The one where four kittens took a nap on my lap

Hola!
This weekend was full of adventures including kittens, extremely full buses and many Inca ruins. Highlights also included Las Salineras, a burrito, ice cream in the rain and lots of French! I took off on Saturday morning with Erika, a friend from my host family, for a little town called Moray as the first stop of a two day exploration of the Sacred Valley. While the ampitheatre and terracing are extremely impressive, the highlight of the day was aforementioned Salineras. There is a naturally occuring salt water spring a couple hours by bus from Cusco that has been redirected into hundreds of salt pans. The water evaporates within five days and thousands of pounds of salt is created weekly. Ill post pictures because its a bit difficult to describe, suffice to say it was one of the most unique and interesting things Ive ever seen in my life. The walk through the valley back down to the highway was also beautiful and we protected ourselves from the huge rain drops for ten minutes under the roof of a very quiet, but welcoming country family. The mother only spoke Quechua and the girls could barely contain their laughter. I guess Gringos are pretty hilarious! They did have guinea pigs running around their one room house and dried meat hanging from the ceiling.

We stayed the night in the cute, but touristy town of Ollantaytambo where enormous Inca ruins overlook the main square. Impressive to say the least but covered in tourists we were a little more excited about the kittens at our hostel. There were five and they were quite possibly the cutest Ive ever seen. I was telling Erika I always make fun of those people who have kitten posters in their room or office, but in real life, theres hardly anything more comforting than baby cats sleeping on your tummy. Pictures pictures, I know.

Sundays focus was a town called Pisac that is famous for their gigantic market held in the main square. In fact, you can barely see the main square because almost every inch is covered in stalls, vegetables, dyes, herbs, pots of corn on the cobs among almost anything else you can imagine. We ran into several other students from our language school as well as random tourists I had met a few days prior in Cusco. Strange how some people (an American I met...) come to a country to travel but only take taxis, shop for souvenirs and barely scratch the surface of how Peruvians live. In discussion with a new house mate last night, we decided that you cant ever really live the life of someone from Peru seeing as your position as a tourist prevents that, but at least an attempt to take buses with locals and try to meet people who dont speak English might give you a little more insight into their livestyle. Just super interesting to see different traveling styles and figure out what I can learn and what I should ignore.

Living at the host family with a girl from Oakland, a girl from Portland, and girl from France. Casa de Chicas!

Explanation of the title

Hi...
Writing from my little neighborhood internet cafe, although I hesitate to say cafe since technically they only sell soda and water. Anyway, this blog seems like the best way for me to keep track of some of my adventures without clogging any inboxes. It is not exactly my style and I can not promise the grammar will be correct because the keyboards in this country differ from place to place, but I will attempt to provide some narration of my adventures over the next two months.

First order of business is a little explanation of the title I have picked for this thing. Yesterday, I made chocolate chip cookies. Seems simple enough and even at 11,000 ft of altitude I figured there was a recipe online that could help me. I was half right. There were many recipes and after some difficulty finding ingredients at the local supermarket, I realized my host familys oven does not have degree marks on it! Then, even after turning it up all the way it took 40 minutes to cook each batch. Hence the title.
The cookies were well received by my host family and Spanish teachers and hopefully next week my attempt at high altitude brownies will prove successful.

I have been in Cusco for just about two weeks now and while it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, the altitude is a serious force to say the least. I guess comments would be exciting for me, although everyone who has been emailing makes my days, ciao for now!