3/27  Right now I am in the lap of luxury. We are on the bus to Cusco. Our seats have more room than in 1st class on a plane. Even getting on is like a plane.... check in your bags, have your carryon inspected, wait in the lounge area and get on. So different than any other bus. The seats recline ALL the way and there is a power outlet to charge your electronics. We have trays to use and are now being served our meal, while watching Skyfall.  Love it.
The day was really nice. We slept in and had a nice breakfast. The day was spent exploring the city some more. First T and I went to the post office to mail more stuff home. What an experience. The lady was mean and very impatient and it took forever.
We toured the chapel and got to go on the roof. See pics. The organ has 1500 pipes. So beautiful. The bell in the tower was huge. In the plaza there were older men sitting with manual typewriters. People came up to them, started dictating to the men and then they paid him. Maybe for poorer people without computers??. There are also lots of people begging for money, many of which had physical deformaties or were very old. T and I felt very sad for the old people and gave some of them some money. There were also lots of police officers everywhere. We think maybe because it is Easter week and they have those parades every night. Not sure though, it could be like that always.
We had peruvian chinese food for lunch. Ordering was tough. Saying chinese thingsmin spanish.....Thought we would give it a try. Not bad, a lot like our chinese food. We did some window shopping and I ended up buying some silver jewelry. The silver is very inexpensive as Peru is a large producer of silver. We stopped at Starbucks so B and G and even T could enjoy a good cup of coffee. All they have here is instant Nescafe coffee, which is strange because Peru grows good coffee. T and I wanted to visit the museum where "Juanita" is. She is the Inca frozen girl they found in the Andes. They had the most interesting movie and artifacts that are 550 yrs old. Juanita was actually in the lab being worked on, but they had another young girl that was found in the same spot and just as old. The amazing part about Juanita is that all her internal organs were in almost perfect condition. She was actually frozen, not mummified. They sacrificed young children whenever a natural disaster (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, etc) happened to appease the gods.
Back to the hostel at 6 to do our final packing. We had the desk lady, Sandra, call us a cab for 7 because all the little cabs driving around can be dangerous. The scam is to take tourists to some dark area, take their cash and atm or credit cards and leave them there. The funny part is, we had quite the taxi experience. For some reason, the cab she called never came, so Sandra flagged down one of the bigger, more reliable ones. In the first 5 minutes we get into a traffic jam like none other. Makes what you see in NYC look like a casual Sunday drive. Cars everywhere and in no lanes. They are criss crossed cutting eachother off and I can't even explain it. Anyway our driver is doing a great job at being aggressive. We have been sitting in traffic for 20 minutes and are starting to get nervous about missing the bus. So we tell him and he tries to cut off a brown van and hits it. The guy jumps out and starts ranting. We didn't see any damage. Our driver blows him off and just then there was an opening in the traffic and he takes off. We look out the rear window and the van is chasing us. Our driver is taking all kinds of shortcuts and turns but the van keeps up. Finlly he stops and 2 guys get out of the van and start yelling. The driver opens his window just as we are locking our doors. G is pinching my leg, she is so nervous. Terry has his hand on his pocket knife, but luckily, after 5 minutes or so they come to some agreement. The driver just kept saying "listen to me... tourists...". So to end the story, we literally got to the terminal, went through the check in process, got on the bus, sat down and it pulled away. A little too close for comfort.
Tommorrow we get to Cusco. The plan is to follow all the suggestions we have heard and read about. We will, rest, drink lots of water and coca tea, no alcohol or red meat and take an aspirin. All this to avoid altitude sickness. Wish us luck!