NO GRACIAS!

So we arrived in Cusco yesterday. No one ever told me it is the land of eternal solicitation. In the 10 waking hours we have walked around we have been asked to eat at restaurants 35 times, to buy a llama hat about 42 times, and to get a masage at least 50 times. I have never despised the words "no gracias" so much until now, because my brain and tongue are fatigued from saying them. I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "no gracias" on it and I wanted to rip it from his body and put it on my own. That being said, Cusco is beautiful and we are still happy to be here.

By the way, the eternal solicitation works because after the 50th massage request, we accepted. We were led into an alley, up some stairs, into a dank room with a dude listening to rock, and asked to remove our clothes. As skethy as it sounds, it was. We made sure to keep all our stuff close to ourselves. Then the music switched to the Incan rendtition of "elevator music" which was all those same grocery-store tunes but with the pan flute as the lead instead of the saxaphone. Two small indigenous women came in to massage us. Their hands were as strong as they were freezing. It felt like I was being massaged by an industrial kitchen-aid mixer that had been chilled. Mike, somehow, enjoyed his massage although he admits that his legs have rug-burn on them due to the way they skimped on the baby oil. Oh, and Mike DID buy a llama hat. One with ridiculous pom-poms hanging on strings off the ends of the earflaps. I keep telling him that I´m walking so far behind him because the cobblestone sidewalks are so narrow...

Aside from the massage, yesterday we had a GREAT lunch after I insisted we not go in ANY place where the waiters were soliciting our patronage. We ended up at a place with a great menu of the day that included Alpaca (like the llama) as its main course. Thin slices of alpaca rolled around spinach, red pepper and cheese and then braised... delicious! I felt kind of bad about it later when a traditionally-dressed woman asked if I wanted to take a picture with her and her adorrable baby llama. Anyways, the restaurant just proved that we can´t go anywhere where people are begging for us to eat there. Had a great lunch today too, after saying "no gracias" 152 times to the other restaurants. Mike wants to go back to the first place so he can finally try roasted guinnea pig. P.S. the large "last supper" painting in the main cathedral has not fish as the depicted meal, but guinnea pig!

We are glad we got here early to acclimatize and get stuff in order for the Inka Trail. We are going white water rafting tomorrow which should be fun, and then we have two more days in Cusco to chill, rent our equipment for the trail, and get more massages...