Katie & James in Latin America: Cusco & The Sacred Valley of the Incas

31st May to 4th June
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Next morning in the whistle top tour was to leave Lake Titicaca for Cusco and the Sacred Valle of the Incas. As we have the flash-packers with us, we decided to take the fancy Inca Express bus from Puno to Cusco which was very comfortable with as much tea as we wanted, a great stop for a lovely buffet lunch and stops at several archaelogical sights along the way. It was a really good trip and a great way to break up the journey.

The main site we stopped at was the largest temple from Incan times at Raqchi. Standing on the site next to the enormous ruins you had a real sense of how they might have lived and how important their worship of the sun was to them:

There were also several stops at view points where local women and children stood round with llamas waiting to have their photos taken which mum just had to have!:

The final stop before Cusco was at Andahuaylillas which has a beautiful 17th century church with lovely original frescos. They peruvians called it the Sistine Chapel of the Andes, well worth the trip.

Once we had arrived in Cusco, dumped the bags at the lovely 'Hostal El Balcon' and had a cup of tea (cups of tea may be becoming a theme for the next week or so...!) we went straight out into town (minus James as he had been ill all day, we left him in bed with some tomato soup) to have a look and book up our trip to Macchu Picchu. Oh, and mustn't forget to mention the delicious chicken balms we bought from a street vender at the bottom of the road!

Hostal El Balcon, Cusco

On Friday afternoon we went on a city tour around the archaelogical sights close to Cusco. The first was a chaotic jog round Santo Domingo, a church (now museum) built in the 17th century on the Oricancha, Inca Temple of the Sun. The temple was the most important of their temples in the area, aligned to the sun perfectly with lots of golden dieties, so what did the Spanish do? As ususal with their opressive subdue the native religion policy they built their church directly on the Inca foundations. It was packed with tourists which was a bit annoying but we did get to see the fabulous Inca stonework (including one stone with 14 angles) and the original curved wall of Temple of the Sun.

The Inca temple of the sun hidden under the arches of the Spanish Catholic in their usual build over the Incas temple tactic...

Perfect alignment of the original temple´s stonework

Other stops were Sacsayhuaman, a ruined ceremonial centre with more magnificent Inca walls:,

Qenqo, where there was a carved out cave containing a table where corpses were prepared and mumified for burial:,

and Tambo Machay in a lovely tranquil setting which is a spring shrine and they still do not know where the water comes from today:

On the way home we stopped at the obligatory artesan market which infuriated James who is completely artesanned-out after 8 months but Dad loved it and off we got to have a look (I never knew I had such a shopaholic for a father!!). When we got back on the bus we realised that a local women had followed us with a stone puma that she was desparate to sell to Dad. An hilarious version of 'The Price is Right' ensued which involved the woman at the door of the coach telling Dad a price, Dad turning to the 'audience' on the bus and us (all 25) all shouting 'No!' and 'Abajo!' (lower!) and various ridiculous offers. That went on for 10 mins and he still didn't buy it...

Friday night we met up with Michelle and Paul who we first met in Guatemala over 8 months ago!! We went for a lovely curry then very cheap cocktails and it was great to catch up and swap tips/stories.

The next day we were off on our way to Macchu Picchu. We took a tour through part of the Sacred Valley the first day, the first stop being Pisac with a very good artesan market (more rubbish that needs to find a home at 97 Catherine Street bought here!!) and a fantastic Inca fortress. We took a good walk through the working terraces and up to the central part of the ruins with temples and houses. We could also see many holes in the rock across the valley which were apparently tombs in the cemetry.

Pisac

The last stop of the sacred valley tour was at Ollantaytambo, another magnificentInca site complete with irrigation system and thought to have been built in the shape of a llama (they'd make a llama out of anything these Andeans!!).

After Dad had sourced some delicious BLTs, we caught the train at 8.15pm from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes:

Agua Caliente high street

By the time we arrived we were all knackered so got to bed ready for the early (5am!!) start the next day to get to Macchu Picchu for sunrise.

And it was completely worth it!!

And so time for a little background. Machu Picchu was constructed around 1450, at the height of the Inca empire. It was abandoned less than 100 years later, as the Inca empire collapsed when the Spanish conquestadores kicked off! The Spanish never found Machu Picchu even though it is only about 50 miles from Cusco, the Inca capital, and so it was not destroyed by the Spanish, as were many other Inca sites. The surrounding jungle grew to cover the site, and few knew of its existence, until 1911 that American Hiram Bingham brought the “lost” city to the world’s attention.

Maybe you are thinking, as we did before we came to Peru, that the Inca Empire was far more ancient than 1450AD. The Incas were only the culmination of many ancient tribes. They got going in the middle of the 13th century. The most popular of the legends about the of their origin was that the first "Inca", Manco Kapac emerged from Lake Titicaca on Isla Del Sol, traveled via underground caves to Cusco and established the Incas!!! Manco Kapac was the first of 14 Inca Kings before the Spanish executed the last, Atahualpa, in 1533. The 9th Inca, Pachacuti, whose name literally meant "earth-shaker"really got the ball rolling. During his reign, he and his son brought much of the Andes mountains under Inca control. He reorganized the kingdom of Cuzco into an empire, with a central government with the Inca at its head. The empire flourished with Machu Picchu built at this time. The empire spread from what is now Columbia down into now Argentina.

All the ruins and clever governmental and agricultural systems you here about are of course very impressive and interesting, but you cannot help but think that the Renaissance was well under way in Europe at the time. Leonardo da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo sculpted his David and painted the Sistine Chapel. The Incas di cut a good stone though...

Looking down on Machu Picchu from Huayna Picchu

The beautiful and dramatic valleys that make up Machu Picchu´s setting

The perfect Inca stonework again

James and Irene took the bus back down to Aguas Calientes and Katie and Andrew decided to walk. As we walked down the thousands of steps, there were about 6 little boys dressed in identical traditional costume sprinting up and down the steps and waving at every shuttle bus going past. It was only half way down when we realised what they each had a different section of hill and were chasing the buses down the hill prentending to the tourists to be the same little boy! Little did we know how effective it was until we reached the bottom and discovered that Irene and James had been fooled!

Katie and Andrew were very disappointed to hear that while being saintly and walking down the dusty hill, they had just missed a traditional procession in the square by minutes!:

After a quick drink in the square we walked up to the thermal springs for a relaxing bathe:

Then we got back to town and started on happy hour (4 for 1!!) until we decided enough was enough and went for a lovely meal at Indio Feliz (delicious crisp/chips).

Another early start the next day for the 5.45am bus back to Ollantaytambo (close shave when we turned up at the wrong station...!). At Ollantaytambo, we were met by our next guide who drove us to some spectacular salt pans, still in use after thousands of years:

The drive from here to the next stop, Moray, was beautiful.

Moray is thought to be the laboratory of Incan times with three sets of circular terraces, each terrace with a subtely different microclimate where they experimented with growing different crops and inventing new types of potato. This way they knew which crop would grow where in their kingdom:

Our final stop was at Chinchero which had a pretty little church and lots more Incan masonry. Back in Cusco, we put ourselves through some terrible folkloric dancing show but left half way through to go to the Irish pub with Susan and Kevin, a couple of Kentucky that we had met on the sacred valley tour.