Cusco and Machu Picchu

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Hello again!

I'm taking the opportunity to write a blog entry today as we're currently stranded in Cusco, Peru, due to a bus strike over the price of fuel. There have been quite a few strikes for various reasons throughout the countries that we have visited so far.

So we are in Peru, our fourth country. So far we have enjoyed Peru, despite the fact that it definitely feels like the most touristy place that we have visited (perhaps bar Salta in Argentina and San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.) This is inevitable, due to the fact that Peru was the capital of the Inca Empire from about the 11th - mid 16th century, and the main cities that we have based ourselves in - Arequipa and Cusco - are tourist hubs with lots of amazing colonial and inca architecture. We began in Arequipa, where we arrived on New Year's Day, but I am going to leave Mark to write about our adventures there. We then headed to Cusco on an overnight bus, and arrived at 6am after almost no sleep as the bus seemed to stop every half hour throughout the night and switch all the lights back on to loud cries of "Cusco, Cusco!" even though there was standing room only for new passengers! The company we went with were obviously sure to make each journey worth their while!

Our first few days in Cusco we spent exploring the city with our "tourist ticket" which gets you in to almost all of the attractions and archaelogical sites containing Inca ruins. However, as we soon discovered, some of the most fantastic Inca stonework in Cusco can be seen just walking around the town. The handicraft shops and restaurants on "Hatunrumiyoq" street are all built on the most incredible inca stonework. The Inca stonemasons were unbelievably skilled, and as Cusco was the Inca capital and an extremely sacred place, with many of the Inca Rulers´palaces also dotted around the city, it is here that you can find some of their best examples. When the spanish invaded Cusco in 1533, wanting to expand the reign of the spanish crown, they beheaded the Inca "King", Atahualpa, even though he provided them with the two rooms full of gold and treasures that they requested. This was the beginning of the end of the Inca Empire, as the spanish desecrated their finely constructed sacred buildings, (which were invariably full of gold as for the Inca people gold represented their God, the sun,) and tore down their palaces, using the finely worked inca stones to build their own, new Cusco.

Close by to the town of Cusco there are many other ruins from ancient times. There are a million tour companies on every corner and down every alleyway, imploring you to buy their tours, but we decided to hire a car for the day and go at our own pace. When we picked up our Toyota Yaris (saloon - which don't exist in the UK) from Europcar at 8:30 am as arranged, Mark found a nail in one of the back tyres (which both also happened to be completely bald!) but it didn't seem to be causing too much of a problem after he pulled it out, so we set off on our outing. We later discovered that the owner had kindly left us the remnants of some cheese and crackers on the parcel shelf, incase we got hungry, and when I opened the glovebox to check that we had the car's papers, it appeared that it belonged to a local chap called Irving who lived in Cusco, but there was nothing to link the car to Europcar at all! We had a contract though, and when we did get stopped at a police checkpoint, to my relief the policeman simply asked for Mark's licence and where we were going, and gave us some friendly advice to help us on our way.

We first visited the four sites with ruins closest to Cusco. First was Tambomachay, where several fountains channel water from a "secret" source in the hills and would have once provided a sacred bathing spot for the Inca Rulers and nobility, according to a guide. We tend eavesdrop on other groups´ guides, rather than paying for our own, a bit naughty but we feel that most of what they have to say is either made up in the case of bad guides, or in the case of good ones, the speculation of "experts" who know how to speculate but don´t know exactly what the sites were really for because nobody actually does! Our preferred technique is to stand near a group with a spanish guide and feign that we only speak english... they don't bat an eyelid and you can glean all the info you need! We have got quite used to walking around sites not knowing exactly what their purpose was but knowing that hundreds of years ago an inca stonemason worked the amazing stones and maybe an Inca Ruler stood in the spot we are standing.

From Tambomachay we went to Puka Pukara or "red fort" in Quechua (the stones were a bit reddish), which had mutiple speculative reasons for its being, from a checkpoint for merchants entering the city to a military defence post to an olden day sort of "Welcome Break" where travellers could stop for a rest, or all of the above. Next was Q´enko, where we visited an underground cave where according one guide we listened in on, the Incas may have performed sacred rituals and according to another, it was a mummification chamber! I suppose mumification could count as a sacred ritual. The last set of ruins closest to Cusco was by far the most impressive. Today it is called "Sacsayhuaman" which apparently means "satisfied condor" in quechua, and as the story goes, when the spanish attacked this immense, beautifully constructed inca fort and managed to take it (probably due to their superior weapons), the bodies of the dead Inca warriors lay on the ground for days afterwards and "giant" condors swooped down from the hills to feed on them. The fort was constructed on three levels, which are said by any to represent the three "worlds" according to the Incas - the world above (the sky, also represented by the condor), the world of the people on the ground, also represented by the puma and the "underworld," also represented by the snake. The outer wall consisted of absolutely immense stones placed in a zig-zag pattern which would have made it hard to penetrate. Some of the stones were almost twice Mark's height and weigh up to 130 tonnes. Who knows how they managed to get them there!

Once we'd visited these four sites, we left Cusco and visited Tipon, where there were several levelled terraces where more fountains channelled water from another "unknown source" into Inca baths. It was very tranquil and the scenery was lovely, plus there were hardly any other tourists there so we spent quite a while sitting around there. I was curious about one thing though, and I asked the guy manning the entrance booth about it - in places there were round piles of rocks which seemed a bit randomply placed to me. He fed me a line about the circle being an important shape for the Incas, something to do with life. I wasn´t sure at the time if that was true, but having now visited quite a few sites - a few them under restoration - I think that they may well have been stones that were there to be used to "restore" the site as we witnessed similar piles of rocks at other sites, and even saw workers putting in new stones in one site. We can´t be certain, but we have read that the government has a habit of "restoring" ruins to make them more impressive to tourists, and often it does have a detrimental effect. In parts of Sacsayhuaman it looked like garden rocks had been wedged/piled between the original inca stones and they seemed so out of place. It looked like the beautiful inca stonwork had been interspersed with what looked like a dry stone wall from home. This restoration work also means that out of all of the ruins that we have seen, we could only really be sure of the authenticity of the Inca stonework where they did not use any kind of mortar to hold the stones in place, but cut with such precision that they fitted together perfectly and their sheer weight has held them in place up until today - withstanding many earthquakes in the region.

After Tipon came Pikillaqta, a Huari site, a people who were around before the Incas. We enjoyed walking down the long corridors that bordered the site and they had a very cool armadillo replica in the museum! One we'd visited these ruins, we visited two little villages with very ornate churches, the interiors completely covered in paintings - Andahuaylillas (who claim that their church is the "Andean Sistine Chapel") and Huaro. As we had plenty of time left, we decided to carry on along the road we were on to visit a lake that was on our map. We drove through some fantastic mountain scenery to get there, and then decided to take a different road that was marked on our map, back to Cusco. At the first little we came to on our new route back, we had to roll along for about 15 minutes as the whole town seemed to have brought their various flocks of sheep back fro the hills for the night at the same tie, and were herding them all down the road! We got lots of strange looks from the locals, some people smiled and waved, but I think in general people often think that Mark and I look very young and so were surprised to see us driving a car through their village, especially as it is currently quite off the beaten track (although soon not to be as there are plans to build a "tourist trail" around their lake. I'm not sure they're going to know what's hit them.) As it started to get dark we wanted to get a move one, but our plan was scuppered when we stopped for petrol in a small village called Acomayo, and were told that if we kept going on the same road then our ETA back in Cusco would be approximately 8 hours! So we turned around and set off to retrace our steps back to Cusco, back across the mountain passes that we'd come in on, and were a bit startled to find that the rockfalls onto the road that we had passed on the way to Acomayo (some of them pretty hefty!) appeared to have worsened! Anyway, we were soon back on the main road and as we entered Cusco at 10pm the skies opened and kindly treated us to the heaviest hail storm that I think I have ever witnessed, within minutes the roads were like rivers, water was spilling up out of manhole covers as the drains couldn´t handle the downpour, and the battering that the roof was taking meant that Mark couldn´t hear my directions as I yelled them at him from the passenger seat. Still, we took the car back clean!!

After our exploring in Cusco, we were ready to set off for our own little tour of the "Sacred Valley" - a number of villages which would ultimately take us to Machu Picchu. We got a bus to Pisac for about 50p each for the hour trip, and visited the ruins there which were in a fantastic setting in the hills above the town, and very varied, with some amazing Inca stonework intermingled with older ruins, fountains, levelled platforms for growing crops with water canals channelled all the way down the hills, a cave which connected two sides of a hill, and the side of one of the hills was filled with holes, an ancient cemetary, where many bodies have been discovered (and sadly for them, excavated and removed as is almost always the case with these sites.) There was hardly anyone there as we went late in the day, expect for a big group of Americans. Now I wouldn't want to tar americans all with the same brush, as we have met some fantastic, intelligent and lovely americans on our trip, but these particular ones proceeded to climb all over the ruins of one tower, despite the fact that the "Do not climb on the ruins" sign had been translated into english precisely for the benefit of fools such as they, and a few of them climbed up really high, right to the edge of the tower, one of them flapping his arms and making loud "caw-caw" bird noises. I´m not entirely sure I could have found it in me to be sympathetic had he have dropped off down the cliff and taken his bird noises with him.

After Pisac was Urubamba, from where we visited the ruins of Moray, where large circles of levelled land, penetrating the hill, are said to have been used by the Inca for scientific crop experiements, each of the levels having a different microclimate. We weren´t so sure about that, but as we're not scientists, we can´t really dispute it! However, we didn't see why it couldn't perhaps be that the incas needed somewhere a bit more sheltered to grow their crops than the usual sites on the side of a hill? Either way, it was interesting and fun to walk around. Moray was one of the sites though, which did appear to have been heavily restored. There were parts which looked immaculate, and other parts where local workmen were halfheartedly hacking away at the overgrowth that had covered the rest of the site, and had circular piles of new looking stones nearby ready to pop on top/inbetween the old ones where they were no longer very stable. From Moray we walked to Salineras, where there were thousands of salt pans, apparently once used by the Incas. To get there we followed an old lady in traditional dress and country sandals dragging a reluctant, bedraggled donkey across the hills. We were distraught that we didn't manage to caputure on camera the moment that a pop tune broke the silence apart from our trudging feet, and she whipped out a phone and answered "Allo?" The salt pans were fantastic and seemed a bit out of place nestled away between the green of the hills. We had a lick and they were very salty! Later that evening back in Urubamba we took a ride in a "mototaxi" to nearby Yucay, which I wanted to visit because it reminded me of England. Rather than a central plaza, the village of Yucay has two big grassy expanses which run alongside the main road and each had a big tree in the iddle and houses around the three other sides. Just like an english "common" in a country village, except a little bigger. It was a lovely change from the normal plazas they have here, and we sat in one of the and watched the numerous saturday evening football matches going on, I think the whole town was out.

The next village along the way, and our penultimate stop on the way to Machu Picchu, was Ollantaytambo. We arrived at the ruins on the first day we arrives and were horrified to find tourists crawling all over it like worker ants and a queue out of the entrance and down the road. So we sacked that off and went and climbed the hill opposite with its free ruins, from where we admired the scenery and view of the town. Our horribly expensive train ($34 US for 1.5 hours) to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of the Machu Picchu mountain, wasn´t until 1pm the next day so we managed to visit the Ollantaytambo ruins at 8am when it was quieter. On the way in we bumped into some americans (I ade the mistake of saying "hello" rather than the usual "hola" and they were happy to find english speakers) and when one of the ladies found out that we were english, said "I lived in England, for 3 years! I went to London but I didn't see any British people, only middle Eastern people. There aren't many Brits in London are there?" After that we saw the "Templo del Sol" (Sun Temple) ruins, with their immense, beautifully carved Inca stones, one of which Mark calculated would weigh about 20 tonnes. We then found somewhere quiet to sit and watched two boys ploughing a field below with two bulls and a wooden plough.

Finally the moment had come, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, checked into a hotel who tried to charge us a stupid amount but we haggled them down to a normal rate with almost no resistance, and bought our Machu Picchu tickets for 126 soles, about 30 pounds each. The next day, we had halfheartedly planned to perhaps set off early to maybe watch the sun rise from somewhere outside the gates (which don't open until 7am) but it rained all night and was undoubtedly going to be cloudy, so we set off at about 6:30 and climbed the 1734 steps to the top. It was a really beautiful climb through the forest and we were really glad that we went on foot rather than taking the bus. We allowed ourselves to scoff at the people at the top, getting off the bus wearing hiking gear and carrying walking sticks, and one slightly overweight lady (american again, I'm afraid) moaning during the 5 minute walk from where the bus dropped her, up to the mirador that she was tired, and asking her guide "Is it like this ALL the way up?" (It really wasn´t that steep, we felt sorry for her guide, and her group who were waiting patiently further up the steps!)

When the moment finally came, and we arrived at the mirador which overlooks the ancient Inca citadel, we were greeted, rather predictably, by a blanket of thick fog and no view whatsoever of the ruins! But we found a good place to sit and slowly, the fog began to blow away and bit by bit the famous Machu Picchu was revealed. We decided that we didn't mind the fog as it was a fitting way to see such a beautiful and mysterious place. We spent quite a while just sitting, watching the fog blow in and out, snatching glimpses of Wayna Picchu, the mountain behind the site which you can scale to get a better view, but tales of rickety ladders and my recently developed fear of scaling just about anything (don't know what's going on with me!) led us to decide not to. So we had plenty of time walking around the site, finding quiet places to sit and eat our picnic lunch (although food is forbidden according to the tickets.) At one point we stumbled across a modern day inhabitant of Machu Picchu, a littel "chinchilla de viscacha" as the warden we asked called it, it looked like a cross between a chinchilla and a rabbit. In the afternoon the weather brightened up and we had some beautiful sunshine and much better views of the mountains. When it finally came time to leave, we took our last look over the site, snapped a few final photos, and set off on the walk back. When we arrived back in Aguas Calientes we were exhausted, and managed to get lured into a restaurant with the offer of cheap meals, only to be stung with 20% service at the end, which we moaned about and then paid... there's not really avoiding it in a town which is really just a tourist base.

From Aguas Calientes we took the silly expensive tourist train back to Ollantaytambo and managed to get a taxi for the same price as a bus back to Cusco, where we were informed of the bus strike.

I finish this blog entry from Cajamarca, in northern Peru, so we did eventually get away from Cusco and are now making our way to Ambato in Ecuador where we are planning to volunteer. If all goes to plan we will be there within 3 days, but our plan here changes from day to day, so who knows really! Until the next time....

Sending you all lots of love and hugs

Amy and Mark xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Photos

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Mark at Sacsayhuaman

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Beautiful inca stonework

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Water fountains at Tipon

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Levelled land at Pisac

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The Moray "scientific experiment" site

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Mototaxi!

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Some ruins up high on a hill overlooking Ollantaytambo

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Machu Picchu

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more Machu Picchu

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Mark at Machu Picchu

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Our initial view of Machu Picchu

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A modern day inhabitant of Machu Picchu

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Me at the entrance to Machu Picchu

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