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Cuzco

We had a few hours to sleep in Lima that night before taking a flight to Cusco . We had the most beautiful views from the plane. As we were descending into Cusco we passed right by snow-capped peaks interspersed with a cloud or two - very scenic! Soon after getting off the plane we both started feeling the altitude (10,900 ft) and had a headache that lasted through the day. We ate a lot of candies and drank coca tea which helped us adjust to the altitude.

After a noon-time nap, we had a guided tour of the city with a small group and a not-so-good guide (she didn't provide much detailed info). We started in the Convent of Santo Domingo right across the street from our hotel, la Residencia del Sol. Like other structures in Cusco, the convent was built by the Spanish on the foundations of Incan buildings that they had torn down.

The Incan stone work is very impressive. With minimal technology they were able to joined stones with precise seams and in an anti-seismic manner. Cuzco has been hit by a number of earthquakes over the years, and the Spanish structures frequently fell and were rebuilt, while the Inca stone walls remain intact today.

We also visited the cathedral on the Plaza de Armas, which is a series of three joined churches, each heavily adorned with Cuzco artwork, which is a mix of traditional Orthodox Catholic arwork and Incan mythology. For instance, Virgin Mary is represented in the shape of a mountain instead of the European slim style because she is the mother of Jesus and the Incas revered Mother Earth.

Then our tour continued by minibus to the outskirts of the city to Sacsayhuaman (pronounced similarly to Sexy Woman), Puca Pucara and Tambo Machay. Sacsayhuaman is an incredibly impressive display of Incan stone work. The rocks used in the construction are tremendously large, and very intricately carved. Archeologists believe that Sacsayhuaman represnted a large puma - one of the three sacred animals, representing this world. From the hills around Sacsayhuaman, we had a great view of the city below us.

The next day we were scheduled to take a tour to the Sacred Valley, which is the valley of the Urubamba River . It turned out no one else signed up so it was just us and a guide and a driver. (The tourist industry here is quite hierarchical: the guide is never the driver, even when we get picked up from the airport.) The guides are incredibly knowledgable though. In order to be a guide in Peru, you have to take a 5 year post-secondary school program. Some private institutes also offer a 3 year accelerate program that results in a guide certification.

We visited the crafts market in Pisac, somehow forgot to see the ruins we were supposed to see there, and then went along the valley floor through Urubamba to Ollantaytambo. Here we visited the ruins of an Inca town, with terraces, guard tower, temple and storage houses. It seems that most Inca settlements were built into a steep slope. They went through a lot of trouble to build stone terraces for agricultural and decorative purposes when it would have been a lot easier to build everything down by the river where the land is flat. One explanation is that some people actually lived down low, but it was the commoners, while the rich people lived higher up so they could survey their subjects. At least in Ollantaytambo, this was so.

As for the scenery, the steep hills along the valley, with a snowy peak at the end of it, were quite scenic although everything looks pretty yellow and dry, almost like parts of California .