I ate the face!

Today we finally went to Tipon, one of the small towns outside of Cusco. The town is famous for two things. The beautiful ruins and the best known place to eat cuy (guinea pig). Once the bus dropped us off we took a taxi up past town to the ruins. Most of the park is grass and terraces but the attraction for tourists is the water in aqueducts and fountains. Almost every single place you walk you can hear the running water. We walked up the "Inca Road" to get to the top of the ruins. On that walk I saw the biggest spider in Peru. All over the trail are little holes that spiders live in. Mom and I were walking by one and mom stopped really fast. She motioned me to stop and took one of my feather dusters and put it close to the hole. The spider came out and he was about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide (not including his legs). It scared me so bad I almost screamed. Beside its huge hole was the baby hole that had a mini spider in it. We caught up with everyone else at the top of the ruins, right before there is a big mountain. Up there you have a beautiful view of all the valley. We stayed up there for a while to rest before we hiked back down.

The cab ride back down to town was gorgeous but I was so excited to eat cuy I didn't look around much. We went to the restaurant "Escondida" which means hide and seek (or hidden) in Spanish. I guess it wasn't that easy to find but the locals knew exactly where it was. They had one of the huge ovens that could fit about 20 cuy in at a time. We got a big one for everyone to split (I got dibs on the head) even though not many of us ate a lot. The inside was stuffed with an herb that none of us liked but the leg was good. It was almost exactly like a chicken leg. There wasn't very much meat so I got the head to nibble on. The cheeks were the best part but David thought I was nutso. IT WAS GOOD!!! Everyone that thinks "Oh my gosh that is so gross", it is just the opposite!