Beautiful Cusco at last

  Cusco, Peru Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Well we were finally here. The jewel in Peru's crown. The fabulous colonial city of Cusco. We had booked a hostel for one night only due to our late arrival and it was right by the square which was very handy. The bus journey had been tiring (who could guess sitting down all day doing nothing could make you so tired?) so we opted for an early night in the beautiful hostel and hoped for a good night's sleep to start fresh the next day. So the next day came and our first priority was to check out and find somewhere else to stay as our room had been right behind reception and we had been disturbed throughout the night as guests checked-in and checked-out at various times. We were pointed towards Dragonfly Hostel and it seemed like a good option for us. Now we could enjoy exploring the city.Plaza de Armas is the perfect place to grab a coffee on one of the balconied restaurants and watch the world go by below. And for sure we did this more than once or twice whilst we were here. We also wanted to book some trips. As well as the usual ones you would expect (Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu) Jody had also been doing her usual google images search and had picked up on Rainbow Mountain. There wasn't much information about it but other travellers we had met on the road and whom had moved along quicker than us, had been to Cusco and had been feeding information back to us about this beautiful but little known about mountain. We were recommended to visit Vertigo Travel on a street up the hill off Plaza de Armas.We found them to be lovely genuine people who had been trekking this mountain for a while -1 month - but in the history of treks to this mountain, that is some time as 6 months ago Jody would not even have found any images on google - it's that new! So we liked the people here and decided to book all our trips through them. Sorted! The first trips we did were to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. Both we have written about separately. Then we took a short trip around the city. The city tour , as it was called, stopped only once in the city - at a museum built over an old Inca Temple. The quality of the famous inca stonework here was incredible. Our guide Vladimir (not a very Peruvian sounding name we know) told us the incas did all their best stonework on the temples. Unfortunately, the Spanish in their quest to completely dominate this town, demolished most of it, robbed all the silver & gold and built their palace over the top of it. Such a shame.Then we drove out of the city - to a site just above it. This site shall forever be remembered by us as the Sexy Woman site, as Vlad pronounced it as such. It's proper name is Saqsayhuaman. This is a site Jody had been looking forward to seeing as she had passed it on her trips 10 years ago but had not visited back then. It had intrigued her ever since. It was another site in ruins but you could see the basis of it and the absolutely ginormous stones which had been used to build it. The Spanish had robbed a lot of the stone to build they cathedral and palaces in Cusco :-( No wonder this part was left behind though, no way were those stones moving without some serious machinery or some dynamite! Vlad took us onto some more temples, those of Qengo where they embalmed their important Tambomachay which was apparently where the country people came to cleanse themselves before going to one of the other important sites to make offerings.There were a couple of other sites we stopped by, but to be honest, were were a bit templed out by now and we weren't paying much attention. It had been a good afternoon but enough was enough! Another tour we did was to the Salineras and to a Garden centre. We made a short stop over first though, to a place we had already visited on the Sacred Valley tour, Chinchero. We pretended we hadn't though as we did't want to ruin the girl's jokes she made. We didn't mind visiting again though as we had really enjoyed it the first time. The garden centre of Moray was our first proper stop though. Not a modern day garden centre but an Incan one. They had discovered that building terraces in a natural dip in the mountains, had the effect of creating several micro-climates. They built various formations of 7 terraces and did a lot of research and development of crops. For example many potatoes were found here. Many of them hybrid and they speculate that the same varieties were planted in different micro-climates here to bring about different varieties. There are now over 4,000 different varieties of potatoes (only 3,00 edible ones apparently) and many of them developed here by the Inca people. Fascinating!The Salineras was very interesting too. We drove through more stunning scenery and then went off road, and down into a ravine or canyon. There was a very steep track down into it and unfortunately we hit a traffic jam. Here in the middle of nowhere was a tailback going down the steep road. We all decided we would get off the bus and walk down the rest of the way and as we did so, we passed the culprit. A bus had snapped it's axel and was stranded. Just held in place by rocks that bus was going nowhere fast!. We continued down the ravine and enjoyed our tour of the salt works. Apparently, there is a fresh water spring that comes out of the ground here but as it has to come through these heavily mineraled rocks, the water picks up the minerals and comes out of the ground ready salted! One of only a handful in the world. The workers trap the water into different pools and allow it to evaporate naturally. They then collect the salt left behind and sell it. It is usually very expensive to buy this salt but as we are now in rainy season the price is cheaper we are told. We don't really understand the logic of that as we would have thought it would make it harder to evaporate, take longer to collect and therefore make it more expensive, but who are we to argue. Fortunately when it was time to leave, a lorry from the salt works had headed up the hill and shoved the bus out of the way so our bus could get down to pick us all up again. We were quite glad we didn't have to walk all the way up to it that's for sure.For Inca stonework though, we didn't really nee to travel out of the city. There is a very famous stone with 12 angles cut into it that sits in the base of a very substantial building, down an alleyway. We found this stone easily enough but then were pointed towards some more stones arounf the corner. Whilst we were waiting to take a photos of these other stones, a city walking tour turned up and so we got to hear all about these stones. They were set into the shape of a puma (apparently). Pumas are very significant here as the represent the god of the current world. Condors represent the god of the skies and the universe beyond, and the serpent or snake represents the god of everything beneath the ground and the underworld. Personally though, we just think someone made up the idea that it was deliberatley made into a puma as you need a good imagination to see it (photos attached). At some point during our stay, we moved from Dragonfly hostel as there was a crowd of people who insisted on smoking indoors all the time. Smoking indoors is illegal in Peru but this crowd didn't seem to care. The staff seemed reluctant to say anything to them either and we were just being smoked out. Marlon's was our new home. It was quieter, warmer and smaller. And cheaper as it turns out. It was lovely. The staff were really laid back and whenever we tried to pay our bill they just said 'mañana'.Towards the end of our stay, we managed to get a walk over to San Pedro market. This apparently was the place to buy everything except alpaca or baby alpaca. 'Maybe alpaca' you could definitely get but the real thing? No no no no no! It was a good place to while away an hour though. Everywhere we have been we have seen umpteen of the dolls they have here in Peru, but the dolls at San Pedro were just plain scary! They looked angry and as if they could thump you quite easily. Another place which was nice to browse was the San Blas area. It is one of the oldest areas of Cusco and just off from the main Plaza de Armas. It has very, very steep cobbled streets and lots of little shops to browse. Bryan found a lady who knitted hats from alpaca and he eventually gave in and bought one. Everywhere we go we see tourists kitted out in all their local purchases; hats, gloves, jumpers, scarves etc and we were determined not to do the same. However Jody had already given in to a jumper and Bryan to a cardy so it seems as if resistance is futile here. Well this city certainly didn't disappoint. It was much busier and many more tourists than Jody remembers being here last time. Bryan thought it was just how he imagined it to be; very quaint and very charming. Certainly very photogenic. But we had outstayed our welcome, Bolivia is beckoning us and we had more to do before we got there. We have really enjoyed being here and there is a pretty good chance we will be back one day. Until then - Bye Bye Cusco.