Cusco and Machu Picchu

Dear friends,

I hope this article finds all of you very well. Since a couple of days I am back from a fantastic trip to the cultural heart of this beautiful country. On Friday afternoon I flew into Cusco, a little afraid of altitud problems, but luckily I was not affected.  Coming to the “plaza de armas”, Cusco’s main place,

I had a “mate de coca” (which is the tea of the coca leaf). Even though it fights its bad image due to the drug, that is processed of the same leaves, it has nothing in common with it, but the image problem.

The first day I explored the city by foot and talked to a variety of travel agents, trying to set up the trip to Machu Picchu for Geralynn and me on Tuesday.

Saturday I did the city tour in the morning, which already includes 4 of the nearby sites around the city. The most interesting was Sacsayhuman (please do not hold me relyable on the spelling).

 

The following sunday I almost spend entirely on the market in Pisac, where I went rather early in the morning after spending half an hour in the overcrowded cathedral for the Sunday morning service. On the way in the local bus I sat next to a yound mom with her little boy, who offered me some of hte popcorn he was snacking on. Although his hands might have been as dirty as the streets, I felt very welcome and gladly acepted the little offer. The market was full of locals as well as tourists. Sadly even after hard bargaining prices were comparable to those in Lima’s markets.

 

On monday morning I had everything set up, for Geralynn’s arrival. I was very happy to meet her at the airport and felt so sorry that I had to rush her, as our tour through te sacred valley was scheduled to leave at 9:00 am sharp.The hassle was definetelly worth it, even though our travel agent would complain about having to wait for us at the end of the day. Oh well….

We went to the market in Pisac as a first stop, but I sure wqas glad to have had the chance to see the place in the busy state on Sunday’s, as it was only half as big, but twice as touristical on Monday morngning. Our 30 minutes rush was quickly donw with, when the bus honked its horn to weak up the rest of the citicens who might as well still have been sleeping.

The nearby ruins of Pisac where the first little walk we had to do and it kept us busy for about 1,5 hours. The view we had about the old inca labratory was worth the little hike. Nevertheless at the topwe had to rest in what we quickly established must have been the guards seat.

 

Continuing to Ollantaytambo after a great lunch buffet with a variety of fish and meat as well as vegi empañadas (not very usual here), we had the oportunity to spend almost 5 hours in the ruins of this old Inca fortress which once was the last hideout when the Inca’s were fleeing from the conquering Spanish.

  

Waiting for the train to Aguas Calientes, which is at the bottom of the hills that host the most famous of peru’s archeological sites, we had a great western like dinner with chicken in whine sauce. The place was also neet to sit down after climbing so many stairs.

Spending the night in Aguas calientes is not worthwile mentioning, save the fact that we decided to get up early to walk te 8 km to Machu Pichu, in order to see the sunrise on top before it got crowded. This little adventure was not completed as we wished it was, for 2 reasons: first of all the 8 km where entirely steep uphill flights of stairs in the jungle and second, because the sun was hidden by an astonishing magnitude of clouds we basically passed on our tiring way upstairs.

 

When finally reaching the top we met the same friends we just made the night before in the train. They were looking for a guide as well so we pooled in. As a group we had much more fun exploring the marvellous sites and hidden treasures of the old Inca culture.

  

What we saw was worth ever bit of the trip !!

   

Really!!!

    

The day turned beautiful once the sun came out around 8:30 am and we quickly started taking of our  “rainforest protection clothes”.

As if this was not enough to call it a day, yet, we decided to climb Wayna Picchu as well (translating into “young mountain”, whereas Machu Picchu would be “old mountain” in quechua)

Reaching the top was emotional after climbing 1000 feet pretty straigth into the sky.

  

At last we decided to go down again at 4 pm, taking into consideration that the site closes at 5:30 om if I am not mistaken.

Sitting down in the mercedes bus, which by the way for US$ 6,- was the most expensive ever in Peru, we felt our legs quite a bit, but turned even happier as the rain puring down on the roof reassured us of great timing. We meant to visit the hotsprings that evening, but none of us had any ambitions to go after walking around all day meanwhile it was still puring down buckets of medium-warm tropical rain.

The following morning one of the very few trains in Peru took us back to Aguas Ollantaytambo where we took a taxi to drive us to the ruins of Morray.

 

Just in time we reached the airport the same afternoon to fly happily and exhaustedly back to Lima. What a trip!

I hope you all had a wonderful time as well,

take care,

Matthias