We arrived back in Cusco early in the evening from our 4 day hike and spent most of the evening unpacking and putting our stuff in the laundry. For dinner that night we headed to a great restaurant recommended by multiple people. Sadly dinner left a sour taste in my mouth as two things happened. First, Kathleen brought about her "high maintenance" side when she looked at her lasagna and made sure everyone knew it looked disgusting and she refused to even try it (it looked pretty good to me). Then at the end of dinner she made a huge fuss that the restaurant had over-charged us (the bill was $811, the average meal was $50 and there were 16 of us .... you do the math) and people refused to pay their share of the bill. Somewoud not pay more than they woed, leaving the slack for other people to manage. Needless to say this had quite the negative impact on my evening.
The next day Sandy and I decided to take it easy as her knee was bothering her quite a bit. After a late morning start we headed out on the town. The highlight of the day was a parade which was occurring in the Plaza d'Armas, just outside of our hotel. This mostly military parade was to celebrate the Festival of the Crosses, where there are overnight vigils on the hill tops around Cusco. The parade (where we joined it) started with indigenous dancers in traditional costumes followed by a march past of various military detachments from the area. The best group to march past would have to be the search and rescue battalion. They not only were dressed in their full rescue outfit (high alpine rescue clothes, life jackets, repelling equipment and to top it off, diving attire, complete with air tanks and holding their flippers like they were rifles) but they also carried their white water raft in the parade with them. I've never seen anything quite like it.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We managed to bump into fellow GAP travelers at lunch and again at the art gallery (not a very good one) ... that would have been the highlight of the day for us. We did spend some more time shopping around the town as the textiles are out of this world and very inexpensive.
The next day Sandy and I decided to take it easy as her knee was bothering her quite a bit. After a late morning start we headed out on the town. The highlight of the day was a parade which was occurring in the Plaza d'Armas, just outside of our hotel. This mostly military parade was to celebrate the Festival of the Crosses, where there are overnight vigils on the hill tops around Cusco. The parade (where we joined it) started with indigenous dancers in traditional costumes followed by a march past of various military detachments from the area. The best group to march past would have to be the search and rescue battalion. They not only were dressed in their full rescue outfit (high alpine rescue clothes, life jackets, repelling equipment and to top it off, diving attire, complete with air tanks and holding their flippers like they were rifles) but they also carried their white water raft in the parade with them. I've never seen anything quite like it.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We managed to bump into fellow GAP travelers at lunch and again at the art gallery (not a very good one) ... that would have been the highlight of the day for us. We did spend some more time shopping around the town as the textiles are out of this world and very inexpensive.
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