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| Plaza de Armas with Catedral de Cusco |
September 6, 2024
On the morning of September 3rd, after a quick breakfast we got a ride to the airport so we could fly to Cusco. The airport was very crowded in the domestic area, but we heard that a new terminal was being constructed and set to open by the end of the year. They’ve also built a second runway which will hopefully speed up departures, so flights don’t end up as late as ours was. We were probably about 45 mins late and spent at least 15 mins waiting to take off as flights were coming in and leaving on the same runway. When we arrived in Cusco, elevation 11,150 ft, we were picked up and taken to the place we were staying, which was a 2 bedroom apartment with a kitchen. This kitchen space came in useful as we boiled up a bunch of water there, as the tap water isn’t safe for drinking.
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| Qorianchka |
The plan for the first day in Cusco was to just wander around the historic district and acclimate. We could definitely tell that the elevation was higher than what we were used to. We felt a bit out of breath moving around, but this was why we got here when we did; we wanted to get acclimated to a higher elevation. One of the first things we did was was pay off our Inca Trail Hike with Alpaca Expeditions. It was nice getting that money turned in and no longer having to worry about what to do with $1200. We wandered through the Historic District, the Plaza de Armas, and over to Qorianchka, before returning to Plaza de Armas later. The Plaza gets really busy after the sun sets (an early 5:45 pm). One thing my mom and I have noticed is it appears that the majority of the tourists seem to be Spanish speaking, so Peru is very popular with the other South and Central American countries. The Plaza has a number of police officers walking the square in pairs, very visible due to their fluorescent yellow jackets. There was this cute interaction we saw between 2 police officers and a probably 4 year old boy. He was dressed up exactly like the policemen, including the fluorescent yellow coat that said Policia, so they have a fan. Very adorable.
Day 2 in Cusco also happened to be my 35th birthday! To celebrate (or really just because it was the plan for the day) we took a collectivo to the town of Pisac. A collectivo is a 15 passenger van that is used to get around from town to town and they’re ridiculously cheap. The trip to Pisac was 5 soles each direction per person, which equals out to about $1.25. You just go to a specific part of town and they’ll start saying “Pisac? Pisac?” “Si, Si!” And then you get on. Along the way some people got off and others got on, while others just stayed on the whole trip. The road was very twisty and turny and my stomach didn’t like that much. I was on the verge of being sick when we pulled into town, but after a bit of fresh air by the river I was feeling better. Along the way we passed through a few smaller towns, including a town where they had sheep “mowing” their soccer pitch.
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| Pisac Ruins |
After arriving in Pisac, we took a taxi up to the top of the Pisac ruins, which were old Inca ruins. You could hike up and back down, but from what I read, it was probably worth the price of the taxi to take you up to the top and just walk down to town. The ruins were fantastic. Loads of terraces, just like you see pictures of. There were the ruins of a whole group of buildings on the hill overlooking the terraces (which were used for farming). We followed a path that stayed high and had amazing views of the valley below. We assumed that the ruins were built at different times because there were areas of big stones with perfectly straight edges and other areas of smaller stones with rough edges. As we had only been up at elevation for around 24 hours, we were definitely very short of breath going uphill, but overall felt fine. When we finished the hike, even though we were starting to get hungry, we got back on the collectivo for Cusco, because I didn’t want to risk eating before the twisty drive back.
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| Pisac Ruins - This temple aligns with the sun on the solstice. |
Once back in Cusco we went out in search of Lomo Saltado, a traditional Peruvian dish of beef, onions, tomatoes, and potatoes, with rice. It was absolutely delicious and just what I needed after a 3 hr, 3.5 mile hike. Very filling and very good!
After our success and learning the ways of the collectivo the day before, on our last day in Cusco we took a collectivo to the Tambomachay ruins north of Cusco. This was a test of our abilities because Tambomachay is not an actual stop for the collectivo. Instead we had to yell at the driver to “Pare aqui!” and he pulled over, we handed him our soles, and set off into Tambomachay. Outside of Cusco are a number of Inca ruins. Tambomachay is the furthest out, then right nearby is Puca Pucara. The next major ones were Amaru Marka Wasi, Q’enko, and the closest to Cusco was Sacsayhuaman. However, a guide book I had found at the used book store had in it a trail to follow from Tambomachay, all the way back to Cusco that passed another few ruins. We ended up hiking 10 miles that day.
Tambomachay is believed to be a set of ruins that served as a religious center, with sacred water fountains. There were multiple canals funneling water into fountains. This set of ruins was fairly small when compared to Pisac.
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| Tambomachay |
After leaving the grounds of Tambomachay, we crossed the road and walked a short ways to Puca Pucara. Puca Pucara means “red fortress” and the name is believed to come from the stone used to build the fortress on the hill, which had a reddish tint. It makes sense that Puca Pucara was a lookout fortress, because it stood up high on a hill and a lot could be seen from there. It was round so you could look out in all directions.
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| Puca Pucara |
From Puca Pucara we followed the directions in my guidebook to hike down to Amaru Makra Wasi. This guidebook had directions like “follow the road, until you see a trail cut to the left, then follow it past a pond, a soccer pitch, and then a grove of eucalyptus. When you come to the giant rock, go right into the valley.” But sure enough, the trail was exactly where the book said. It was as we were passing the pond that we found the cutest thing we’ve seen so far on the trip, a baby llama and 2 baby alpaca. The only way you could have ever seen them was following this trail. They were so adorable and we watched them for a bit because I had to have a picture of a baby alpaca and they were too busy munching their grass to look up for quite a while.
After we passed the big rock, we no longer really seemed to be anywhere near people, though we could hear a rhythmic indigenous drum that someone was playing somewhere nearby. We came across a series of ruins that I’m sure 98% of the people who visit the other ruins never see. There we did see a group that had ridden horses out there, and another that seemed to be with a guide and came from the direction we did.
We continued south towards Cusco and to reach Amaru Marka Wasi, which is also known as Templo de la Luna. This ruin had just barely visible carvings of a puma, a condor, and a snake, representing the 3 levels of the Inca religious theory of life. There were piles of cut bricks, which confused us for a bit until someone told us they were piles left by the Spanish, when they dismantled the structures after reaching them. From there we ended up getting lost. The reason was we followed the obvious trail instead of the more faint one mentioned in my guidebook. This resulted in us going about .4 miles in the wrong direction before realizing our issue and doubling back, to go the right way. We eventually found our way though, and got to Q’enko, our next set of ruins.
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| Amaru Makra Wasi |
This one was the busiest of all the ruins we had visited so far. We seemed to hit them at the exact same time as all the guided tours from Cusco did because it was so crowded. It was also a smaller set of ruins so there were a lot of people in a small area. They have a rock that supposedly looks like a puma on the summer solstice in December. This time of year it doesn’t look like anything other than a large rock standing upright. This set of ruins had a small crevice area to walk through, and then another tunnel built through the rock where there was an altar to sacrifice people on, meaning this area was a religious site.
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| Sacsayhuaman |
From Q’enko, we followed the road for a couple hundred yards before crossing and walking down the long road leading to Sacsayhuaman. Sacsayhuaman was incredible. It was massive. Just after walking in we turned to the right and went up a small hill. We then had to take a twisting tunnel through the rocks for a number of yards, and then it opened up into a HUGE amphitheater. I bet the amphitheater was over 100 yards across, a perfect circle (from my eyes anyways). We walked across the amphitheater and out the other side, then up a slight hill to where we could get a better view looking down into the amphitheater. After climbing up another hill we reached a point where we could see down into this wide expanse and over to the other side where there was a zigzag wall made of stones that were 2-3 humans tall. How they got those stones there and stacked on top of each other is beyond me! The wall had to have been at least a quarter mile long. It was just stunning to look at. Then up on top of the wall the remains of some other structures, things they say were once towers. Sacsayhuaman was said to have impressed even the conquistadores.
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| Sacsayhuaman - See...2-3 human tall stones! |
After finishing up at Sacsayhuaman, we finished our day’s trek by walking down into the Cusco Historic District and back to our room. After a brief respite in the apartment, we headed out for some food. We ate at a place closer to our place that was probably more of a locals place than a tourist place. 2 filling meals cost us a whole 36 soles, or roughly $9.36. As we’ve really only been eating a moderate breakfast, a mid-afternoon snack that we brought, and then supper, it makes for a fairly cheap day of eating.
Then after finishing up supper, we headed to the Alpaca Expeditions place where we attended a meeting to brief us on the trip. The guide said this will be the hardest hiking you’ve done, but I’ve done Kilimanjaro and Everest Base Camp trail, so I have a feeling this might be the 3rd hardest hike I’ve ever done. I’m not looking forward to all the stairs I’ve heard about.
In the morning, we finished packing up our things. We then headed to the Scotiabank to try to trade in some of our large bills for smaller ones. The ATM gives you 100 soles when you’d really prefer smaller currency like 10 or 20 soles bills, or 1, 2, or 5 soles coins. So we managed to get a bunch of smaller money which will be more useful. Google Translate Offline was very useful to get us what we wanted at the bank.
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