Lake Titicaca and Cusco… Peru is fantastic!

 After my adventures in the mountains last week, my journey around Peru (which is being made up as I go along) took me to the famous Lake Titicaca. After only 4 hours sleep, we took off on an overnight excursion to the islands on Lake Titicaca, which included visiting the floating islands made of reeds, staying a night with an indigenous family, and catching sunset from the highest point of the island.  All in all a good trip, and met some cool people. Now I'm in Cusco, and we spent the last two days around town. I'm taking off for my five day hike to Machu Picchu tomorrow. We were supposed to see some Inca ruins via bus today, but missed it due to a heavy party night with new friends yesterday. Maybe I'll do it when I get back from my hike. My friend Katie who I met in Argentina has been traveling with me all this time, but tomorrow I'll be parting ways and she'll be joining up with another friend. She's been great to travel with, and I'm wondering how I'll fare with my non-existent Spanish. I can understand almost everything, but they don't understand Portuguese at all. I'm trying to Spanishify it, and it works like 30% of the time.  Food so far has been pretty hit or miss, but incredibly cheap. I finally tried the ¨cuy¨ at the insistence of my friend Filipe back home. Cuy is Guinea Pig. Yes, that same pet you had as a kid, only de-furred and served extra crispy with teeth, eyes, ears, paws… all right there on my plate. It was a trying moment, but I ate it and now won't be doing it again. It wasn't that tasty, and the sight of it was pretty gnarly. I also tried chicharrones, which is essentially fried hunks of pig. Better than the cuy, but not something I'll really seek out in the future. Some other random news… Cusco is at about 10,000 ft, and my runs in the morning only last 30 minutes and I have to stop about every 2 minutes on the slightest of inclines. Also, I'm not shaving on this trip so after a week I'm starting to look pretty grizzly.