Una postcarte amiga?

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I´ve wanted to go to Peru for a very long time, probably over half my life, ever since I first discoved the travel writing section in my local library. Now that I´m finally here, my opinion of the place is somewhat mixed to say the least. Yes, the countryside is beautiful and the Incan ruins worth seeing, but having been scammed, hassled and hounded by trinket sellers for the last week, it hasn´t got a hope of knocking Bolivia off the top spot of favourite places visited to date. To get the picture, think more Bali and Sri Lanka than Borneo and consider that fact that we can´t walk from our hostal to meet friends without uttering 'No gracias, I don´t want a postcard/ printed picture/ toy llama/ alpaca jumper/ shoe shine (I´m wearing flip-flops)/ finger puppet/ lunch in your restaurant/ Mexican food/ so-called free drinks in your bar' at least 15 times.

After the aforementioned worst bus journey of our lives, our warm welcome to Peru continued with being triple charged by the taxi driver. Hardly a good start. The triple crown was completed when were are all double charged the next morning on the bus 'because we had a seat'. Another passenger later admitted to us that it was only beacuse we were gringos. I don´t mind paying a bit more than the locals for certain things, but this contast scamming and haranguing starts to wear very quickly. If it wasn´t for the fact that we are going to see Macchu Picchu later in the week, I´d have considered leaving the country days ago.

However, on the positive side, Cusco itself is a beautiful city, with colonial plazas, cobbled streets, beautiful churches and a graceful air. After Bolivia, the range of modern shops, bars and restaurants was somewhat overwhelming. It even has a decent japanese restaurant at which we treated our tastebuds to something different as a treat for surviving that bus ride from Puno. However, you don´t have to go far from the centre to realise that these places only exist because of tourists and few locals ever frequent them, unless as staff.

On our first proper day, armed with the Boleto Turistico which is the essential pass for all visitors here, we went with friends out to Tambo Machay for our first Peruvian incan ruins. This is an incan bathing site and closeby is the site of Puca Pucara, an Incan fort with stunning views. From there we walked back towards town, taking a slight detour to visit the Temples of the Sun and Moon, little visited sites at which further archeologial explorations are being made. A local offered to show us the condor, puma and snakes carved into the entrance - a small snake to signify the person entering the temple and a larger one exiting, indicating the person had been enhanced by prayer.

Further down the hills we visited Q'uenqo, with its warren of tunnels, some carved to imitate the shape of llamas. On the top of the rocks, a flat sacrifical area remains, with nearby snake-like zig-zags carved into the stone, as channels for the chicha (local grain alcohol) or even blood to flow down.



The star of the local ruins however, has to be Sacsyhuaman (commonly known as 'sexy woman').

The imposing site was the best example of incan stonecraft, with thousands of stones perfectly fitted together to form the walls of the complex. Only 20%!o(MISSING)f the original remains, since the Spaniards, as in so many sites, tore down the walls for their own buildings. When the incans built Cusco, they concieved it as a puma shape, with Sacsyhuaman as its head and the zig-zag walls as its teeth. We marvelled for some time over the size of the stones, trying to imagine the amount of human blood and sweat shed to contruct the walls without even the help of wheels.

Saturday was spent as one of those exhausting but essential admin days, planning our onward journey and booking flights, with Quito- Buenos Aires proving to be a strangely elusive route. The chance to spend a few days in Columbia sadly fell through when the flight offer was booked out, so we have to settle for running through Bogota airport instead, in time for the onward connection to BA to catch Argentina´s first World Cup match on 10 June.

We´ve settled on a one day on, one day off activities pattern here, so Sunday saw us take a full on tourist bus trip to the Sacred Valley. Naturally, such trips involve numerous retail opportunities, with the first pointless stop being at a touristy market with little of interest to us. We passed most of the time watching local girls dressed up in traditional costume, trying to persuade tourists to take a photos of them for a fee. Sadly, several were happy to do so, meaning this practise will continue for the time being instead of dying out if it weren´t encouraged.

Pisac market however proved to be worth far more than the 40 minutes allotted to it, being a real local produce market in addition to good quality souvenirs. It also gave us the first (and hopefully not the last) chance to sample the local corn on the cob with cheese and peanut sauce. Suitably energised, we proceeded to climb up to the Pisac fort and admire the temple and palace areas for the Incas, elevated above the living quarters for the Quechu commoners below. The water channels for irrigation are still in good working order, serving the terraces below as they did when first contructed.


After a lunch at the inevitable tourist buffet, we continued on to Ollantaytambo, a village continuously inhabited from Incan times. The incan ruins climb up the hillside from the town towards the Temple of the Sun, which was never completed. Wars between various incan factions disrupted work, followed by the arrival of the spanish conquistadors, who were actually beaten here, even if the ultimate result went in their favour. Here we were able to see the ramps used to drag the huge stones up for the temples, having been pushed from mountains several km away. Our tour guide insisted on explaining that the Incans used ´water and gerbils´ to cut and polish the stones into shape. We were too busy trying not to laugh outloud to catch the correct word in the Spanish explanation, so came away with the distinct impression that rodents have a bad time around here, considering cuy (guinea pig) is on half the menus in town.


Our final stop of the day was the the church in Chincherro, which was built by the Spaniards on an incan site. The church itself is impressive, with painted and carved walls and roof beams inside. However, no photos are allowed, so you´ll just have to take my word for it.


Having sampled some historical sites and ruins, the coming week is going to be a more energetic one, with white water rafting on the cards, followed by a four day trek, culminating with a day at Macchu Picchu. Given that I´m not a huge fan of trekking, let alone for 4 days, I´m not quite sure how much fun this will be, nor how I got talked into it. Tune in next week for the update......

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