Day 3: Cusco


Day 3: CUSCO, in which I see some Inca ruins and have further run-ins with local transportation

After all of the travelling days, it was nice to wake knowing that I would be spending the full day in one place. Breakfast was wonderful, albeit a little eccentric for my English sensibilities, featuring the tastiest pineapple I’d ever eaten in my life along with a tray of hot meatballs, and butter so decoratively presented that it would take me another day to find it.

I hope I’m not the only person who always photographs hotel breakfasts

After breakfast, I joined the guide and some of the others in the group on a trip to Saqsaywaman, which lies on top of a hill to the north of the city Perhaps fearful that an attempt to walk up the hill might result in me keeling over, the guide hailed some taxis out of nowhere and sent us on our way. My taxi driver of course turned out to be a king of the species, overtaking every other taxi and vehicle in his way as we progressed up the hill.

The guide likened Saqsaywaman (pronounced as ‘sexy woman’) to Stonehenge, a comparison I didn’t feel was particularly strong as Stonehenge is many thousands of years older. In fact it would be more accurate to compare it with Hampton Court Palace, and if the Spanish Armada hadn’t been defeated perhaps that palace could be in a similar condition. Despite the lack of age, the remaining fragments of this Inca Fortress were impressive in terms of scale and craftsmanship. Our guide was clearly deeply passionate about the history of his people, and he told us many captivating stories from the days of the long-gone Inca empire.

It’s not so easy to capture the scale of the place in a photograph – each individual stone was enormous, and originally the fortress was much larger before the Spanish disassembled it to build their churches.

In addition to Saqsaywaman, we also visited some other smaller Inca sites, travelling between them by waiting at something that didn’t look very much like a bus stop for something that didn’t look very much like a bus. The locals on board stared at us as if we had lost our senses. Seeing as, without a guide, it is almost important to deduce where a particular bus is headed and when and where it might stop, I can’t imagine they get many gringos climbing aboard.

The bus was a lot of fun and only cost a few pence, with the added excitement of trying not to fall out of the open door whenever the bus pulled off unexpectedly.

Once we had seen all of the Inca sights, we got the bus back to town and then descended about a million steps until we arrived at a restaurant where I had my first taste of alpaca.

Not beef – alpaca! And delicious it was too.

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