Day 9 - Arrival in Cusco and first Inca sites

The walls around the Sacsayhuaman
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Wow, what a day!!! I can't believe I haven't gone to sleep yet, even for a quick nap. I arrived this morning at 6:30 in Cusco from Arequipa with the night bus and I simply didn't sleep more than chunks of 20 minutes at a time. The driver was going so fast we were thrown from left to right everytime there was a turn and forward everytime the brake pedal was pressed. I was thinking about getting to my Hostal, having breakfast, a shower and going to bed but something different happened. I did have a shower - that was the priority after having been 26 hours in the same clothes - but then I decided to go out. I was suddenly not tired anymore.

A door to the Sacsayhuaman
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So the first thing my Rough Guide was advising me to do is to buy the Cusco Tourist Ticket. It's a combined ticket for 16 Inca related sites and museums across Cusco and the Inca Sacred Valley. It still costs 130 Soles, which is around $45. This is European standards, I don't really mind as the money seems to be used to maintain the sites, but I hope they have a different rate for residents though.

My ticket in my pocket, I decided to embark for an expedition to the first sight. Well, maybe not an expedition, let's say it was a 30-40 minutes walk uphill - steep - to the Sacsayhuaman, the "head" of the ancient city of Cusco. And you know what, I realised something, I think my vertigo is slowly starting to be cured. At the same time, if being on the edge of a 1km canyon yesterday doesn't do the trick, what will?

Puca Puca
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So, yes, the Sacsayhuaman, the "head" of Cusco. Let's not forget Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire, stretching from what is now Ecuador to Peru, eastern Bolivia, north Chile and north Argentina. As a city of this importance, it was designed in a specific way, in this case in the shape of a Puma, the animal representing the Earth for the Incas. And in this Puma, the Sacsayhuaman is the head. By the way, the other two key animals are the Snake for the underworld, and ... the Condor for the sky, or the spiritual space. See how much I learnt today!!!

Puca Puca
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So what was it then? Well, the Sacsayhuaman is a megalithic site, a sort of inner city composed of three different layers corresponding to these three "spaces", with at the center the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. The main use for it was to complete Cusco's Puma by forming its a head. I'm quite sure that our French readers will have started thinking about Esteban and Zia at this point...

The most impressive with those ruins is the absence of cement to make the - huge - stones stay together to form a wall. The Incas used the shapes of the stones to create a kind of lego, but not a square or rectangular game a lego, a king of random one. In fact, the structure of their walls remind me a lot of what a cristalline structure looks like. The big advantage is that the stone's own gravity causes them to stay together and most of all, because they are assembled in quite a random manner, there is no obvious weak point or way to "attack" the wall to destroy it. Quite smart for 15th century people when 21st century engineers realise that by doing so, they were making the structure capable of sustaining earthquakes, so frequent in this region.

The city of Cusco from the Sacsayhuaman
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Wow, this is already a long entry... I have to say, all these are only ruins but they are so different than the ruins we are used to visit it is quite fascinating... But I'm going to cut things short.

After the Sacsayhuaman, I walked to the Qenko, which is quite a weird site, a big stone with tunnels we don't exactly know what it was used for. I then took the collectivo to get to the last two major sites immediatly around Cusco: The Tambo Machay and the Puca Puca. The former was a - not so public - bath. The latter was probably a hunting "lodge" for the Emperor.

I'm still holding the handrail...
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Pff... loads of Inca ruins today, it was very good. And the best thing was to be able to do thisjust by walking and using normal buses with the locals. I mean, tours are nice but at some point you want your freedom back!

By the way, if you ever got the chance, try the Lomo Salto. It's salted pieces of beef cookedwith potatoes and onions, served with rice. I had that today after all my physical efforts and it was delicious.

Ok, that's it for today. Got to get my laundry back (wow that's interesting). I will probably head to the pub for a drink after that and then go to sleep. Tomorrow, I really start exploring the Sacred Valley with a stop in Pisac.