navelgazing.omphaloskeptic.net Journal

Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

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Back to Cuzco Cuzco, Cuzco, Peru, Sunday, 20 March 2005 1:04pm

I visited an Internet cafe this morning just to check email. Every other customer was either a boy under 10 or a nun.

Nobody seems to have emailed me any requests, so I didn't have to shop for anything specific at the Sunday market in Pisac. It's the biggest in Peru, and apparently the second-biggest tourist draw in the country (after Machu Picchu). Jenny's guidebook says that the one in Cuzco used to be bigger, but that the city started forbidding sellers who didn't buy booths in the official market, forcing many of them to go to Pisac instead.

It was less crowded than I imagined. It was certainly packed with stalls. They radiated along side streets from the (completely full) plaza for blocks. People had started setting them up the evening before. They might have been claiming spaces. It was unclear how things were organized, though I saw an official telling a man that he couldn't be selling belts right across the street from a group of women with a table full of belts.

But there were fewer tourists than my guidebook led me to expect. We left fairly early (11:30am), and we passed plenty of tour busses headed down to Pisac on the way, so perhaps it becomes more hectic later on.

It's amazing how much shorter the trip between Cuzco and Pisac is when you don't go through Urubamba.

Dave and I are at the airport, waiting for our flight to Arequipa to meet up with Yuri.

Comments

tinny Monday, 21 March 2005 5:05pm

Can you bring me the ugliest souvenir you can find? If you want, I can get you the ugliest souvenir I can find from Asia, but you might not want that.

aneel Tuesday, 22 March 2005 8:14am

Oooh. That's going to be tricky. You want actually ugly, not just horribly tacky?

tinny Tuesday, 22 March 2005 4:43pm

I'll leave it up to you. :)

(Anonymously) Tuesday, 22 March 2005 4:01pm

brightly colored rug... or something hideously garish. whatever. where's my postcard?

~melissa