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I love Cusco. There's really not much more to say. I don't know if it's the sense of history, the people, the Andean peaks surrounding the city, or the alpacas wandering the streets, but I'll always go back to Cusco.

Quick Tips:

Definitely spend time wandering around the city looking at the modern walls built onto Spanish colonial walls built onto Incan walls. There are a lot of things to buy, from stores and off the street. Cusco's a great place to get info about the highlands, and there are plenty of tour agencies around.

Best Way To Get Around:

I love taxis in Cusco. There's one fixed price to anywhere in the city center, and there are millions of taxis. This is especially useful because it can get tiring climbing around Cusco at almost 2 miles high.

Inti Raymi is the celebration of the solstice in June. It's an old Inca festival still celebrated every year. In 1998 I went with my host family to Sacsayhuaman, the ruins above the city, to see the performance of the ritual. We should have gone earlier than we did, because they set up huge bleachers around the field where all the pageantry is, and normal people had to sit on the hill behind. My family and I ate our lunch and tried to see what was going on behind the bleachers. People bring picnics and crowd into the ruins and have parties in the streets for nights before and after- it's really an exciting time to be there.

Ukukus, when I was there, was one of the more popular discotecas, but there are a bunch nearby, clustered around the central Plaza de Armas. For tourists, there's usually no cover charge, but if you're with Peruvians you might have to convince the doormen to let them in too. Drinks are cheap by American standards, and there are several happy hours. If you want to go early, around 6, they show a movie most afternoons, and every night there's a live performance of typical Peruvian music. There are tables, a bar, a dance floor, and usually pretty good music. The great thing about Ukukus is the mix of people you'll find. Tourists from all over the world go to Cusco- one of my friends saw a girl from her middle school homeroom there.

In the center of Cusco is the Plaza de Armas. Cusco used to be the center of the Incan Empire, and the Plaza de Armas was the center of the city. It still feels like a crossroads. Like most Spanish plazas, there's a cathedral on one side and shops or government buildings around the other. You can sit on one of the benches and watch the fountain, the groups of tourists from all over the world, the pernicious shoeshine boys, the Incan women selling sweaters and hats and anything you could ever want, and other cusquenos crossing the plaza on daily business. The Plaza de Armas was one of my favorite places in Cusco.