Cusco

Cusco is a really beautiful city. It is drowning in shops and markets selling identical products for tourists alongside an infinate number of trekking agencies (literally hundreds), gringo restaraunts and throngs of people trying to sell you something, anything. However, despite this monotony, the city still has character in abundance. Many of the walls in the streets are half the original inca walls, the streets are narrow and cobbled and the it has a distincitve sensiblity; a laid back chaos of sorts. There are many Quechua people who come to the city to sell thair produce at the local markets so the inhabitants are always diverse and very colourful. There are markets everywhere that sprawl into the streets and the 'stalls' are always manned by women. Not women as we know them, but hardy-looking women who have fifty years of hard graft written in the lines on their face. They are always short and round with woolly knee-socks and knee-length citcle skirts, twenty jumpers and cardigans and an amazingly colourful tapestry to carry 'things' in. My new friendn Alanna has recently intruduced me to the game, 'guess what's in the sack'....because these women carry enormous loads wrapped up in colourful fabric on their backs, tied around their chests and you can never tell what's in there....sometimes they move and then you know it' s a small child, or many cuy (guinea pigs).