The morning after saying goodbye to the dream team we had arranged to meet with Patricia to do a little tour of Cusco wearing the traditional Cusqueno costume.
The costume is worn for celebrations like Inti Raymi and dancing.
The traditional day to day dress of the women is still to this day very similar but with less decoration.
I wore a layered skirt with a white blouse and a delicately beaded shoulder boulster all topped off with a huge circular hat with streams of several colours floating down my back. The hat had been hand stitched with hundreds and thousands of tiny beads creating patterns all around the circle. The streamers were beaded too in their respective colours.
Alex wore bright blue velvet shorts with tassels of beads hanging from the knees and a waistcoat, again decorated with thousands of beads and a whole statue of Christ on the cross attached to the front and center.
His hat was a fitted cap which trailed down the back of his neck with swirls of colours. We looked pretty ridiculous of course but we went with it and wandered around the Church that sits overlooking the city, went to the statue of the white Christ and even went to see the locals in the fields enjoying the end of Inti Raymi. The tradition is that during the weeks after Inti the families gather in the fields around Sachsaywaman and cook potatoes in ovens they make in the strange lumpy earth.

We watched them gather the rock like lumps of earth and build small pyres, set the fire inside and throw the potatoes in. They all sit and chat while the potatoes cook and then tuck into their feast.
We were invited to help build the mini ovens with one or two of the families but sadly none of them had an potatoes ready so we had to settle for an icecream instead!
We dropped Patricia home and said our goodbyes and hit the supermarket for some essentials…(mainly wine and tinned tomatoes) and parked up outside our faithful hostel and collapsed in a heap.

After all of the fun, mayhem and excitement of the road trip, travelling with a group of people for the first time EVER and the wedding we decided over a bottle of wine or two that we were worn out and entitled to a much needed a rest.
We gave ourselves a weekend off and decided we would begin to worry about the camera again on Monday.
We spent the whole of the next day (Saturday) in bed in Peggy outside of our hostel. We played computer games and caught up with friends and family on hijacked wifi and pretty much enjoyed a hangover as much as is humanly possible! We had planned ourselves a real treat for the Sunday though. We had looked at staying in a hotel for the weekend and instead of wasting the money on that we decided to do something we really enjoy…COOKING!

In Cusco they have an amazing Chocolate museum (Choco Museo) where they make all of their own chocolate in house from seed to bar and they also do lessons! We booked a chocolate making class in the morning and a cooking class in the evening, what better way to spend a Sunday!

We went and met the manager of the Museum, Corin and as we were without camera he asked his friend Jeremie to take some pictures for us. We met Manuel who works there and we chatted with him about our travels and how we manage not to kill each other being in each others pockets 24/7 and then we got down to making some chocolate!

There was a family doing the class with us, Whitney, Taylor and Lilly and we all learned about the trees that grow chocolate, the pods that hold the seeds and the process that they go through to become the chocolate bars we all love. We roasted the chocolate beans, shelled them and drank a tea of steeped shells while we worked. (like calorie free hot chocolate Yummy!) Once shelled we had to crush the beans in a pestle and mortar and grind them into a paste. There was a competition on to see who managed to make the paste first as it was hard work. Alex came first and Lilly came second! Lilly is only 7 and it required some serious elbow grease so Alex handed over his chocolate bean shell prize to the most deserved winner, Lilly!

From the paste we made 3 different chocolate drinks, all fabulous and one of them very similar to the Chocolate drink that Reyes and his family made for our wedding in Belize! Adding chilli, cloves, cinnamon and all kinds of ingredients! We learned all about the next process and watched in pictures our paste turn into chocolate. The process takes days and lots of power so we were happy when we were handed our liquid chocolate to flavour and put into moulds.

Alex added chilli and mint to his and I added salt, coffee and hundreds and thousands to mine, we made bars and individual sweets and handed over our trays for the fridge to be collected later!

That day we had a feature in the local paper the el Commercio so we picked up a copy and went for some well earned lunch once class was over. We had enjoyed Chicha por Gaston so much in Arequipa that we went to the branch in Cusco too! It was lovely all over again and a massive treat!

We whiled away the afteroon strolling the streets and watching the world go by and returned to the Choco Museo at 5 for our next class.
We met with the group and headed out for the market to collect our ingredients. The market was familiar to us as we had been a few times and also for our items for our wedding. Most of the group were in a little shock to see the peeled cows heads on display and worried as most of the stalls looked closed as it was Sunday evening. It soon became clear as we wandered around that most stall owners stay in the market with their stock and just cover it up for the night. They all appeared as we lifted blankets here and there to find what we needed.

Once we were stocked up we got back to the Museo and got back to work. We peeled, chopped, diced, washed and boiled, all the while meeting the rest of the group. Alex cried the whole time he chopped his chillis as the girl next to him was finely dicing onions. I squeezed what felt like a hundred limes and before long we had everything prepared for the dishes.

We made a bean salad which was delicious as a starter and then yellow chilli chicken for the main course. We also had a lesson in making Pisco Sours which was fun and then we all sat down together to eat! It was 10pm by time we were finished and none of us even had room for the amazing chocolate fondu desert! Some of the people in the group were setting off the next morning (well around 3am) to go and do the trek to Machu Picchu so we all said our goodnights and we collapsed exhausted the minute we got back to Peggy!

We had had such an enjoyable day, we were pleased that we had made the decision to spend some money doing what we love to do instead of ‘living’. Peggy is our home and we are as comfortable there as anywhere, yet where can you learn how chocolate is produced or to cook a local dish and of course, meet so many like minded people!!?!