Exploring more of Cusco

The past couple of days, I have been wandering around Cusco and the surrounding area. Chad and I went to Sacsayhuaman (pronounced Sexy Woman), an old Inca fortress above the city. Yesterday was incredible. I had already been to Machu Picchu last year so Chad went alone and I stayed here. I took a local bus where I was the only tourist to a small village one hour away. On the bus I talked to a guy from Cusco about peruvian politics and the impending free trade agreement with Europe. Once in the village I meandered through the colorful market and then started hiking to some Inca ruins. I hiked up for a couple hours through Inca terraces until I reached the beginning of the ruins. I had the whole mountain to myself and just sat in a dilapidated overgrown Inca house and looked out at the most unbelievable views. I hiked longer, and then my solitude was ruined by a busload of tourists looking at one of the ruins, but I continued hiking for a couple more hours, sometimes on ledges a yard wide with a 150 ft drop. Later I took the bus back to Cusco and then got a ticket to the Cienciano game. Cienciano is the local professional soccer team who won the south america championships in 2004. I sat next to a little kid who told me who the players were and all about it. The game was nuts. There were three or four brawls between the teams and the field is surrounded by a barbed wire fence to control the rowdy fans. Throughout the game, dozens of riot police used their shields to guard the opposing players while they were kicking corners from the onslaught of trash being hurled down onto the field. At the end of the game, when the opposing team left the field the police made a tunnel with their shields because the Cienciano fans were throwing all kinds of stuff down on them. The fans had drums, trumpets, flags, toilet paper and some even lit flares and shot off fireworks. All in all, it was awesome. Today, as I await my travel companion´s return, I watched a parade here in Cusco. Tomorrow we are taking a bus to Puno, the port town on Lake Titicaca and then we go to Bolivia.