Our first day in Cusco was a Sunday so we decided to go to a nearby town called Pisac for their big market. We asked the people at our hotel how to get there, and they said a taxi should cost about 3 soles ($1). We thought that that sounded too cheap, and it was. I guess something had gotten lost in the translation because the cab driver actually took us to a bus station in Cusco where we then had to take a bus to Pisac. Somehow we managed to snag the last two seats on the bus and a few minutes later we were off. The bus only cost about 2 soles per person.
The market at Pisac was huge and we had a lot of fun bargaining for souvenirs. My favorite purchase was a backgammon set where the pieces were sheep versus llama! After we bought a ton of stuff we found a little restaurant tucked away in the corner that sold guinea pigs and empanadas. After bonding with my Aunt´s pet guinea pigs just before leaving for South America, I didn´t have the heart to eat them so we had a bunch of empanadas which were delicious and only 1 sole each.
After lunch we decided to check out the Inca ruins in the mountains just above Pisac. We had our big bag of souvenirs so we decided to take a taxi to the top of the mountain and hike back down. It cost 15 soles to get halfway up and 20 to get to the very top, so we decided to go to the very top. However, halfway up the mountain we stopped at the park entrance where we were surprised to learn that a park pass costs 70 soles per person! At that price we wouldn´t even have enough to pay our cab driver, let alone get back to Cusco! We explained the situation to our cab driver and said we could only go halfway up and he very nicely took us to the top for only 15 soles! This left us with only a few US dollars that we would have to somehow change to get back to Cusco.
Hiking down through the ruins was really neat and well worth the adventure getting there. There were multiple ruins along the way to explore. Some were pretty overgrown and most of the time we were wandering around by ourselves. A few times we lost the trail and hide to climb up/down some pretty steep hills. I felt like a real explorer!
It took several hours, but we finally made it back to town. There we ran in to a couple from Miami that we had met on the bus to Cusco. They asked if we would like to share a taxi all the way back to Cusco, but we explained that we had spent all our money and couldn´t afford our share. We then headed to the currency exchange to beg them to change our money (they usually won´t except $1 bills). After getting a pretty bad exchange rate, we managed to have just enough for the bus and taxi back to our hotel. However, we again ran into the Miami couple and they insisted that we share the taxi with them and just pay as much as we could afford.
One thing I am noticing about South America is that things have a way of working out. Although our Spanish is improving, we often go along not really sure what we are getting into. Fortunately, for the most part, everyone is extremely friendly and willing to help out silly Americans like us.
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