Cuzco, Peru

---

Cuzco


Day 40

We arrived last night in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital said to be founded around 1100AD. Today, we needed rest so we sleepily wandered around the town taking in very little but organising our next few days. The town is kept very well that is obvious and for the first time on our trip we saw a concentrated mass of tourists. The seething masses were now unfamiliar to us and we felt that our travels had almost become invaded, exposed to the public! - however we are now on the Inca trail and tourists were a sight in Peru we had to get used to.


The City Tour - Day 41

During our morning stroll around our local neighbourhood of San Blas we stumbled across a little museum displaying the artisan works of Hilario Mendivil. Mendivil is famous for his long necked sculpture motif and has several statues prominently displayed in the Cathedral.

We kicked off the "city tour" by introductions from our new guide, Bernie. Bernie had a lot to live up to and as it turned out......he failed, miserably. He just did not seem to like being a tourist guide, his english was average at best and he had a genuine talent for talking with his back to his audience ... The City Tour was not the most enjoyable as a result of this.

We did visit some sites of historic importance around Cuzco including a site fondly refered to as ´sexy woman´ or as it should be known Sacsayhuaman. The size of the stones that lie at the brains of the operation (eg. positioned deliberately as the head of the Puma within the City - you can google the mythology behind that) are massive, some weighing in at an impressive 130 tons. The site is composed of carved stones of fine craftmanship that lie perfectly between mammouth stones found in place at the site. Sacsayhuaman is thought to be a Temple to the Sun.

As part of the tour we also visited Qengo, Tambo Machay and Puka Pukara. Quengo being the most unusually impressive temple of the day with superb examples of Inca stone carving and its hollowed out temple, housing a stone altar carved into the natural rock. Unfortunately we couldn´t see any of this clearly as the tour was so lumbering that we arrived here in the pitch black.


The Sacred Valley Tour - Day 42


We didn´t want to risk getting stuck with a poor guide again today so we had armed ourselves with a very good book, Cuzco and the Sacred Valley of the Inca´s (which was later stolen).

As the tour bus rounded the corner of the mountain pass it pulled over for us to take in the spectacular first glimpse of the Sacred Valley and River. Back on the road, our clever little book told us we should look out for a condor cleverly sculptured into a mountain face where the head indicated Pisac, our first Inca ruin stop of the day. No-one else on the bus knew about the condor and we had a sneaky giggle to ourselves as our precious guide book had already outdone our guide.

Pisac was an Inca Fortress set high above the valley floor its terraces flowed down the mountainside to meet the modern dwellings of today and at the top houses a number of temples of varying sizes and uses, meeting places for only very important Incas and a burial place. Though these burial sites were small holes scattered across one side of the mountain face where the remains had been placed.

We then reached Ollantaytamboo which similarly to Pisac was built up along the mountain face and not at ground level where the Inca´s believed should be left alone and kept as sacred fertile land. Here there were also semi-hidden carvings cleverly sculptured into the mountain by the Inca´s without disturbing the surrounding natural beauty. The face of a mythological Inca God (one of the 4 mythological Inca brothers who turned to stone so that he could watch over the Sacred Valley for all eternity) as we learnt from our trusted sourcebook (see photo).

From here we left the rest of our tour group and branched off by ourselves to catch the train to Aguas Calientas, our gateway to Machu Picchu.

---

Photos

13 cornered stone
A display of Inca stone carving craftsmanship

Ollantaytambu
Can you see the face of the Inca God (centre, side profile)?