Return to the navel

Back to Cusco and it's still as good looking as ever. We spend a couple of days finishing off seeing the local sights. To see the Inca ruins on the outskirts of town you have to buy a boletto touristico, a tourist ticket. This ticket also includes loads of museums within Cusco itself so we thought we'd make use of it and have a nosey around, after eating more cracking food of course.
We visited a dire underground museum, a dire museum in a church with oodles of god(excuse the pun) awful Spanish religious art, a decent modern museum and another moderate popular art place.
Back in the day when the Spaniards were trying to convert everyone to become a Catholic they clearly had a language barrier, the locals of Cusco spoke a language called Quecha(some Peruvians still speak it as well as another called Aymar), so to overcome this reams of abysmal art was produced to tell the story of Jesus and the bible and all that tosh. Worshipping the sun to get a good harvest made much more sense. Anyway, this means that now there's plenty of pitiful museums claiming to have wonderful historical art that is really just pure garbage.

Saying that, we did see some great art in the tourist information museum which also included some old photographs of Cusco. Clearly a lot of money has been pumped into the place to renovate it. It's always looked beautiful but to varying degrees, many streets in the faded pictures looked like the buildings had suffered from large earthquakes. The main church on the main square, the Plaza de Armas, was half crumbled. What we see now seems a long way from the dirt streets and half tumbled buildings but there was clearly still a charm about the place. I just couldn't help but like it. But after over a week here, longer than we'd spent in one place anywhere else, it was time to get a move on. I didn't want to leave but there were other places to see. I'd come back even though I'm not sure what was left to see, other than the many church interiors but you have to buy a separate tourist ticket for that. I'd obviously stuff my face in one of the many great eateries on offer, even though I'd had a bad stomach for days that I couldn't shake off.
Okay so you get hassled to buy some piece of art, hats, sunglasses, t-shirts and books every five minutes of various street hawkers. But, they don't pester you too badly, well not as much as the guys trying to get you into their bars and restaurants. It's also full of tourists, for the travel purist/idiot this is a bad thing. For me this doesn't bother me a jot, in fact it takes the pressure of the blond boy anyway. For me this is one of the best places we've been. The people are friendly, the place has winding cobbled narrow streets with well crafted stonework buildings, it's got history coming out of it's belly button and has good food and views a plenty. Forget Peru, this could be the best city in South America.

But onward we go. Arequipa next. This place looks great from the photos and we've heard it's stunning. Will it live up to Cusco though? It's also home to the two deepest canyons in the world. Should be interesting.

The sexywoman of Peru

In between gourmet meals and fine wines we did manage to sneak in the odd bit of sight-seeing too. Many tourists come to Cusco for a couple of reasons. The main one is the ancient Inka site of Macchu Picchu. It's close by, sort of. The other is because there's many an Inka site a lot nearer the city. On the outskirts of town there are 4 Inka sites to visit. We got dropped off at the farthest one and walked the 8km back to town taking in the other 3 on the way.
The first was at Tambomachay. This is basically a ceremonial bathing site for the Inkas. The Inkas actually only reigned for about 200 years but what they did leave behind was quite substantial and has definitley left it's mark on the landscape and villages of Peru. Excellent stonework here also and an expert water channelling system for freshwater baths straight from the mountains. It's a shame Peruvian tap water isn't as fresh nowadays.
Nearby was another site, Q'engo. This is speculated to have been a fortress but others have said it was a rest stop for weary travellers. Either way it gives great views looking back over Cusco. Not much to it other than numurous small unroofed rooms.
It was quite a distance to the next 2 sites and not using suncream was a great error, I never seem to learn. I got absolutely frazzled. Typically.
After about 45 minutes of tramping down a hill past tourists on horseback going the other way we arrive at the 3rd and slightly more impressive site. This is largely a huge rock that has been cut into and under, producing many carved steps, altars and pitch black networks of tunnels. There's also a large round ceremonial area. It's said that many a sacrifice to the gods took place here. I was also in a photo with more Peruvians here. Another tourist sacrifice.
Last and by far the best site is Sacsayhuman, known to many tourists as 'sexywoman' as the pronunciation is quite similar. This is a huge site overlooking Cusco and is also the spot where a huge battle between the Spanish and the Inkas took place. Mammoth stones are placed and carved here forming a large jagged effect that is supposed to represent the teeth of a puma. Some of the rocks are 3 times the height of me so it must've taken some serious shifting to get them here. Without the aid of any modern machinery this is extremely impressive. There's also a large round terraced area that possibly could've been a fortress. The Inkas terraced lots of steep land areas to improve irrigation for crop growing also. Although Sacsayhuman is a massive site now it's only 20% of it's original size, the Spanish destroyed the rest. Cusco was clearly a very important place for the Inkas and therefore the Spanish needed to clearly make their mark here too. Which is probably why there's a large Christ figure right by the Inka site.
We walk back down to the city along the steep cobbled streets looking forward to the big one. These Inka sites are merely a warm up to the most famous of them all, as well as one of the most famous sights of the whole continent of South America and the world, Macchu Picchu.
But getting there isn't straight forward.

The Navel of the world

We heard a lot about Cusco, all good, but where we'd been dropped off by the bus looked much like the tumbledown buildings of Puno.
Once in a taxi and off toward a few hostels, to see if they had vacancies, we soon discover this is very different from Puno. In fact it's very different from most places we've been on this trip. In a good way.
The main square, the Plaza de Armas, is a picturesque affair with two large cathedrals and a central fountain. Wooden and and stone constructed buildings containing cafes, restaurants and shops line the other sides of the square. We've not seen soo many tourists in one place for a long time, well since Iquazu Falls.
The streets leading off the Plaza are narrow and cobbled. One car at a time mainly, I think a lot were one-way but sometimes you can't tell.
The street leading to our hostel is a steep cobbled affair. Not great at still a fairly high altitude. It doesn't get easier no matter how many times we climb it. At the top there's great views over the city and down onto the square.
Cusco is the old capital of the Inca empire and many Inca related things still remain, many have also been destroyed by the Spanish or built over which is why there's soo many churches here. It's a beautiful city either way. There are still many intact Inka walls and narrow streets lined with huge angled stones perfectly married together without the need for mortar. Some parts seem like they haven't changed for centuries.
We'd heard from a couple we'd met in Puno that there's an English cafe here that does classic English food. By this point I was missing some home fair and this place gave it to me. We ate a great Sunday roast, with vegatable bake, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings(although these weren't up to my standard of course). Lovely stuff. I know it's not exactly getting into the flavours of the country but I didn't care.
Not all of Cusco is beautiful of course, Avenida del Sol is one example. A long commercial street that's constantly full of noisy traffic and people trying to get you to exchange dollars. Still, we've seen worse. Along with this there's an everyday hassle of saying, 'No, gracias' to about 20 people trying to get you in restaurants, give you massages, sell you paintings, sunglasses, jewellery, hats, clothes and marijuana. I can get past that just to be here. At night the place is lit up and looks just as good. It's also a safe place to walk around at any time. The tourist police prescense see to that. We decide to stay a while. Peru has suddenly got much better.
We gorge ourselves on great food almost every night too. There's soo many good looking places to choose from that you could eat at a different place every night for a year and it'll mainly be good. Many restaurants look rustic or arty and have gone to the effort to try and get the tourists more than any other place we've seen. We also watch a couple of live bands in a strange art bar that has weird masks coming out of the walls and crazy art scattered around. I'd be happy just to be here and eat and drink for a week or so but there's plenty of sights to see damn it!
First up was the central Inka Museum. Not a bad place, set in a Spanish Colonial mansion, with someinteresting stuff inside including a dark room filled with sacrificed mummies in frightening positions. I'm not that into looking at dead bodies tied up with their hands up to their face screaming. Well not much anyway.
We seem to round off most days here in some flash funky restaurant that's pretty cheap and has outstanding food, did I say I liked this place?