Cusco / Cuzco

Cusco is just an amazing city, I think I could spend weeks here.. and I am glad that I have 8 days for Cusco, the surrounding sacred Inca valley and the Machu Picchu, there is so much to see and the atmosphere is really nice as well. It is just great so sit down somewhere, have a drink.. (I mean a tea or an inka cola or a fanta..., the piscos are for the evenings... ;-) ) and watch the city's life..

Cusco was the former capital of the Inca empire and even if the Spaniard did everything to destroy most of the Inca-buildings, they integrated parts of it in their own buildings, even monasteries... the Quorikancha (meaning golden courtyard in Quechua) palace / Santo Domingo Monastery is the best example... The Palace was the main one of Cusco and the walls were all covered in gold. Everything was destroyed but the walls were left after the gold had been taken off...

As it was the centre of the Inca culture, the Spaniards had to deploy some special effort here to convert the locals to the Christian religion: There are a lot of churches and monasteries here and they are all especially rich in decoration, there is literally gold everywhere.. all the altars are made out of cedar wood and are covered with gold... well, the Inca-gold that the Spaniards did not put in the churches, they brought it back to Spain..., so at least, they left it here... the Cathedral is stunning, I think I have never seen anything comparable...

I visited lots of the churches and monasteries, walked through the little streets with craftsshops everywhere... The main square, called Plaza de Armas like in almost all Peruvian town / city, is beautiful.. it is sourrounded by colonial arcades with shops, bars and restaurants.. the former Inca square was actually double the size !

Yesterday, I took the local bus to Pisaq, a town 30km away from Cusco, where there is a market on Sundays... First of all, it was difficult to find the "terminal", which was well hidden in some courtyard.. I asked a lady passing by (tere were actually not that many people out there in that area at 7 in the morning...) and she was going there as well.. fortunately I still got a ticket with a seat.. as the bus is just filled up until literally nobody fits in anymore.. after not even 10 minutes of travel, we were stopped by the police (as the bus was too full) and , in addition, it seems that the driver did not have all the papers.. So we were stopped for more than half an hour.. then, 5 minutes after we had started we stopped again: a tire had gone flat !!! This took another half an hour.. It was actually quite funny to see the local people's reactions... they strongly complained that the bus was too full and yelled at the driver and the accompanying person, "thiefs" was probably one of the less strong expressions used... but in the end, I made it to Pisaq, where I walked through the market, which , unfortunately, is not that traditional anymore.. most of it is a pure tourist market with local handicraft - some of it in good quality, but also a lot of crap.. I ate a chocolate chip chessecake at "Ulrike's café", the owner of which is A german lady who lives here for quite some time already.. The French couple, Céline and Gildas, had praised this cheesecake so ch that I had to try it.. and it was reallllyy good !! Then I started my climb up to the ruins, which is a 1,5 hours walk very steep up with a lot of "Inka stairs". The landscape is just beautiful with all the Inca-agricultural-terraces on the hillside.. Whn I saw the first ruins, I though I had arrived, but that was just an illusion: the site is ebormous and I actually walked around there for around 2,5 hours. I made some extensive breaks on the site in order to escape the tour groups which arrived in hords between 11 and12 but were rushed through by their guides, which were yelling "faster, faster!" all the time.. In the end, I also decided to walk down again, so in total I was walking around 5 hours, which was quite a challenge given the altitude and the fact that I have cought a nasty cold, whic provokes quite some breathing problems... but the walk was very rewarding ..

The bus-trip back was also a bit challenging as - this time - I did not get a seat and was one of those squished in the bus. I had to stand in an impossible position for almost an hour and eqach time the driver was changing gear, he hit me with the gear stick... not very nice... :-( but I survived... but extremely exhausted...

The night was very hard, as I could not sleep as I was freezing.. even with my sleeping bag and the little heater on.. I suppose I had some fever as well... so, today, I just visited a few other sites within Cusco and bought my train tickets up to Machu Picchu (for which I had to stand in line fo 2 hours.. !!!) But finally I got exactly the trains I wanted even if by e-mail, Perurail had told me that these trains were fully booked...

Tomorrow, I will leave for Ollantaytambo (in the sacred Inca valley9, where I stay one night and from there I will take the train up to Aguas Calientes, the village closest to the site of Machu Picchu, where I will stay for two nights. This allows me to visit the ruins of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu in the early morning before the tour-group-hords arrive on the spot... You will therefore probably not hear from e for a while as I read that Internet access is not so wide spread up there or extremely slow.. we will see...