Cusco Excitement

Day 6

The tour includes several days in Cusco. Typically people fly here and take a few days to adjust to the altitude so there is a lot to do.  I think we've walked the path from the hotel to the plaza del armas enough that I can do it in my sleep by now.

Grounds outside the Incan temple

I ended up doing a city tour.  A smaller group of the bus tour ended up going.  It wasn't so much of a city tour as a tour of archaeological sites.  We toured 2 churches, one catholic and one Incan, as well as 4 sites.

We started with the Incan church.  It was fascinating to learn about the religion and see the archetectural details the Incans used.  The Incans really used symmetry in their buildings and were able to build earthquake proof buildings with massive underground foundations.  The Incans also believed in natural phenomenon such as the sun, moon and stars.  Which you see represented in many aspects of the buildings.  The mountains being a potentially dry place meant that rain was something that was always important.  They also worshipped thunder and lightening.

What is left of the Incan buildings

Seeing the Catholic cathedral next showed much of how the Spanish Catholic converted much of Peru.  Catholisism here is still heavily influenced by Incan beliefs.  You see imagery in the paintings with people chewing coca leaves and many suns and moons depicted.  This particular church is so large that it took 96 years to build and with the swampy land it is on they built 2 smaller churches on either side to support it.  The interior is very ornate.  Lots of gold and silver altars.  And mirrors, a trend we noticed throughout Peru, to show the sun as Incans worshipped the sun.  It was a slow conversion giving the Peruvian Catholism a very distinct style.

Cusco from above

We then headed up the hills to the White Christ statue.  It's a smaller version of the one in Rio de Janeiro.  It was a gift from Palestine after the wars.  There were fabulous views of the city and you can see how big the city is and how spread over the valley it has become.  Amusingly, the parking lot was small and the typical Peruvian organization so we had a small fender bender with another vehicle.  People were staring at us a lot!

White Christ Statue

Next came the 4 archaeological sites.  We started at the highest point with the water temple.  It's considered the water of life, similar to the fountain of youth.  It also involved a small uphill hike.  It was a tough one with not having been very active at these heights yet.  Slow and steady was my friend.  But the fountain was impressive and you could see the Incan construction where they would use the naturally occuring stones with the rest of the construction.  Haven't seen too much of this style yet.  And of course while the water is drinkable we were advised against drinking it.

We had a quick stop for ruins that were a hotel in the Incan days.  Our third stop was at a rocky complex, Qenqo.  It was a maze of trails through huge boulders.  They did burials and mummifications here.  They would set the prepared bodies in the sun in the day and the cold rocks at night.

Water of Life Temple

Our last stop was Sacsayhuaman.  Which us terrible English speakers pronounce as Sexy Woman.  It's a Quecha word so it's a little trickier to pronounce.  It's a huge complex at the top of the hill.  As Cusco used to be the center of power, this is a huge protected, likely military sort of building.  You can still see the 3 levels of walls on the hillside.  Some of the rocks are as big as 100 tons!

Qenqo interior shot

After the tour we had lunch by the plaza and managed to get back to the hotel before the thunderstorm.  Ended up waiting out the storm and went to a handicraft market.  It was pretty commercial and it felt like the booths were all very repetitive.  But for the most part the sellers aren't very aggressive.  The people selling on the street are a little more insistent and will do their sales pitch in Spanish as they thrust items at you.  And we've started to see the girls of different ages dressed up in traditional outfits with an alpaca waiting to get a few soles to take a picture.

We've had a bit of a walk around the city now.  Some of us are fearless with the Peruvian traffic.  Really happy for the police ladies in Cusco near the hotel.  Despite the traffic lights they have the ladies out to direct traffic.  And only ladies.  Haven't seen any other lady police but all the traffic ones are ladies.  With their very loud whistles.  But they saved us from certain death a few times.

Sacsayhuaman Site

Went for a group dinner.  I'm not sure if it's because of the bigger group or not, but service is really slow.  It's amusing to see that it takes as long to make the drinks as it does the food.  And all the food never comes out at once.  It takes a bit of a fight to start eating when nobody else has dinner but if you wait you get cold dinner!

We've had our Machu Picchu briefing.  It's an early start to say the least.  Depart tomorrow at 5:15 am!  But it'll be worth it.