The stunning remains of an empire (and Chas crapping on about stonework)

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A selfish decision

When we first started this blog, I (Chas) made a decision to be honest about what happened to us and what we were feeling. I wanted the blog to be more than just an update on the beautiful places we were visiting but actually letting you, the readers, know about us personally. Notice all the 'I's in this paragraph; this was an arrogant and selfish decision. It has drawn much criticism from friends, family and strangers alike for being cynical and negative whereas the live action version has nearly always been joyful.

I feel I should not write funny stories that describe negative aspects of our travel due to a very harsh comment we received on a previous blog saying we need to take a positive attitude pill or fly home. I would like to make two things very clear: 1. I will not censure myself just to be happy happy joy joy about everything we do, as I have demonstratively proven; travelling can be and often is stressful; 2. I am sorry if how much fun we have is not coming through. We have been having a rocking time since leaving Adelaide so long ago and I apologise if I focus too much on the negative. By the way, speaking of comments, hearing from you lot would be nice once in a while (Zac, Sof and Paul are exempt from this criticism for being common contributors and funny ones at that)! We get complaints if we do not publish regularly enough and then get no feedback!

The crawl back home

We arrived back into Cusco late at night where Waykitrek for the last time picked us up and took us back to the narrow streets of San Blas. I would like to say that after our workout in the Andes we skipped up the steps to our hostel but I would be lying. We almost crawled like babies, loaded up with bags, groaning with agony and gasping for air. It was not pretty in the slightest. We got a warm reception at Home Sweet Home from the managers, Frederic and Kathy, and, as Delia put it, it did indeed feel like coming home. Frederic is a lovely Swiss who speaks the funniest Spanish I have ever heard. He still speaks with a strong Swiss French accent but speaks very colloquially. However, the slang he uses roams the Spanish speaking world, one minute he's Argentine, the next Mexican and occasionally, when polite, he's Peruvian. But in all versions, very inviting and friendly.

As we only had two days left in Cusco, we were taking one of the commonly touted city and Sacred Valley tours. These are great value as Ana and I had done them last time, but here is a tip: haggle, especially in low season. The starting price was $20 for both tours; after walking up a tourist street (Procuradores) we had managed to get them down to 35 soles for both by simply quoting the next person the price given to us by the previous person. The tour started at 2pm so we had the morning to ourselves.

The laundry crises

Anyway, our first stop was laundry as Chas was the only person who left clean underwear in Cusco before the Inca Trail. When we first arrived in Cusco before the Trail we had a panic with our laundry. We had put it in the day we arrived to be picked up that evening and when we came to collect it, it had locked up early. There was a bit of panic because if we did not get our clothes the next day, we would have none for the Inca Trail. All worked out well but it was with a bit of trepidation and caution that we selected our next laundry. If there were any stuff-ups this time, we were leaving Cusco for good and would never see our laundry again.

Laundry is always one of those things while travelling for a long period of time. You never do it until you have worn everything you own twice; it is often incredibly expensive; and you need at least two days available to guarantee you get it back. So we selected a cheap place near us and took off for our city tour. We got back home at 7:20pm and it was closed. Bugger. The Sacred valley tour the next day went from 8:30am to 7:30pm and we were leaving on a very early flight the following day. We were royally screwed. The others were starting to panic and I (Chas) was trying very hard not to laugh. I know it never helps a situation but my Dad has an annoying phrase: 'If you will laugh about it later, you may as well laugh about it now.' This was one of those times. The prospect of everyone wearing dirty underwear for another day and maybe losing all of our clothes in one fell swoop was very comical.

Thankfully I went down early the next day before we were heading on the Sacred Valley tour and banged on the door to find the owners there early. It all worked out and I was finally allowed to laugh at it. Although I was not laughing as I carried five people's laundry back up those steps to the hostel. I think after all the stupid things that happen to me and Ana during our travels (and the list is long and always increasing), we are getting better at seeing the funny side of possible disasters. That is a warning to anyone who considers travelling with us in the future!

A Christian monument to violence and intolerance

Back to the first day and sitting in Plaza de Armas, waiting for our city tour to start. Ana, James and I went to play cards in a cafe after Ana and I had been threatened to have our camera stolen by a little boy selling paintings. This was the first time I had felt unsafe in our entire time in South America, including walking around Copacobana at night with our packs on. It was a little unsettling.

Anyway, Delia and Rachel decided to go and see the Cathedral. As Ana and I had seen it last time, we decided to leave the girls to it. There is a second reason why I did not want to go. The interior of the Cathedral has more gold than I have seen in any other single place, all stolen from sites of massacre and melted down. The foundations of the church are from the Inca's destroyed and sacked palace. The walls are adorned with beautiful Rennaissance style paintings from schools of art where natives were trained to paint beautiful and stunning religious scenes without pay or reward. The whole Cathedral is a monument to how the churches tacitly supported mass murder and then gleefully accepted the pillaged booty. I know we cannot hold the modern church accountable for crimes of the past just as we cannot hold the Australian government accountable for Stolen Generation or the US government for continuing slavery long after its abolishment in Europe. This however does not mean I should bask in the beauty of a building celebrating its crimes, much less pay for the pleasure.

I am not saying people should not go see it (and hence being too negative Viktor); it has much cultural significance, it is beautiful and serves as an excellent reminder of the past. I just did not want to go twice. Interestingly, some of the paintings from the Cusqueño school reflect the mixing of cultures: one painting of the last supper has Jesus breaking up guinea pig instead of bread and drinking chicha morada (a tasty drink made of purple corn) instead of wine to help proseletization by making Christianity relatable to the locals.

The unbelievable bits that the Spanish ignored

There is so much that you learn about the Incas when you visit Cusco, or Qosco, or however you spell it (there are numerous ways) and now that I have been there twice I am able to identify quite clearly what it is that strikes me clearly: how remarkable it was that the Spanish were able to so completely destroy a culture. In fact the word Inca only applied to the royal family, so tourists never learn what their name for their own people was. While the English/Australians have an excellent track record in this respect with the aboriginal Australian peoples (obliterating cultures completely with barely a shred remaining of their language or history), those poor cultures now lost to us did not command vast empires in the Andes, pioneering stonework and agricultural technologies across an area spanning several countries. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not denigrating aboriginal cultures, merely comparing them in order to show what it must have taken to wipe out the Incas.

Pizarro, the conquistador, came out with something ludicrous like 30 men. That was all it took (with the added advantages of small pox, horses and metal weapons and armour) to destroy the army of the entire Inca civilisation! He kidnapped the Inca Atahualpa and held him for ransom for a room full of silver and a room full of gold. Once this was duly paid, Pizarro duly beheaded the Inca who was, apart from their king and leader, an object of religious worship.

Anyway, now that the very negative history lesson is over, I want to show you how amazing what is left really is. One thing I have noticed on this trip more so than my last visit to Peru and Cusco is really how much has survived. I am not talking about buildings and artwork but mainly the language, Quechua, that is spoken all through the sierra, the brightly coloured woven clothes and hats that can be seen on the poorest people cheering up the landscape, seeing babies in slings, the food and drink obviously and much, much more. What brought the Incas to their end was how selective the Spanish were. They destroyed the armies and administration; they destroyed the aristocracy, their religion and their skilled tradesmen. What is left remains part and parcel of the life of the commoner.

Food glorious food

While there are many traditional mountain dishes and styles of cooking, such as lomo saltado (a salted beef stir fry served with chips), what stands out is often what they cook not how they cook it. The most striking sierra dish is cuy or guinea pig. It is traditionally only eaten for special occasions like weddings or birthdays. We got to try it chopped up and grilled and, I do not mean to joke, it tasted a little like chicken. Not very impressive. However, last time Ana and I were in Cusco I ate cuy al horno, oven-roasted whole guinea pig. It still had shrivelled eye balls, crispy paws and sharp white teeth. It looked like a poor rat had fallen on the grill and then been served up by very unobservant chefs and waiters.

I also got to try alpaca meat which I can now strongly recommend. Like kangaroo, it is a very lean red meat that has a very different flavour to beef. Very tasty in all methods we tasted.

Then to the vegetables. Peru loves its corn. It has so many types of corn, some of which frankly defy belief. The purple and the black and white one are particularly special. Chicha morada, a national drink that has kindly been passed down by the Incas is purple, fresh and absolutely delicious. Probably healthy too. They make it out of yellow corn and then ferment it into a sort of beer that is very intoxicating. Peru also has seemingly limitless types of banana, potato and chilli, but that is best left for our time in the jungle.

The ever astounding stonework

First stops on the city tour (must stop getting distracted by food) were the Dominican church otherwise known as Qoricancha and the impressive fort of Sacsayhuaman. When the Spanish arrived in Cusco they reportedly stood in awe of its location and stunning stonework. Most impressive of all was the sun temple of Qoricancha whose name translates as house of gold due to gold adorning every wall, gold ornaments everywhere, golden door frames and the beautifully delicate golden statues in the garden that purportedly whistled musical notes as the wind passd through them. All of this naturally got melted down and redistributed. The temple was destroyed and the land given to a priest who accompanied Pizarro's brother. Upon this they built an impressive church.

This church suffered in a large earthquake mid last century and this revealed the Incan foundations, some of the more impressive stonework to be found in the former empire. It became a UN Heritage listed site and is now a museum of Inca history. One interesting thing that we learnt is that the early church used to have a large golden sun as a covenant of the lord, another example of the religions mixing slightly to aid proseletisation. The stonework is so impressive. I know I keep rabitting on about it but the only metals they had were soft (gold, silver copper) and somehow cut these stones perfectly and individually, with amazing amounts of corners, and then managed to fit them together without any mortar. Some people think that they fit together so tightly due to use of vacuums but really have no idea how to replicate their amazing stonework.

Different but no less impressive if the fort of Sacsayhuaman where, instead of perfectly straight, delicately cut stones, the walls are made of enormous 7m tall boulders, still perfectly fitting together all this time later. Sacsayhuaman was the stage for the major pitched battle between the Spanish and Incas over Cusco. A famous general defended a tower, throwing off his own men who wished to surrender and then killing himself when the tower was taken. The jagged walls of fort are suposed to represent the teeth of a jaguar shape (an animal representing power in Inca religion), a shape that the whole city of Cusco was designed to make. Unfortunately it was raining at Sacsayhuaman which made the experience a little miserable for the newcomers; despite the ponchos it was freezing cold and hard to get excited. I (Ana) made Chas go across to the carpark and buy one of those plastic ponchos because he was just getting drenched and there looked to be no change in the weather. So off he went, and came back with one for James too. Chas proudly handed over the poncho, saying he picked the colour especially for him, it being a bright pink!

An enormous earthquake decimated Cusco in the 15th century and it was only within the hundred years from that earthquake to Pizarro's invasion that the majority of the Inca sites that remain with us today were built. An astonishing achievement! It was then that they discovered/invented the technology to build earthquake resistant walls, with their trapezoidal shapes, windows, large expertly cut stones and wall angles.

To stun and stun again

The rest of our time was going from site to site. We went on to Qenko, a temple to the earth, that is built into the rock and has a labyrinth in it. Also, somewhat amusingly, there is an altar which our tour guide described as being either in the shape of a jaguar's head or a phallus. Easy to get the two confused (and another example of how little we actually know about the Inca civilisation).

Then up the hill to Tambomachay where we heard about the Incas' ability to build canals and channel water from snowmelt. It is a water temple with two still flowing fountains that, as legend has it, if you drink from both streams you will get twins. Obviously, I drank from it last time I was there. You can't actually drink from it anymore because the conservation department has barricaded the fountain off from the public. After that it was back home to panic about our laundry.

The next day we were off to explore the Sacred Valley of the Incas. First to hit up some markets, which were admittedly great but unremarkable other than that they contained llamas! The first sight we were visiting was the market town and archeological sight of Pisaq; the markets were worthy of their fame but really I (Chas) am not much of a shopper and found the corn being sold much more entertaining. White corn was in season and the local snack was beautiful huge pale cobs served with a lump of cheese and a delicious peanut and chilli sauce. Mmmmmm. Local food does it again! (Stop talking about food; the readers want to know more about the Incas not get hungry reading about delicious, succulent, juicy, tasty cooooorrrrrrn.)

The archeological site of Pisaq was also stunning; once again consisting of many terraces, this agricultural outpost had a lovely city on top. The walk along the ridge was a little hard on our still aching legs but well worth it, not just to see the site and the beautiful Andes towering above it but for the excellent explanation by our guide. The Intihuatana here had been destroyed but remained beautifully housed in its temple, once again combining natural rock with stonework. Pisaq is really three sites, the city, the granaries and the farmer's village and we did not have enough time to see it all, sadly. It would be well worth an independent visit outside a busy tour schedule.

There were only two more stops on our tour, Ollantaytambo and Chinchero. Ollantaytambo is in, if anything, an even more spectacular setting. The mountains are not green but bare and lovely to look at, one with the face of the deity that inhabits it quite clearly showing on its face. Delia's legs were giving out so three of us had a coffee while Rachel and James duly struggled up the mountain to make the most of their last day in the Incan empire. One amazing part was this fountain carved out of stone and when the guide ran his finger along the top of it, the water ran down the rock, hugging it, instead of shooting/streaming out over the top of it. He then flicked the water with his fingers and it reverted back to a stream. These Incas man!

Chinchero was yet another market and a mildly interesting colonial church. The good thing about these markets was that there were workshops where you could see how the textiles were made, spun and dyed using natural local products. It was incredible (says Ana here). The women use a root from a plant that grows up in the mountains as soap! They use a kitchen grater to grate the root into a bowl of water, and then this lathers up just like soap! The source of the colours come from little black beatles that when mashed (poor things) turn bright red, another root that is bright yellow, and I can't remember what the other coluors were. Unfortunately Chas had seen it all before and was getting tired but Rachel, Ana, Delia and James enjoyed it which was the important thing.

The last night never to be forgotten

The night before James and Chas (as men, the hunters) had been sent out to recover the laundry. Delia to her credit accompanied them and as they walked back past a small pizza place, Chas decided to get a pizza. We all chipped in on one of the cheapest pizzas, garlic pizza. This pizza was thin crust and delicious, the perfect mix of crust and greasy cheese. And did we mention it was stuffed to the gunnels with garlic? And served with garlic sauce to be put on top!

We had to go back on our last night. We were hooked. I wish I could tell you the name of the place but it is on Siete Angelitos on the left as you walk away from the Plaza de Armas. We duly got served garlic bread, garlic pizza with chilli and garlic sauce. Heavenly!

But what really made our last night in Cusco special was the waiter. While waiting for our food we partook of a few games of cards. This caught our waiter's eye and he offered to teach us a Peruvian game. We leapt at the opportunity to find he was a fiend of a card player who took devilish delight in the downfall of the losers. He accompanied his stabs with maniacal cackles and completely forgot to serve any of the other customers. This was a man who had to be taught twenty-wan, the game where it is mandatory to delight in the despair of others.

He took to it like a duck to water and we had a ball, ordering too many beers, forgetting that packing and an early morning awaited us with new horizons. It was well worth it!

For the amusing but less beautiful photos, check out the second page.

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Photos

The narrow and beautiful streets of San Blas
The whole feel of old Cusco is so much more untouched, despite the hordes of touts and tourists, than the colonial parts of Arequipa

The dreaded steps up to Home Sweet Home hostel
It's the pink building on the left

A centrepiece fountain in Cusco
Marking the start of the Avenida del Sol

A poncho pose over the city of Cusco
Please note James has chosen pink for his winter colour this season

The Plaza de Armas
With a view of the pillaging Cathedral

The Plaza de Armas from Sacsayhuaman
What a surprisingly creative name, huh?

The famous stone of 12 angles
There are many stones with more angles but this one is famous as it is on a palace near the centre of Cusco and is supposed to represent the 12 neighbourhoods or important families. Or whatever the person you give 1 sol to says it means.

An exhibit in Qorikancha
Even taking the walls apart has not yielded the secrets of their masonry

An old man of the mountain
Can you see the grumpy visage of the god of that mountain?

Our last night in Cusco
Amazing garlic pizza with garlic sauce with a serve of garlic bread, wonderful service and a devil of a card-playing waiter

The many steps of Ollantaytambo
Which Delia, Ana and Chas gladly did not undertake

The jagged military walls of Sacsayhuaman
Making the shape of a jaguar's teeth

Comments

[Sof]

Corn, corn, corn
Have you found a cornballer yet? Do they have corn flavoured lollies and sausages in S.A.?

[Amanda]

I'm loving it!
I for one am LOVING your blog - so interesting and vital - it's great to hear both the positives and negatives, as that is all part of travelling, especially to the places you are visiting. (And not everyone has to agree with you!) Keep it up! Lots of love to you both and special love to Rachel. xx