Cruising around in Cusco

Cusco, Peru (8th - 12th & 16th March 2016)

We took an overnight bus from Arequipa after our hiking trip using CIVA which had a 180 degree reclining seat bed so we were pretty comfortable.

Arrived at the bus terminal in Cusco at 7am and was instantly hounded by the taxi drivers and the hostel representatives trying to get business from us. We hopped in a taxi and found an area that seemed like a good area and headed towards San Blas. San Blas is considered an artist area with a lot of tourist places to stay, eat and visit - the only down side is the steps and the hill!

We found a cheap and nasty hostel for S./40 (AU$17) per night for which we spent three nights there.  We went off to Plaza de Armes (Square of Sorrow) which most cities we have visited have a few city squares with this name as this is where the Spanish would execute some of the local people and display them as an example. Many cathedrals and churches are located near the plaza as well.

San Pedro Market Place

We went to the San Pedro Marketplace and got some delicious food there, the jugo/juices were excellent as they were cheap and enough for two people as they refill them (S./5) and the small restaurants they have there give you a huge meal for S./5 as well.  We bought 750g of dried fruits and nuts for S./30 and they were of excellent quality - would recommend!

Eak in his element!

Eak bought some cheese from a nice man here for a bargain price. 

Our favourite dried fruits and nuts stall, she had beautiful quality goods.

The markets are huge and worth a look around!

Right outside the Market Place on our way to the 'free' walking tour, these women cornered me desperate for us to pay US$5 for a photo, told them no I only had a few Soles and started walking away but they got their token tourist photo out of me, such a sucker.

Plaza de Armes

Wandering the streets of Cusco, really steep and generally full of stray dogs

Free Walking Tour

The free walking tours were obviously free but we found them a gimmick as they walked you to places that you could buy things at "cheaper prices because you are our friends". You must tip them at the end of the two hour tour as well. Only a small amount of history was given throughout the tour.  The only benefit for us was that we met a lovely couple, Muriel and Derek (Darius) whom are French and Polish respectively, but are living in Sydney. We ended up having a lovely dinner with them and organising to do our own trip to the Sacred Valley the next day.

The steep streets of Cusco, primarily in San Blas (where our hostels were located, such a hike up the hill but it was good exercise!)

The "Free Walking Tour" group with Cusco behind us!

The Sacred Valley

We visited the Sacred Valley with Muriel and Darek, we took a public mini van to Pisac for S./4 pp which took about 40minutes and visited the Pisac Market which we found to be the same quality and price to Cusco so we didn't buy anything there but Muriel bought a couple of sweaters for her family.  We had some awesome Empanadas at the market, and some white corn (Chico) with cheese - which was interesting and not that good.

Pisac Market or Pisaq Ruins

We managed to organise a private taxi to take us from Pisac to ruins for S./250 - which was quite expensive but it was getting late in the day so we had to otherwise we would not have seen as much as we did.  The drive up the steep.and winding roads were crazy, the a Pisac ruins were quite impressive and the terraces were the shape of a Condor. The ceremonial centre of Intihuatana is the main area we visited being flanked by carved terraces some hundred meters in height. There were tombs carved into the hills have all been looted but they were great to see, apparently the largest cemetery in the Tahuantinsuyo area with over one thousand graves.

They have a liturgical or purification (bathing) fountain which had been running for over 500 years, unmaintained.

The river running through the Sacred Valley is called Vilcanota River, which changes names at Machu Picchu to Urubamba River and then merges with the a river in Amazon Jungle and flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

Ollantaytambo

We thoroughly enjoyed the history of the historic fortress at Ollantaytambo.  The Spanish never made it to Machu Picchu because of this fortress.  The terracing is on such an epic scale it is incredible to comprehend how than managed to get such massive stones up that high - I heard that it took 12-15 people to get the Easter Island statues up but it took as many as 600 people, coordinated, to get some of these stones up.  A lot like the Cambodian Temples in that the Inca redirected the flow of the river so that they could float rocks to the sites.  They believe that it was still under construction when it was invaded by the Conquistadors about 500 years ago.  The buildings on the right side of the valley were used as food storage and were undamaged by the Spanish.

These sleeper pods are precariously perched on the side of the cliffs and hundreds of US dollars to stay in per night.

Market at Chincheros

We ran of time to go to Moray, an Inca experimental farming project on a vast scale which need terracing into the ground to find different microclimates to get the best possible crop genetics. But stopped off at the Chincheros Market to see traditional dye techniques.

The market there showed us how they traditionally used different plants to get the colours of the wool. We bought a handmade, hand dyed and hand woven table runner which was quite expensive but of good quality.

A huge day, we arrived back to Cusco at 8pm, so we had a dinner at local restaurant with a set menu which was okay.  Packed our bags again as we needed to change hostels the following day.

Visiting the Inca Ruins near Cusco

The next day we moved to a more expensive but nicer hostel, while we prepared to spend the day exploring the ruins nearer Cusco, we took a taxi to the highest and furthest point and walked the road back towards Cusco, via the ruins along the way.

Starting with Tambomachay, a small Inca built ruins that are baths/fountains built using aqueducts that are still functional today.

Tambomachay Fountains.

We managed to visit the Tambomachay fountains, Parepareke and Q'eyko ruins which were fairly basic before wandering off to the final temple/ruins of Saqsaywaman.

The last temple we visited was, Saqsaywaman (pronounced "sexy woman" in a Spanish accent and not a NZ accent!). That place is HUGE, it was destroyed largely by the conquistadors and 'only' 20 percent of the current structure can be seen today. On the information brochure it states that the Archeological Park of Saqsaywaman has an area of almost 3,000 hectares, with a perimeter of 28,370 meters. We spent two hours there just wandering around, admittedly the altitude (3,555 m) made everything quite challenging and it was an exhausting day.

Again, moving these gigantic rocks to build these impressive structures is still mind-boggling.  We walked over 16kms that day but we had a good day all round, ending back at the San Pedro markets for a juice and a huge vegetarian meal with mixed salad and rice.

View of Cusco from the bar above our hostel (below in yellow)

From here we went on the Machu Picchu trip (see next post).  After finishing the Machu Picchu trip, we stayed the night in Cusco, as we arrived back very late, dirty and incredibly tired, then caught an overnight bus to Bolivia.