Sleeping in is glorious and guinea pigs are competition

Verse of the Day: “Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”” John 6:29

  After a great day at Machu Picchu, we were all very excited at the prospect of having no real plans for today and having to option to sleep in. For Sam, though, it was another early morning as he was to catch his plane to DC to start college. Becca and Courtney made sure he got his taxi and said final fair wells. He was definitely gonna be missed as we were going to be traversing Cusco without our fluent translator and comic relief. I would have to say we did pretty well. Cusco is a beautiful city and probably the most clean and attractive city we have stayed. We spent late morning in the main square hanging out with Jess and Adrienne shopping before they left for their flight. Tejal hung out with us as well and worked on making her own travel plans for the rest of her time in Peru. She figured out that she was gonna go to the jungle for two days and we hope she has safe travels and a great time. 

For lunch we checked out a small restaurant that said they had guinea pig (cuy) which we were excited to finally be able to try. To our disappointment, the waiter said we had to have called 4 hours in advanced to get it. We decided to stay and had some brick oven pizza and calzones which made our tummies really happy. After a quick stop for ice cream on this beautiful, sunny, warm day, we said our goodbyes to Jess and Adrienne. We got an email from them saying they made it safely to Lima and we hope they also have safe travels back to the US. With the departures of 4 of our fellow travelers, our group soon seemed very small but cozy as only us SRU students were left.   

The sales-ladies were relentless at trying to
 convince Nate their sweaters fit him :-)

With this being our very last full day in Peru and this beautiful city, we ventured out once again to do some last minute shopping. With our failed mission to eat guinea pig at lunch we set out to find a restaurant that would allow us to try one at a descent price. This soon became a fun game and before we knew it we had restaurants around the main plaza vying for our business. Before we found one to eat we did some more shopping which turned into another bargaining fiesta as we went back and forth with vendors talking them down to the best price. This was comical when Nate Fry wanted to buy a t-shirt and the lady was charging him more just because the shirt was a bigger size. Mary called her out as discriminating against him because of his size, he can't help that he is a bigger person. With all of us pulling for Nate she came down 10 sols and we won! This happened with many other purchases and it was a blast working together to get the best price. Finally we decided to try for our guinea pig again and get some more food to eat. This is where Sam would have been awesome but thankfully a nice person nearby decided to help us after he saw we weren't getting through to the hostess.

Diggin into some Guinea Pig! Yummy!!

We all just wanted to try it, not actually sit down at a restaurant so this nice man was able to communicate a take-out guinea pig for us. Once we had our pig we bought our cheap beverages on the street and ate at Paddy's Pub, the highest 100% Irish pub in the world at an altitude of 11,165ft. The food was cheap and hit the spot. While eating our meals we tried our guinea pig which tasted like chicken to some and squirrel to others but the general consensus was that it was good. 

It was a great relaxing day in the city and we were all very glad to be able to spend this last day together having a good time and laughing about our experiences. It has been very exciting as we anticipate our journey back to the states. Please stay tuned for the end of our journey as we get to make some chocolate tomorrow and board our plane!