Cusco

Cusco city streets

A view over Cusco

Cusco cathedral

The giant stones transported to form the defensive walls of Saqsaywaman

A view across Plaza de Armas

After the 6 hour bus ride we arrived in Cusco. The beautiful
colonial centre is mesmerising and you can spend hours wandering the streets
admiring the blend of Spanish Colonial architecture and Inka inspired walls and
décor. The infuriating thing about Cusco centre is how touristy it is, it has
lost a lot of the Peruvian charm and now every corner is frequented by people
asking you if you want a massage, restaurants chasing you with menus prying you
into their establishments. It makes for an unpleasant feeling of existing
solely for the purpose of the tourist and has driven the Peruvians out of the
city centre.
I arrived with a terrible cramp in my leg and a starving
stomach, so the hungry monster came out and drove F crazy before I found the
food I was craving. Our tour guide took those who wanted to on a walk of the
city, I lay in bed and tried to figure out what was going on with my leg. That
evening we headed to a local tourist haunt of Los Perros where we found the
international cuisine that mant opf our group were craving. I have never been
so happy to see a plate of stir fry vegetables. We headed out to the party
hostal after dinner where the young part of our group had headed and had some
beers before escaping from the imminent messiness.
An early wakeup call in order to see the sunrise over
Saqsaywaman (pronounced sexy women) resulted in a fascinating tour but with no
sunrise. This was a Inca fort and is phenomenal in is construction. The stone
bricks are perfectly carved to form the walls and the size of the boulders that
they brought up from the nearest quarry is truly impressive. Only about 20% of
the site remains today as when the Spanish arrived in Cusco they took the
stones from the Inca site and used them to build the Colonial buildings that
still exist in Cusco today. It was 6am on an Inca site and there were kids
playing football everywhere!!!!
A stop a Jacks coffee saw me very happy to see decent coffee
and a wonderful mango, orange and ginger juice that cured the oncoming cold. It
was a Sunday sand we walked into the Cathedral during mass to avoid the
entrance fees and admire the wooden alters with intricate detail and beautiful
paintings of the old town of Cusco. Cusco was designed by the Incas to form the
shape of the Puma with Saqsaywaman as the head and main plaza as the heart and
the old town as the body with the two rivers forming the tail. That afternoon
we got lost in the local market that not only consisted of the central market
place but filled all the surrounding streets and it was a nice retreat from the
touristic centre to wander without being hassled. Plaza San Francisco had live
music and a craft market, although colourful failed to attract the wallet out
of my handbag.
Tonight F and I decided to celebrate our 3 year anniversary
after delaying the celebrations due to illness. F had a Alpaca kebab and I a
stuffed pepper after an entre of garlic bread – which was white bread with
garlic butter, needless to say we were relieved when the main course arrived J
Another city walking tour the next day saw us take in the
site of Iglesia de Santo Domingo which was originally the site of the Sun
temple of the Inca and an observatory during their time. It was fascinating to
see the original Inca walls being used alongside the Dominican church. The
stone work is incredible and is testament to the Inca’s that during the two
large earthquakes in Cusco the Inca structures stood while the Colonial
buildings fell to rubble.
We visited one of the projects that Gap is working with in
the community. It is a kids home where they provide a variety of different
services for children from abusive families or children without support or families.
It was good to see that were not addressing just one of the many needs of these
children. They had an educational component where they helped them with their
homework or to reintegrated back into education, a therapy based programme
where they addressed the psychological and emotional needs of both the children
and parents, developing self esteem, personal values, social skills and
cultural identity.. A work based program where they taught skills/trades so
that once they left the program they could find work and take them off the
streets. They had a program with children with special needs and finally a
recycling program for everyone where they received education and skills on how
to reduce waste, increase environmental awareness.
Our group has been reduced as a few have headed off to the
jungle and so it was nice to have a smaller group to head to the Irish pub for
a few ales then to a divine pizza place for a very relaxed and chilled evening.
We are starting to feel like we have too long in Cusco now
as the days are dragging on. The last site we wanted to see was the Inka museum
that tracked the history of the Inca’s. I though the Inca civilisation was a
lot older than it was and it still seemed unclear to me as to how this wave of
civilisation started. The empire grew so quickly because they borrowed the
technology for the existing tribes and brought all the ideas together, so it
wasn’t a completely different tribal group more the formation and joining
together of the existing groups. How that process happened is vague. The
artefacts for both pre Inca and Inca times were fascinating and much more advanced
than I had anticipated, especially in pottery and ceramics and the decoration
of these items. At the museum they also had a weaving exhibit where they were
training women in the traditional methods of weaving and several women were
sitting around the courtyard weaving as they had done for centuries – it was
great to see such preservation of culture.