We were tired after our hike to Saqsaywaman and the walk back to town. It took us a little while to find a suitable restaurant to have our lunch at at in the Plaza de Armas, the central plaza. Restaurant fronts were not always obvious during our search,
but you would also have agents from these restaurants approach you on the street with menus, to try to entice you to enter a door that could lead you to a some hidden place somewhere, perhaps even up one or two flights of stairs.
We settled on the Mistura restaurant, across the plaza from the Church of the Society of Jesus which you can see in the picture below.
We enjoyed our lunch. It was a chance to relax and catch our breath.
The food was well presented when it arrived.
At this restaurant, as in a few others, we were each given a complementary drink. Some of us had Pisco Sour, a cocktail that originated in Peru. I did not find the drink that compelling the few times I tried it during this trip. Another popular non-alcohohic beverage in Peru is Chicha Morada. That was tasty. (We were disappointed to find out later on in the trip that chicha morada can be bought in 2.5 liter bottles from the supermarket just like any other industrially produced drink.)
My alpaca dish was tasty. The meat has a distinct and light flavor to it. It also had a good consistency for chewing. Yum!
I coined a name for the french fries on my plate – Jenga fries! I also partook of some additional liquid refreshment during lunch. It was needed after all the exercise that had been done in the morning. You can see what remains of my drink in the glass in the background.
While we were in the restaurant, we saw many plates of cuy being brought down by the waiters from the kitchen on the floor above us. A tourist couple sitting at the table next to ours had ordered the same dish, wanting to try it at least once before they departed Peru. They seemed to enjoy it.
After lunch, we wandered around the plaza for a while (click on the picture below).
We spent more time at the Plaza that we wanted because of a shopping expedition that took longer than expected. We did a couple of rounds of the plaza while waiting.
We would have liked to go into the churches around the plaza. The cathedral (in the picture below)
was supposed to have a somewhat famous painting that showed a guinea pig being consumed at the Last Supper.
We were disappointed to find out that the church was charging an entrance fee. How unseemly! Moreover, they did not allow the use of cameras within the church. That was the end of that project. Even the Jesuits just across the plaza were doing the same thing as the cathedral for admission to their church.
Here are a couple of more pictures from the plaza.
A statue of Pachacutec stands at its center.
(In addition to this statue, I saw at least two other statues of the emperor in different places around the city.) One can also see the statue of Christ on the hillside in the background in the picture below. That hill is next to the one Saqsaywaman is located on, and in fact you can take a trail from Saqsaywaman to this location.
We gathered together after the shopping was complete and continued our exploration, walking towards the big indoor market (or mercado).
We walked past the Arco de Santa Clara.
to arrive at the market.
The market itself was quite an interesting place to wander around. It was huge inside.
You could buy almost anything you needed for the home, including foods,
and other kinds of stuff. 
They had a section with counters at which you could buy fresh food and sit down and eat. These were very small places where you did not necessarily get a table to put you food on. Here is one instance. There were many other such counters.
It was beginning to get late by the time we were done with the market. We walked back to the hotel using the back roads. On the way we passed crowded streets, on one of which a street market seemed to be underway.
The pavements were packed in some of the streets.
You saw some interesting food in the store fronts.
And you always had to be careful to avoid getting hit by road traffic.
Once past the markets, we continued our way back to the hotel. We walked through a neighborhood that looked somewhat questionable. The group of people in the background in the picture below are near a building from which a lot of noise was emanating. It might have been a music club, one that was open early in the evening.
But we did arrive at the Jose Antonio Hotel safely.
I was completely exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel. Some of us must have walked around 6 miles, and we were also not used to walking at this altitude.
But the evening was not over yet. We still had to go to a dinner at a nearby restaurant that had been arranged by the tour group. The food was good, but I was still full from lunch. I barely survived. I had to make an extra effort to avoid falling asleep at one point. I crashed out early after we returned to our room. We had a long day of travel ahead of us the next day.
A few hundred feet into the walk, I abandoned the paper map that I had printed and was trying to follow, and let the youngster in our group lead us onward using 
then a left onto the road near the Inglesia De Santo Dominigo,
a couple of more turns,
including onto a road with the blue window shutters,
and then we were on the final road we had to take to the place where we were to meet the ladies. Despite the narrowness of all the side roads, there was motor traffic on them.
The last road that we took during this part of the walk was a long stretch that was quite steep.
with the last stretch of the road proving to be the most challenging.
We even saw a car start up the street and then give up, backing away to a spot where it could turn on to one of the side roads. The motorbikers in the picture below made it to the end of the road, at which point they had to find an alternative way to proceed further.
We took it slow and easy. When the road finally ended, and we still had to climb a few steps up to the top,
up to a hairpin bend on another road above the first one, to the place where we were to meet the ladies.
One of the entrances to the park was located here.
We waited for the ladies. The street dogs kept us company.
We bought tickets and continued our climb once the ladies arrived. The climb continued to be steep.
This llama lifted his headed for a moment from the grass that it was chewing – to look at us with amusement as we passed it on our way up the slope.
We continued the climb!
Once we reached the top, we hired a guide to show us around. The first section we visited was the area of a reservoir. We saw a few ruins along the way,
including a couple shrines,
and walked through a closed waterway (aqueduct), one of many,
that lead into the reservoir. (Note that the hole next to the shrine above could also have been a waterway.) The reservoir was quite large.
From the reservoir you can see the “slides” that were once actually used by children.
This formation is natural. We actually saw children trying to slide down on these sections of rock. If you ask me, it looked somewhat dangerous!
The remains of the fortress lay beyond the plaza.
(You can click on the picture below to expand it.)
The size of the rocks used for the walls decreases at you get to the upper levels of the fortress. You cannot help noticing the massive sizes for the rocks in the lower wall,
and the perfect fit of the rocks.
The Incas apparently created shapes in the walls. The rocks in the wall below are in the shape of a llama or alpaca (I suspect it is an alpaca because the neck is short compared to the neck in another rock formation of similar shape close by).
We walked into the fort area, to its top, to get views of the city (click on picture).
By the time we had walked back to the central plaza, on another one of the narrow, character filled, roads that fill this part of town,
we were tired and ready for lunch.
The picture below is an advertisement for transportation to what may be the most popular destination in the country for international tourists.
As we drove out of town, we passed a hill with a statue of 
There was another monument to the Emperor Pachacutec, beside the road that we were driving along. 
We climbed out of the valley that Cusco is situated in using a series of switchbacks. The bus made a stop somewhere along the way, on the hillside, to provide views of the city. While we were stopped we got instructions on the use of 
We stopped for lunch at the village of 
The 
I was fascinated by the way the kids were carried around by their mothers.
Who can resist pictures of cute children! This one continued to turn around and look at me as mom walked away.
Lunch was followed by a demonstration of the process for creating different colored threads from the wool. This thread is used for making the different products sold by the cooperative. 
Most of the people in this part of Peru are 
While walking through town we passed a procession. It could have been the procession in celebration of Easter.
There also seemed to be some kind of meeting going on in town. I heard two different accounts regarding the subject of the meeting. One was that this was a funeral service. The other was that this was a meeting of the mayors of the local villages. They are sitting to the left of the picture below. I was told that the mayors carry their official staffs with them, and these had been collected in a standing pile in front of where they are seated. A good amount of 
Then it was onward to our destination for the night. The view beside the mountain roads was beautiful. We stopped for pictures. The snow-capped peaks of the Andes appeared in the distance.
The valleys were covered with meadows, green fields, and clumps of trees. There were flowers by the wayside. For some reason I began to think of 
The clouds moved swiftly across the sky.
And then we began our descent into the Sacred Valley following a series of switchbacks down a steep mountainside.
The sun was beginning to set as we got to our hotel on the outskirts of the town of 
Urubamba is a small place beside the 
At dinner we were entertained by a musician playing music on different kinds of 
While you are in Peru, you will hear the song 
Splattered Brains 