Sexywoman, curries and Cuzco

     We flew into Cuzco airport about 2ish and tried to get to our first hotel. The cab driver did not have a clue where the place was but luckily we had been warned about this and had studied a map of the area. After driving round for about 30 mins we finally found the place. It was run by a very sweet family who spoke no English but we are pretty good now at the Espanol so got checked in and a cup of coca tea while we waited. After dumping our bags in our room - nice and spacious, good hot water, possibly the most uncomfortable beds we have ever slept in - we headed out to explore.
     We set out for historical quarter of Cuszo and realised that the hotel we were in was over a 1.5km away from the main area, knowing the Inca Trail was looming in the next few days we thought the walk would be good for us. Walking though the town was nice and Cuzo has a great feeling about the place...I decided I liked it here. After 30mins we arrived at the Plaza de Arms which is the main square and it is truly breathtaking! The catherdrals, churches, Inca walls, ruins are fantastic.....the only thing was it was the most tourists we had seen in our entire time in South America. After exploring the town and finding a hostel in the centre of town, we got some lunch/dinner at a great family run Mexican place on Gringo Alley and then walked back to our hotel for an early night as we had a lot to do to sort out over the next few days. 

The Cathedral in Cuzco

     Next morning after a very uncomfortable sleep we check out of the Inkas Inn Hotel and head to the new one Pirwa Hostel off the square. As it is a Sunday most of the tourist sightseeing places are closed and so we decided to plan ahead on the sightseeing for the rest of the week...there is a lot to do before we head out to the Inca Trail. We are starving and so head out and somehow stumble across a Indian Resurant that does a buffet for 15 soles...that's about £4 to you guys back at home. It is a place called Maikhana on Avenue del Sol, as we got up the stairs it smelt really good and then we saw the owner, an Indian lady in full sari, hair in a bun, bindi on her forehead and I thought, ahhhh, I am finally home.... The food was amazing especially the hot chappatti and dhal....been craving it for 3 months now! After me and Neil stuffed our faces as much as possible and I read how curry prevents cancer and listened to the family speaking Hindi we left for another walk around the town. As it is a Sunday there were a lot of local people out, going to church and there seemed to be a procession going on in one of the churches, so we watched for a bit before heading back to the hostel for TV and bed before a full day's worth of sightseeing tomorrow.


     We headed out to Peru Treks first to pay the rest of the money for the Inka Trail. We handed over the 600 dollars and realised that we had to do it now. We were both feeling a bit nervous about this. They gave us a 'briefing' where a guide described what we were going to do and what we needed and stuff and made it all sound a bit better.

     We headed out and found the place to buy our 'tourist ticket'. This lets us into most of the archeological sites and museums in and around Cuzco, valid for 10 days it cost 130 soles. Today we were going to tackle all the museums we could. We started out at the Pachacuteq monument that we had passed before. Pachacuteq was some big time warrior bloke and the monument was an enormous brass statue of him at the top of a big tower which we could climb up. Inside were descriptions of all the various Inkas that there were, until the Spanish wiped them out - see pictures for details... The view from the top was pretty impressive.

Pachacuteq

     Then we went to the Qorikancha temple where there was an archeological museum buried underneath it. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't that impressed considering we had seen the pottery at the Larco museum. The main attraction here was the mummies at the end. After this was lots of art galleries, none of which we could take photos in. After a few hours of this we were museumed out so had some food and headed back to our hostel. After a bit we headed out out to a place called the Real McCoy...it has British dishes as well as the best Fish and Chips at 3300 metres above Sea Level, it also has condiments from the UK aswell as English Tea Bags! After 3 months we thought a taste of home would be good.

     The next day we checked out of Pirwa Hostel and headed to El Tuco Hostel though it is a little further away from the plaza it was only 50 soles a night and had great reviews on the hostel websites and so we headed their to be met by the owner Coco who was friendly. After unpacking again we headed out for the next day of sightseeing.
     Next day we had planned as our 'religious circuit' day. We bought another ticket for 50 soles which gave us entry into the major churches in the town. The first 3 were all attached together - again, not allowd to take photosso sorry - the cathedral was centre and had a black Jesus in pride of place, a beautiful choir area and a picture of the last supper, where Jesus and his pals are sitting down to a dinner of roast guinea pig. Next we went to the Church of Compania de Jesus. We got in and noticed a hole in one of the altar thingies with stairs behind so we slipped through, climbed up these very steep stairs and came out on a big balcony area. We could also go out and see over the Plaza where we took a few sneaky pictures. After we climbed back down and I nearly brought the whole altar down by smashing my head on the top of some virgin, a lady came running up and offered to give us a tour for a small tip. She gave us a really good insight into how the original religions became assimilated by the Catholics and all that. We had already noticed a lot about this, how the images of holy virgins were always in the shape of mountains and that there were lots of Sun and Moon imagery around as well. The current priest also speaks Qechua (the local language) so it is popular for that - originally, they had different parts of the church for the Spanish invaders and the local population. They also have a variety of different babies who they like, not just baby Jesus. She then decided to take us up the stairs we had already come from, we didn't particularly want the climb again but we also didn't want to offend her so we did. She also got us a nice photo with a view over the Plaza.

View over the plaza

     After this we hiked up to San Blas, which is the 'arty' part of town to see a church there. We had to pass by a particularly impressive Inka wall as we did, including a famous 12 sided stone that has been fitted perfectly into the jigsaw. I am still always impressed by the brickwork here, B doesn't really share my enthusiasm.... The church at the top of the hill was quite small but had the nmost impressive lectern, carved intricately out of wood. We admired that for a while and I pointed out that there was a skull right on the top, Bindya had already done her homework on this and it turned out that it was the head of the man who had carved it.  Then it was time for curry and home.

Inka Stones!!!!

      Next day bright and early we got up and geared up for our only "training" for the Inca trail with a 8KM walk from the furthest Inca sight near Cuzco back inbto the city. We heard from websites and other people's blogs how to walk the route and how to get to the site. However when we got out we couldn't find the minibus that took us to Tambomachay so we ended up haggling with a taxi driver to take us their which only cost us 15 soles ...around 3 quid.  After 20 minutes we arrived at the first and furthest Inca Site, Tamnbomachay. They were Inca baths which were used as a stopping point for Pilgrims who needed to cleanse themselves for the journey ahead. The ruins were nice and we took some photos, checked out the small market and headed to the next Inca site called Pukapukara which means the Red Fortress, here we got a guide who was great at telling us about the ruin and seemed realy proud of her heritage and ancestors achievements. She explained how the fortress was used as a check point for those who came from the sacred valley to Cuzco, the person in charge would recorded information such as people entering the region, why, what they brough etc and this was all done through tying knots in pieces of string. She explained the meditation that priests would go through her due to the spiritual energy and got us to lie on the ground for 2 minutes while meditating and it would make us feel better....you know what it actually worked and both of us said how when we lay down we could suddenly hear soothing pan pipes that helped us to to relax but once we got up we could no longer hear it....spooky hey! (Apparently the place was built on massive quartz crystal blocks)

Picking up the spiritual vibes....

     We finished off our tour and asked her how to get to Q'enqo. She pointed into the distance and said, 'Those trees over there'. Luckily, that morning, B suggested we look it up on the computer and we found the blog of some bloke who had done the walk already. I copied down the main directions onto a scrap of paper. The first instruction was to find a small path leading off tghe road next to some eucalyptus trees. I asked B if she knew what a eucalyptus tree looked like. She didn't and neither did I. Through a combination of luck and blind guesswork we probably ended up on the right path, or at least we ended up on a path. We walked for a while, getting further and further from the road, heading into small farms and eventualy an enormous canyon. It was absolutely beautiful and we knew we were getting some good practise in for the 'big trek'. We climbed up the side of the canyon, over the top of the hill, gthen spotted something in the distance that looked like some ruins. We headed off for that, hoping it was the Temple of the Moon. It was basically just a massive roock that had some steps carved into the side and a few blocks around it, with little niches and doorways cut into them. On Bindya's suggestion, we clambered up the giant steps to get to the top. 

     As we arrived, out of breath and with sore hands from grabbing the rocks we saw another tourist strolling up the other side, which consisted of a gentle incline. We took that way down. We were a little confused by our directions at this point, which semed to suggest that we could go left or right and it wouldn't matter. We took left and it did matter at we ended up down on the main road, a couple of kilometers walk uphill from Q'enqo. We slowly trudged up the road, rapidly losing any morale or sense of fun that we had up to that point. We eventually reached the ruins but we weren't in much of a mood to enjoy it. A bit of arguing later, we headed off for the final ruin, Saqsaywaman (pronounced, 'sexy woman'). This was the most inmpressive of the lot. It was the site of a very important battle between Macha Inka and the Spanish in 1536. The resulting loss, leaving the site covered in dead bodies, led to the inclusion of 8 condors on the Cuzco flag, representing the hundreds of carrion eating condors who descended on the battle field.  I spent most of my time gawping at the impressive stonework - these stones were massive and still fitted together millimeter perfect.

     We had had enough walking by this point so hung around for a bit until a taxi turned up and got that for the last km or so into town.


     Next day we went to the next hostel - a semiposh one called Yanantin - very nice room, big, comfy, horrible smell coming from the drains.  We went out and bought all the stuff we needed for our trek - water bottles, a bag, head lamps, knee supports etc.  and spent the rest of the day chilling.  We couldn't really sleep that night as we knew we had to get up about 5 a.m....bring on the Inka Trail...