Cusco (Peru)

Arrival

After a 10h bus ride we arrived in what was once the capital city of the mighty Inka empire: Cusco. Founded in the 13th century by the legendary Inka warrior Manco Capac, it is now the cultural capital of Peru, surrounded by the impressive Sacred Valley and numerous ancient sites. Here you can see that these people were great mathematicians, ingeniers, constructors and astreologists.

We arrived in Cusco city around six in the morning, where somebody was supposed to pick us up from the bus station. Of course, nobody was there... Welcome to Peru! :-)
Two weeks before we left, we found a nice hostel trough a Belgian guy who is partially living in Peru. Since we were planning to stay here a couple of days, we wanted to be sure that we had a good place to stay. The hostel was really good: very friendly people, nice breakfasts with fresh food, spaceous rooms with hot showers (not obvious in South-America) and ten meters from the Plaza de Armas, the heart of the city.
After our breakfast, we had to go to the pharmacists. The first day we were in Lima, we both got sunburned. Of course Joke's sunburn kept ketting worse, so she got a special ointment and had to wear a scarf for several days (as you can see on the pictures). Luckily enough, there's a shop with scarfs evey five footsteps.

We soon noticed that five days weren't enough to see everything in this nice city. The main reason why we wanted to stay some days, was to visit the world famous Machu Picchu. Being one of the seven wonders of the world, this is the main attraction in Peru. However, as you might know, the area around Cusco suffered from serious storms, causing the only railway to this site to be completely destroyed by a mud flood. After being rediscovered around 80 years ago, this site never closed to the public. Of course, now that we are here it is closed for two months. How much bad luck can we have??? We were both really disappointed because of that, but on the other hand there's so much more to visit that is usually skipped by tourists.

We immediately did a city tour the first day, visiting the four main Inka sites around Cusco: Saqsayhuaman (also known as 'sexy woman'), Tambomachay, Pukapukara and Q'enqo. Very impressive how these ancient people constructed their temples, taking into account the position of the sun, mountains, etc... They even created a technique to make their buildings resistant to earthquakes. Sadly enough, most of the Inca empire (and its buildings) were distroyed by the Spaniards five centuries ago, otherwise things would be different now in Chili.
We ended that first day in a good restaurant where we had some typical Andean meals: Aji de Gallina (chicken in a creamy yellow sauce, olives and parmesan) and Cuy (roasted guinea pig). Although a lot of people refuse to eat cuy, it's a delicious peace of meat.

Sacred Valley

Of course, we didn't want to miss a trip to the Sacred Valley of the Inkas. This valley was appreciated by the Inkas for its special geographical and climatic qualities. It was also one of the empire's main areas for taking advantage of the natural wealth, especially to grow potatoes, corn and coca plants.

For our visit to the Valle Sagrado, we had the same guide as with the city tour of the previous day. He seemed to run on Duracell batteries. He kept on talking, alternating Spanish and English, without hesitating. Nice to get this much information, although it was a bit tiring. Every penny counts, so they put as many people in the bus as possible. One Danish guy didn't even had a seat, he sat on a pillow in the front of the bus. And our overactive guide stood up all day, for several hours of riding on bumpy roads!

We started in Ollantaytambo, an attractive little town with a nice archeological site. It was once the royal estate of the greatest Inka emperor in history: Pachacuteq. Here we had to climb a lot (and we mean A LOT) of stairs. Not that easy, because of the altitude (around 3000m above sea level). When you're at such a hight, in combination with the heath, you get less oxigen, so the smallest effort really exhausts you. Have you ever had the feeling your lungs were about to collaps? Well, I(Joke) did! This despite my wonderful condition. :-) Nevertheless, it was all worth it! What a great view! And again, it was very interesting to see how the different temples were positioned. When the sun comes up, it immediately enlightens the temple of the sun (the big wall you can see in the pictures), etc...

After our lunch in Urubamba, we went to Pisac to see another temple. However, more interesting were the wide pre-Inka terraces that were used to grow vegetables. Which vegetables were grown, depended on the altitude of the terrace: the lower ones were used to grow coca plants, the higher ones contained potatoes and corn.

Finally, we visited Chinchero that has a beautiful church were elements from both Christian and Inka religions were merged. We also saw some local women explaining how they extracted different colors from natural elements and how they use this to color their alpaca wool.

Maras and Moray

After a relaxing day in Cusco city, we went to the salt mines of Maras. These mines are owned by the people of the nearby town and every weekend they come to collect the salt minerals. The salt is not only used to cook, but also for therapeutic reasons and to create small souvenirs.
Next stop were the enormous circular terraces in Moray. They were used to study the effects of different climatic conditions on crops. The Inkas believed this was a fertile region, because of the two hills in the back that - with a little imagination - look like female breasts.

Today we took a day off to hang around in the city and to buy some souvenirs. Tomorrow we are heading to Puno, near the Titicaca Lake, our last stop in Peru...