"M" is for "May the 6th...still..."

I cant believe I'm still on May 6th. I seem to be having a struggle with this. Sometimes words just flow out of my fingertips, and other times, well, not so much. This seems to be one of the other times.

So, after lunch, we went to a silver factory. Of course, the term 'factory" is all in the interpretation of the word. In my mind, and I'll bet in yours too, "factory" is a huge building with smokestacks and time clocks and parking lots and lunch rooms and lots of employees who stand in one spot and do the same thing over and over and over. In this case however, "factory" can be more defined as a cottage industry.

Silver is very inexpensive in Peru, and its one of "the things" you should seriously look into buying, both as a great souvenir as well as an investment, and not only that, jewellery is easy to pack in your suitcase that is getting smaller and smaller by the day.

This place is one of the better places, good prices, reputable and so on. But, let's be serious, I'm not naive...I know darn well that our guide, Sweet Eddy, gets a kickback from the vendors depending on how much is purchased by his group. It's this way with all tours, be it free meals in a restaurant or rooms in a hotel. That's the way business is run...all over the world. I couldn't care less who gets what for free, but don't pretend that it isn't happening.

But I liked this place, not only was there a great demo on how they made the jewellery, from the melting of the silver to the finished product, there was a sweet courtyard to sit in, free drinks (water and pop) and bathrooms...ummm, the bathrooms were pretty scary, but they were bathrooms nonetheless. Actually, "bathrooms" may be too strong a word, they were quite filthy, no toilet seats or toilet paper, and no paper towel either. As a matter of fact, let me digress for a minute; paper towel is the one thing you just don't see in bathrooms here. There is a communal towel, usually damp and somewhat grubby. I tried to not think of the germs that must be saturated right into these towels, and I cursed myself mightily on the rare occasion when I didn't have mt hand sanitizer with me...which of course results in the frantic waving and flapping of hands to dry them, or using toilet paper, but half the time the toilet paper was also non-existent and you hate to waste your own precious amount of paper just to dry your hands.

I'm not a jewellery wearer and I had no plans on buying anything, but, well, the prices were so good that I couldn't resist just a few little items.


Everything made by hand.




Each door on the bottom housed a different shop. I think the owners maybe lived upstairs.




Just a tiny sample of the finished product.

 One of the doors went into a gold shop, but gold is out of my price range. Sorry kids, no gold in your Christmas presents this year. Or any year.

After all this, we headed back towards the Plaza de Armas, the city centre, and then out for dinner. Luckily, I wasn't alone. Cusco is not that big, and laid out in quite a nice grid, but I don't know...something about my inner sense of direction....



The main Plaza




Also in the mail Plaza




And also in the main plaza

 Every plaza in every city and town has a cathedral or two, or more, in the center. Is it any wonder I was constantly getting lost? Half the time I thought two different cathedrals were the same one, and they weren't, half the time I thought I was seeing the back of a cathedral that I had just seen the front of, and I wasn't and half the time i was thinking I was in a whole different city. And sometimes I was.

I was more than content to follow along, like one of the sheeple. When I did go out on my own,I was very cautious to make sure I turned around to see from whence I had come. And get this, the one place that I spent most of my time alone and never got lost, was Lima, at night, a city of 10 million people. Go figure.




A fun restaurant, excellent food.




Alpaca fillet, with a Peruvian mash and pepper sauce.

 Back to the Prisma hotel for another good sleep, and tomorrow....what a hike we'll have...some say it's a test that the porters watch you take to see if they think you can mange the Inca Trail.  And I've heard trekkers say that it's harder than the trail, but obviously easier in the sense that it's a two hour hike, not a full day. But it made me realize that I chose the right vacation.