Cusco Day 5 - cooking class and a free afternoon

We had a bit of drama last night with the front desk. Someone in the hotel was being quite noisy and someone else decided it was coming from the children's room. At 10pm our room phone rang to inform us of the accusation and to ask us to recitfy the situation. I let them know that we and the boys were fast asleep and not partying in any way. The rearranging of furniture and general room remodeling continued for some time and then started up again in earnest at 4:20. I have to say that I have found the hotels to be very noisy, noisier than hostels or airbnbs have been.

Today is our cooking lesson. We started that off by going to the local market and buying all of the ingredients. We saw all sorts of new things.

The boys were keen to run off and take photos with my phone. They are clearly my children!

We bought tea, salt, chocolate, maca powder and some grapes. It was so awesome!!

Here we are with the other tour family from the UK, our guide and our host chef. It was so awesome that we cooked and ate the meal in her home.

The group had a great time chopping and preparing the food.

We found it intriguing as to why there was a large,  flat rock next to the tables and cutting boards that were assembled outdoors for us to work at. Any guesses???

Turns out it's used for smashing the garlic to remove the skin! As cool as this tool is, it would manage somehow to send of of us to the hospital if it existed in our house. Hard nope.

The boys were overjoyed to play with the guinea pigs and kittens (conejillo de Indias and gattitos) at the home where we had our cooking experience. Truly I'm not sure if the kittens or the kids enjoyed it more.

 The cats are pets, the guinea pigs will become a Sunday dinner at one stage.

Shhhhh....don't tell C that they eat guinea pig here as a delicacy (editors note: we have already made a reservation at a restaurant here in Cusco for when we return prior to our flight so that we can enjoy this delicacy as a family).

We made soup, a main course (below), a passion fruit drink and a purple corn/prune/ peach pudding dessert.

We left so very, very full of Peruvian goodness.

We had the afternoon to ourselves and happily relaxed. I did a bit of laundry. I have three pairs of pants and these two pairs are currently soaked. The shorts and dresses I packed have sat unused.

 Let's hope these dry or the Peruvians are going to be seeing a lot of pasty Canadian skin.