Welcome to the 2 mile high city, Cuzco Peru

We took off from Lima early in the morning so we could have a full day in Cuzco and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Cuzco is at 11,500 feet above sea level.  So when you fly into the city the clouds are floating by real close to the surface.

This is on the approach to the Cuzco airport ( see how close the clouds are to the ground)

 Here we are. Welcome to the 2 mile high city of 1 million people.

We piled off the plane and on to the bus to head into the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

In the U.S. and most of the rest of the world when you see the golden arches you know what they serve at the eating establishment.  Well here in Peru they have the famous brown guinea pig with the colorful vest (guess what they serve at that  eating establishment!)  You can see in the background the chef holding up today's special.  Hold on I think I have a better photo of this.

Oh yes, remember only one to a customer (probably tastes like chicken)!
As our bus cruses up to 12,400 feet (I don't get it when they call this going to the valley) we stopped at a local trading post.

We learned all about the Llama, Alpaca and all the other four-legged relatives of the Camel!

The llamas are the ones on the left, the one on the right is a Peruvian pot bellied pig (oh wait that's me)!

Cindy sizing up a new Alpaca sweater. (Hope she likes black)

Oh but wait, they have it in all colors (I didn't see any of those red, yellow or blue alpacas running around. They must hide them when the tourists come to town).

Okay so they use all kinds of berries, leaves and insects to get those colors but it only works on the white alpacas.

I got a good photo of one of the craftswomen working on Cindy's new sweater. Should be done in a few minutes.

The kids were great.  They sat there eating their popcorn (in the plastic bag) while there moms worked on the clothing.  As you can see by the kids clothes they do a fantastic job.  Well I don't want this post to be too long so I will end for now and continue with the Sacred Valley and Ollantaytambo ruins in our next post.