El último día... (4/25/2014)

Today was our last day in Cusco and is aptly described as being very bittersweet. To add to our stress levels, we realized our timeline of events was not going to work with the Peruvian bus schedule, and we were going to have to lose a couple of things in order to get enough time in Chile. As we are champions, we finagled with the lady at Cruz del Sur (lo siento, Vanessa... Oltursa no tiene nuestro ruta), and were able to change our tickets to Arequipa. We the. Use a different bus company, Flores, do go from Arequipa to Tacna, where we will cross the Peruvian-Chilean border by colectivo. It was imperative that all this border-crossing be done by the light of day, and obviously we are masters of the Peruvian bus system and were able to do this. 

We shared a taxi back to Centro with a young Mexican fellow and his female German friend. We spoke entirely in Spanish, wandering our way into the Plaza de las Armas, where una sorpresa awaited us. Today all the estudiantes cusqueños were presented to the provincial officials. Again, a delightful display of nationalism that we thoroughly enjoyed. EmBoss of course could not resist asking one of the little Peruvian girls about the presentation. She wanted us to come to her home in Calco to meet her family, but sadly we were forced to decline because of our travel constraints. We headed back to our hostel to deal with the rest of our errands: lavanderia, hostals, checking out etc.

Feeling stressed by all this and our multiple failed attempts to buy plane tickets from Arica our Santiago (shout out to Momsky for all your help!) we realized we needed food pronto. We headed up to this little cafe in San Blas, known for its gringo breakfast all day and it's book exchange. After spiritedly discussing feminist theory as it relates to the Twilight series and the 50 Shades of Grey series (a cute Dutch woman was shocked that a book with such pornographic material would be available in a book exchange. Turnout the cafe and it's book exchange supports local children by providing hem with school supplies and a backpack. We ate our little breakfast taste of home, knowing our funds were going to a good cause, while putting a couple of Washingtonsin the tip jar.

We loaded up on snacks (the lady at Supermercado Orion thought we were insane for buying seis mini-loaves of ciabatta bread) in order to avoid the nasty bus food. This time tomorrow we will be in Chile... So stoked!

¡Hasta luego, Cusco!

EmBoss