After Lake Titicaca, we made our way back to Arequipa where we finally met with Jesus, a Peruvian friend from my time at UT Dallas and a wonderful local guide (against his wishes). Arequipa was quite nice, but after all of the driving around Colca and Puno, we were very ready for a bit of downtime and not too much excitement in the city. That doesn’t mean we weren’t ready to experience all of the excellent food that the city has to offer – from Cuy (would skip it next time…) to baked goods (the pastries are awesome!), the culinary experience in Peru continues to delight. I’ll repeat it again to make sure I drive the point home… food in Peru just hits different to the rest of South America.

After a few days putzing around Arequipa and getting way too much good food, we flew over to Cusco where our active touristing continued. We only planned for two full days here, and the first one was wholly dedicated to Machu Picchu including around 12hrs of traveling by car, train and bus to the entrance of the park. While effective, I wouldn’t recommend the same itinerary for others – it’s a bit too much of a traveling-to-touring ratio, especially when Machu Picchu has become a very ‘guided’ destination. Apparently since COVID hit Peru, the overwhelming amount of tourists to the mountain meant that the local tourist authority instituted a strict visitation schedule with tourists only able to walk in one of five pre-determined paths. While still a very interesting tour of what is an incredibly impressive Inkan city, the lack of ability to just wander around and see the sights does put a damper on the overall experience… It also didn’t help that Jesus wasn’t in the tour with us, so we all ended up doing said pre-determined path at different times… oops.

Machu Picchu commercialization aside, the rest of our time in Cusco was a blast – the food scene is again fantastic, so we had a chance to sample a few traditional Cusquean dishes, including what was essentially a barbeque restaurant – this lunch also had a great show with traditional Peruvian dances in between bites of food! One unique thing we were also able to do here was chocolate making – not necessarily the full bean to bar process, but enough of it that we came away with some dorky pics and a higher level of appreciation for the subtleties of chocolate that isn’t doused in sugar. We also sampled some tea made from the cacao bean shell immediately post-roasting, and made some very fresh hot chocolate with beans we roasted and mashed ourselves. Overall the chocolate making class at the ChocoMuseo was a blast and I would highly recommend this to anyone in Cusco!