands and pet them. The baby alpaca was soooooo soft! The great thing about this place was that they showed all the stages of going from alpaca to clothing, or whatever else they need to make out of the wool. There was an area where they were dying the wool with plants and minerals from the area. My favorite, though, was the women in traditional dress sitting around hand-weaving this new thread. It was incredible. The amount of effort and skill that goes into their work was staggering. If everyone did work like that, if everyone used their hands to create--well, I wish I was that talented. We spent a good hour or two there, then got back on the road. The majority of the day was spent at Pisaq. It was, again, really neat, but it was kind of a long stay and we were all so tired. We hiked around for a bit, took pictures, explored, then headed down to the village where we went to the market. It was a fantastic market; it was huge and cheap. Before we really got into the shopping, though, we ate lunch at a German lady's restaurant. It was a good attempt at American food, but wasn't quite the same. Still, it was good and gave me the energy I needed for the rest of the day. After Pisaq, we drove to MORE ruins at Ollantaytambo. We only had a little while there, since it was getting dark by then. This place had so many stairs! They were huge stairs, too. I felt like a little kid going down them, stepping on each step with both feet. The bus ride home made me feel kind of sick because we had been on that darn bus all day long. At the hotel in Cusco, when we finally got there, we had dinner. There was a Peruvian band playing for us, including dancers dressed up in some pretty wild but really cool costumes. The music they were playing was so much fun. If I had more energy and didn't feel sick, I would have found it hard to resist dancing, too! As it was, I went to bed as soon as I was done eating. I figured it would be best to get my rest since we had another big day ahead of us.