Cusco part 1

TIP NUMBER SIX
Look for steps Incans LOVE steps. Including the 7,483 steps of the incan trail, your average mcdonalds has more steps in it that the Vatican, and it seems like more when you’re getting hit in the face with 4 Massage menus per meter of travel.
TIP NUMBER SEVEN
“Con gas” in 7 point font on the side of a water bottle means that this will not be a tasty beverage, only an explosion.
TIP NUMBER EIGHT (out-sourced)
If you are thrown for a loop by your travel agency and left for dead in a town called Oyotembu with no ticket, just go up to any bus driver and start yelling “NO ESTA BIEN”, “NO ESTA BIEN”, “NO ESTA BIEN!!!!!”, “NO ESTA BIEN!!!!!!!!” until that bus driver lets you get on.
TIP NUMBER NINE(out-sourced)
Lean every single form of No abla so that you can remain sitting in first-class while the co-pilot yells at you.
For example: “MOVE”, Je ne parle pas. “MOVE”, Ik zou niet spreken. “MOVE”, Nemluvím?

Cusco day one;
I don’t care if you’re straight out of the swiss alps, the second that airplane is depressurized your every cell knows it. 11,000 feet feels like being on the other end of play dough. Fun task for the first couple minutes of adjustment try: to remember your name, do simple math, understand what the big turny wheel with your luggage on it is all about. Once in our taxi two things become clear: 1 Peru doesn’t standardize drivers license testing and 2. CUSCO IS AMAZING.
This twisting, hilly, green but mostly brown, ubber catholic pandemonium inside this town is unprecedented in my book. I can’t say why but I love it. The joke “we couldn’t fix your brakes but we made your horn louder” is a way of life in this town. The first thing you see once pulling into town square is to the west is a massive Pacha Cudi statue battling it out with the even bigger Jesus statue to the east on the opposing mountain side. And off to the right is a cathedral the nearly the size of an aircraft carrier, which apparently is completely plated in gold on the inside. Allegedly all the saints are dragged out once a year and danced around which is a bastardization of the mummies this town used to pull out and make do the meringue once a year.
We’re dropped off with a thud and we walk in to our hostel that is filled with the absolute friendliest kiwis, scotts, and brits that are telling us about the town and getting us amped on salsa dancing. To say the least we’re already kicking ourselves in the ass that we’re only going to be in town for a day.