South America 2009 - Day 16 (8/22/2009) - Leaving Cuzco

I would have liked to sleep in longer this morning, but one of our roommates was sick, and had been throwing up all night - they conjectured that the cause was the guinea pig he ate the night before. After a hostel-provided breakfast of bread/butter/jam and juice, Greg and I checked out of the hostel before the 10:30 AM deadline, but still had a few hours before our flight departed around 5 PM. We stowed our big bags in the hostel storage, then went out in search of the 12-sided stone, which we found. We then walked around town for a bit, including a stop at one of the central markets, where I bought a glass of fresh-made pineapple juice. Curiously, when the merchant lady offered to give the juice to me "to go", she poured it from the glass into a plastic bag, tied it up, and inserted a straw. We walked back to the hostel and sat around for a bit (I started watching a movie in the movie room while Greg worked on his netbook) before heading back out to Plaza de Armas to find lunch. We ate at a restaurant that served a few Asian dishes in addition to the more standard far - had some Asian meatballs while Greg had a pasta/steak dish.

After eating, we made it back to the hostel in time to grab our bags before the taxi we had arranged earlier arrived to pick us up. The driver took us to the airport for S/.6.00, or about US$2, which we found to be ridiculously cheap. From there, we flew to Lima, where we had a layover of a few hours before flying to Atlanta (overnight), then back to St. Louis.