Cusco!

     Chocolate Museum: My mom and I went to the Choco Museo, where we learned all about the cacao bean and how people make chocolate from it. We even got to try some samples of chocolate with salt and chocolate with aji (chili)! Very interesting fact: The cacao pod has a sweet pulp inside of it that monkeys love to eat, but the beans within are bitter so they spit those out. This is how the tree reproduces! We also got to enjoy DIY hot chocolate which was yummy, but we had to utilize our closed teeth as strainers so we didn’t drink the cinnamon or cloves. The café walls were used as the history of chocolate, going from the Mayans all the way to Mr. Hershey and Mr. Nestle. We really did learn a lot.

mountains of Cusco: Viva el Peru!

Cacao tree with the fruit pods

do-it-yourself hot chocolate!

     Ruins of Moray: This was no Machu Picchu, but still so cool! And it was really big and deep, more so than you can tell from the pictures. This could have been a ceremonial area for the growth of corn or the month of May. “Moray” in Quechua (language of the mountains of Peru) is similar to both the word for “corn” and “May.” I especially liked the floating stairs on the sides of the concentric circles. There were so many sets of them in the concentric circles of the ruins.

     Salinas de Maras (salt pans): These were so cool. This is a half a mile worth of small pools of water that somehow salt is generated from. People own one or more pools and work in them to separate the salt from the water and dirt. There were piles of salt everywhere, and the shops at the top of the hill sold the salt in little bags. It was chilly outside, and we expected the water to be cold, but it was actually quite warm! I was glad for the people that stood in those pools for hours at a time. There were tiny streams and canals throughout the whole thing, so the water from the mountain traveled through and into all the pools. It was so amazing to see!

     Cuy (guinea pig): After an afternoon of shopping at the artisan market, my mom and I split an order of fried cuy, a delicacy in Cusco. Yes, it is guinea pig. Yes, they eat it and like it. My mom and I ate it, but we weren’t crazy about it. It’s good to say you tried it, but I won’t be eating it again. There wasn’t much meat on it anyway. I prefer chicken :)