Return to Cusco

Leaving already?

It wasn't real, I checked...

The (tourist) town of Agua Calientes.

I'm not the sort of person who throws around the phrase 'bucket list' and things you have to do before you die, but I guess I just 'crossed off' one of those. Some people also talk about places and countries as 'done,' so when you ask them "where have you been in Asia?" they would reply "I've done Vietnam, Thailand... and oh yeah, we DID Cambodia last year." What is 'doing' a country supposed to mean? It annoys me, and so do people that always say "it was amaaaaaazing!" about everything. Machu Picchu was special though - nothing really anything else like it in the world, and I did enjoy the experience as it's hard not too. Looking back on it now, and seeing the photos again, the whole thing is really sinking in - I've been (done?) Machu Picchu, one of the New Seven Wonders Of The World. A few things take away from the experience, like the price or crowds, the fact that you only get 1 shot for good weather, and it's remoteness - but I guess this adds to it's uniqueness too. Some other places that I have been to have also disappointed a little, or just didn't live up to my high expectations. On the other hand, places like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Rome (ah Roma!), and of course The Pyramids, just blew me away. Machu Picchu is somewhere in the middle I guess - I had very high expectations, as it was somewhere I wanted to visit ever since I first heard about it 20 years ago, and nothing can really compare to a 15 year old's expectations about something so strange and foreign when he'd never left his own State, let alone country, before.

A dog and his restaurant on the road to Agua Calientes.

Peruvian Hairless dogs... yuck!

Beauty everywhere, even on railroads.

Trying not to grumble about the weather the day after Machu Picchu - as it was warm and sunny, perfect for photos - Laurel and I sat down for some breakfast before doing the hike back to the bus. Some people say they are 'dog' or 'cat people,' which I don't agree with as I love both, but at the same time I don't like all dogs and cats - some can be downright assholes. There is also the thing of looks - which I think are important regarding animals that you touch on a daily basis. Well, the Peruvian Hairless dog is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, and there was no way I wanted to touch it at all, and I had a hard time keeping my scrambled eggs down. There were a few in the town, running around and barking at everyone. They are a dark grey colour, leathery with tuffs of white hair sticking up from their head and a spot here or there on their bodies. Some of them were wearing knitted jumpers made by their owners, although this did little to hide their hideousness. Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh, as this breed is very old, dating back to Pre-Inca times, and I'm not usually this superficial (I'm sure they have a lovely personality), but a dog is supposed to be fluffy and cute and make you want to touch it. These dogs have failed in my opinion. After managing to not look at them too much while eating breakfast, we headed off into the sunshine back to Cusco. The rid back was not as pleasant as the one in - our transport was delayed by 3 Chileans who got lost or were just very slow getting back from Machu Picchu, and so the driver was upset and driving like a maniac to make up for time. We nearly died twice, once from nearly reversing off a cliff and the other time a truck nearly hit us head on (as we were on the wrong side of the road of course...). Safely back in Cusco and still shaking, straight to bed was the only think I wanted to do.

I'm (not) sexy and I know it!

Piece of art.

"Sexy Woman" ruins in Cusco.

With a few days to explore and enjoy the city before jumping on another bus, we decided to walk up the hill behind Cusco to see the ruins of Sacsayhuaman. There are so many ruins and archaeological sites in the area that you could spend at least a week seeing them, but they aren't cheap. It costs 70 soles ($27) for the entrance to one site, or you could buy a ticket for 130 soles ($52) for all of them. I didn't want to spent the $27 to be honest, as I think that is a bit steep considering you can eat a huge meal in the city for less than $5 and have a bed for $15, but this was the main sight here so pay I did. Pronounced 'Sexywoman' but most people, including the local tour guides, is a fortress which sits in the hills above Cusco. It was built in around 1100 AD by the Killke culture (one of many cultures and peoples in the area before the Incas) and added to by the Incas, it uses the same Inca-typical building style of dry stone walls using huge hand-cut blocks with no mortar between them. Outside the fortress there are women selling all kinds of things from stone llamas to wrist braids, and I ended up talking to one women and haggled her down from 30 soles to 12 ($12 to $5) for a stone statue of Pachamama. I was happy!

Where there's a will, there's a way.

The streets of Cusco.

The ruins of  Sacsayhuaman.

There was very little information about the ruins, so I Just enjoyed taking photos and walking around at hill that the Sexy Woman ruins sat on, overlooking the city. Some people don't think that the Incas could've built such things with the tools they had - the stones were too large, too hard to cut. How did they do it? Some people suggest alien intervention. Although I believe that there are other (more) intelligent beings in the universe, I don't believe they came all the way here to muck around with a few stones walls and pyramids then disappear without getting any acknowledgement for it. A BBC TV Series I watched a few years back, called Building Wonders, showed modern engineers re-constructing famous buildings around Britain, including the Stonehenge, using only the tools they had at the time. Ok, they had modern knowledge of physics and construction techniques, but they did it. Manpower and ingenuity are the keys here, and the Incas has bucket-loads of both. The common people worked for the Emperor on 'public works' projects (called a 'mita' system), and in return they would be fed and given alcohol, and music would be played while they worked - not a bad deal.

Mountains around the Sacred Valley of Cusco.

The fortress of Sacsayhuaman.

Salt from the Maras.

There are so many things to see and do in this city, and one of those things I also did was the Inca Museum just behind the main plaza. This place is packed with treasures from the Inca Empire, describes all the people and cultures that came before the Incas, how people lived and used the land as well as telling the story of the Spanish Invasion and their never-ending quest for gold and silver. Something I noticed walking around the streets away from the centre were the roofs of houses - they had small decorations on them. When a house is finished in Peru, you put a small ornament on the roof for luck, the practise is called Torito de Pucara. It dates back before the Spanish, and the idols used to be llamas but have since been changed to bulls. There are so many churches in this city that they all start to blur together - huge, brown-stone Spanish Colonial structures to God and used to awe the local populace and convert them to Catholicism. Today they draw tourists as well as god-fearing Peruvians and South Americans, but the trouble is that you have to pay to get into all of them, and even then you can't take photos. I understand that some chuched don't want hordes of foreigners with cameras coming in and making a place of quiet worship into a circus event, but at the same time if you are going to charge tourists (locals don't get charged) then let them take photos - every other country does it. Long story short, I didn't go into any of the paid churches - I preferred to find small ones that weren't a tourist destination.

The Maras of Cusco.

Maras, 40kms North of Cusco.

Salt ponds of Maras.

By this time, my Machu Picchu buddy had left the city for another destination, and maybe we would meet back up somewhere along the track - the good part about travelling is sometimes this happens and it's great! I decided to do a short day tour before leaving myself. I'd seen the Maras on television many, many years before coming to Peru and had always wanted to see them in person, so today I did. I took a bus tour 40kms north of Cusco, driving through beautiful landscapes along the way, and ending up in a gorge just outside the small town of Maras. People have been mining or havesting salt for thousands of years, even tens of thousands, mining it from the ground or gathering it from evaporated sea water. The same is done here with salt water, but with a difference - a natural spring of highly salty water fills hundred of ponds, flowing through intricately dug channels that run down the side of the mountain. People work these 'fields' of salt and water, the system dating back to before the Incas where anyone can work and gather the salt as long as they are part of the community and it is all cooperative. The water flows down into the ponds, the water level slowly goes down, and yada yada yada, you have salt! There are different types of salt, colour and taste, and all of it is available for sale at the shops at the top - where you have to walk through to see the mines of course, and walk through again to get back to your bus. 

Hand-crafted clothes... for a price.

Selfie time!

Some of the colours and designs of the clothes made here.

The last thing on the list of things to do here before heading off was a small town just outside of Cusco. At the local workshop a group of ladies make the colourful and traditional clothes that you see all around the country. All made my hand, they use natural dyes from local ingredients. The woman who was doing the demonstration had great English, and explained how they made it and how the whole community was involved and that the money goes back to the town. Llama wool is used for these clothes - first it's washed in natural soap, then dyed and hung out to dry. We were served 'munya' tea while we watched and listened, but most people were too interesting in watching a little 7 year old girl, all dressed up like the adults, making clothes. Aftegr the demonstration people wandered around and took photos, but very few people bought anything as everything was quite expensive - a long shawl cost 300 soles ($120). Beautiful but far too much for my limited budget. If only I could buy all the beautiful things that I've seen along this trip - fistly I wouldn't have the room in my bag, even if I bought a new one, nor would I have any money left. I will have to make a special round-the-World trip just to go back to these places to shop! A good day out, and a good farewell to Cusco too - I felt that I'd done a fair bit here, and not just Machu Picchu.

Thanks for visiting, come back soon!