La escuela de español

Hola..
La primera semana...oops wrong language...

Phew. We are glad to have finally finished the working part of the holiday - ie 2 weeks of intense one-on-one spanish lessons (http://www.machupicchuschool.org/). Don´t think we realised how hard the learning would be - but it got easier in the second week as we started to have a basic grasp of the languange. We were also getting homework everyday, although admittedly, I got less than Aarti. Probably because the teachers knew I would be less likely to do it then Aarti. We had an exam on the last day where we both passed with flying colours - I got 17 and Aarti got 18.5 out of 20.

Other than school, there are lots of lovely little Inca ruins around Cuzco and thats where we have spent our weekend. You have to buy a tourist ticket that covers most of the ruins and a few museums, churches and a folk dance. The ticket is valid for 10 days so there is plenty of time to see all the sights. On Saturday we saw 2 ruins - Pisac & Olantaytambo. Pisac is quite huge and it involved abit of walking - at altitude and we were soon out of breath on the uphills. I guess that was abit of practice for the Inca Trail. They were both pretty impressive ruins, built on steep hills, and really does make you wonder how they built it without any machinery. We had a really nice fire baked pizza for lunch at Olantaytambo. On Sunday we took a collectivo (matatu) to Tambomachay (another small ruin) and walked back down to Cuzco (8km!) also seeing Pukapukara and Saqsaywaman (more ruins). Unfortunately there was no sign of a sexy woman at the latter, however there was some kind of a celebration there and hundreds of school kids were puting up a show. It was very colourful and grand. Other than that we visited a few museums and saw a folk show (which I found really boring).

The homesatay we have been at has not been anything like what we thought it would be. Its more of a students house. We have hardly eaten with the family, as they seem to like to eat their food in their room. But its not been bad and we have met quite a few students who have come and gone over the last 2 weeks. Not to mention the fact that our facebook friends are growing..... We have been out to a couple of local bars and a local ´discoteca´ Its also been much colder in the second week, and I have found drinking gettind me really tired the next day - probably because of the altitude. In a way we are glad to be finished with Cuzco as homestay is now getting aboit boring - the cold weather is not helping as well. Inca Trail ( Camino Inka ) starts tomorrow and we can´t wait for it.

Hasta Luego.