Weekend adventures

My first weekend in Cusco flew by and it was truly amazing. It was spontaneous and full of surprises- exactly how it should be!

On Saturday, my roommate and I took a hike up to Cristo Blanco, a huge white statue of Christ that overlooks the city (pictures below). It was a beautiful walk with great views. Plus, I was very excited to see my first llamas (or alpacas...not sure of the difference yet). There are also some Inca ruins on top of the same hill, but we were not able to go because we had to rush to be on time for our next activity - chocolate! We went to the Chocolate Museum with one other girl in our house and her boyfriend. We took a 2 hour class about the history of chocolate and how it is made. We got to make a couple ancient chocolate drinks that the Inca royalty used the drink, as chocolate used to very expensive and a luxury. We also got to flavor our own chocolates to take home. I made mine a bunch of different flavors - mint, chile, milk, peanuts, etc. They turned out quite delicious!

I expected Sunday to be pretty low key so I could relax and do my Spanish homework. That did not happen at all. Me and 3 of my housemates decided last minute to go to some ruins in the Sacred Valley. A 1 hour bus ride and 15 minute cab ride later, we arrived at Moray. Moray is Inca ruins that are a bunch of huge, depressed circles. The temperature increases as you walk down to the center, so people believe that the Incas used these circles to experiment with different climates for growing crops. It was amazing - I really hope my pictures do it some justice! After Moray, we drove about 20 minutes to the Salineras, which are salt mines that have been used since the Inca time. It's a group of hundreds of little ponds that local people own to farm their own salt. Our cab driver's family actually owns one of the ponds, so he ran down to check out how the pond is doing. Unfortunately, we didn't see the farmers in action because they do not farm the salt until the rainy season is over in May. But it was still very cool and had really breathtaking views.

It was a really great weekend and I am excited to do some more traveling next weekend. But I have to cut this post short because I have yet to start my Spanish homework!

I took 111 pictures this weekend, but here are some of the best ones: