Cusco - Last days

I still had four days in Cusco after I finished the trail, but the first of these was spent housekeeping (laundry mainly, including my jeans which were soaking wet and muddy up to the knees), writing emails, reading, sleeping, and basically spending as much time as possible on my arse or lying down. This gave me two and a half days to explore Cusco. Clearly I wasn’t going to see much of anything in two days without a guided tour, so I enlisted for the City tour on Tuesday and the Sacred Valley tour on Wednesday.

Cusco has a really amazing cathedral, built after the Spanish invasion, and therefore built and decorated in an interesting mix of European and Inca styles. For instance, the horses in the paintings (all of biblical scenes, obviously) look very llama-like, and I found the very first depiction of the Last Supper I had ever seen where Jesus and the disciples are eating guinea-pig and drinking chicha (corn beer). In that particular painting, Jesus and 11 of the disciples are white, and one had dark skin. I don’t think I need to tell you which. It seemed odd to me that an Incan artist would choose to depict Judas this way, as if he was identifying with him somehow. I figure the reasons for this were economic, that the Spanish man (I bet it was a man) that commissioned the painting wanted it that way, presumably to convey to the recently vanquished Inca society what their place in the new social order was.

Next up, the Qorikancha, an old Inca temple that the Spanish, in their Catholic colonial frenzy, tore down and built a convent on top of. Anything that was deemed to be of spiritual significance to the Incas (pagans) was taken down, the walls and basic structure left and taken over by the Catholic Church for the convent, and for a palace for one of the men who had helped Pizarro conquer Peru. Years later there was an earthquake that shook all of Cusco, and the Spanish-built walls and roof came tumbling down, while the Inca walls remained intact. Since then the Qorikancha has been declared a protected site and the convent was never rebuilt, giving a “construction site” feel to the place, which is a little unfortunate.

The weather began to sour as we headed out to Saqsaywaman (or “Sexy Woman”, to all the pronunciatorally challenged English speakers), an incredible Inca structure built with enormously massive stones (excuse the tautology, the size of the stones merit the emphasis) one of which has more than 30 corners (or something like that, we didn’t spend much time there on account of the rain). Then we went to see a (fairly uninspiring, compared to the rest of the things we’d seen) water temple, before being dropped off in the main square. I had been fairly careful so far on my travels not to waste money on stupid and ridiculous souvenirs (fridge magnets, commemorative coins, woven bracelets and similar tourist trash) but was loath to leave Peru without something to remember it by. I had noticed a lot of Peruvians wearing woollen ponchos, which looked beautiful and very warm. I found a gorgeous one for USD$24, which I was quite prepared to pay if that was the going rate, but given I was shopping in a street just off the main square, I was inclined to believe they were ripping me off. As always, when in doubt about something, I went back to the hotel and asked Vicky. She advised me (wisely of course) to wait until the next day when I would be going to the market at Pisaq and would be able to haggle a better price. I had also decided to eat guinea-pig that night, but the restaurant Vicky recommended proved impossible to find, and, disinclined to wander about any more in the pouring rain, I ducked into the cleanest looking place I saw. Let it be said here that despite all the warnings I ate salads and food from stalls in Peru and didn’t get sick. I had alpaca (tough and fairly tasteless), a glass of wine and a coffee which all up cost me 30 soles, which, considering I had eaten an enormous bowl of delicious vegetable soup, lomo saltado and juice for lunch for 2 soles fifty, seemed completely outrageous. However, considering it was about seven euro I shut up and enjoyed my meal.

My second-last day in Cusco I spent doing the tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Incidentally, there’s nothing sacred about the valley itself, but rather the river that runs through it (the Urubamba) was sacred and the reputation rubbed off on the valley. Although the hotel had booked me on the English tour, there was some confusion at the tour company with regards to which bus I should be on, and by virtue of the fact I was talking to them in Spanish I managed to worm my way onto the Spanish tour. Thank God, because another day of pre-recorded, broken English would have done my head in.

The first thing we went to see had nothing to do with Inca culture or Peruvian history, and everything to do with capitalism and fleecing tourists. The Pisaq market. Trying continuously to keep my father’s advice in mind (“Lucia, don’t buy stupid shit.”) I ignored the vast array of cheap but poorly made and incredibly useless souvenirs and embarked on my poncho-finding mission. I eventually found one very similar to the one from the previous day (though admittedly not quite as good quality) for 35 soles, less than half the price of the other one. I also finally bought some corn from a stand, although I wasn’t hungry, it was something I wanted to try before I left Peru. There are a few different types of corn available in Peru, and this kind is white rather than yellow, with enormous, mutant-size kernels. It was sweet and juicy, served in its original leaves, eaten without condiments. Yummy. I was soon to regret this purchase however, as I didn’t realise that our next stop would be an early lunch. The lunch was buffet style, and Christina (a girl I met) and I decided we would have a bit of everything. Everything meant starters, sushi (which I hadn’t eaten since I left Australia) main course and dessert. For all this we only had an hour. We stuffed our faces like mad, the food was delicious, but by the end of it I really needed a good lie down. A good lie down didn’t really factor into my near future however, and we were off to see Ollantaytambo.

“Tambo” in the Inca language means “rest stop” and that’s basically what it had been, a sort of Inca hostel on the way to Machupicchu. Again we learnt lots about Inca engineering, agriculture and logistics, and it turns out they were actually quite clever little ducks. They had grain silos up in the mountains where two or three air currents happen to meet, making that space a few degrees colder than the ambient temperature. The guide told us how they diverted the course of the nearby river to get the boulders from the mountains “over” the river to the Ollantaytambo site.

From Ollantaytambo to a smaller site with an adjoining church. The church was unremarkable save for the quite gory and depressing representations of Jesus dripping with blood. I guess they were trying to make an impactful statement about the nature of Jesus’s sacrifice, but maybe they let their imaginations run away with them? By this stage we were all getting a little sick and tired of the locals waiting to pounce at every tourist trap, thrusting ponchos, little carved animals, jewellery and coca leaves in your face. It was especially heartbreaking to see young children out there in the rain, hawking souvenirs, when they should, by rights, have been in school. Such is the extent of poverty in Peru.

That marked the end of the tour and to be honest, I was pretty wiped at that point. I slept in the bus all the way back to Cusco, and that night met up with Christina and we wandered the streets together, checking out the nightlife (which was pretty dead considering it was a Wednesday). Cusco is even prettier by night, the square is all lit up and if you look past the city into the mountains all the lights from the houses twinkle at you like stars. I only stayed out for a couple of hours before heading back to the hostel and crashing into bed.

Thursday was my last day in Cusco, and I had planned on going out to see a bit more of the city in the morning, but I ended up packing, eating breakfast, and generally doing housekeeping stuff and wasting time. I still hadn’t eaten guinea-pig, or gotten my jeans back from the laundry the hotel had sent them to two days before (my only pair of jeans!). I also hadn’t been able to confirm my flight with the “travel agent” I had booked it through, who wouldn’t answer my (numerous) emails. Finally in desperation I called Lan to discover that although she had booked me on a flight, it was four hours earlier than the one she told me she was going to book, and I had to be at the airport in less than an hour. I took a taxi to the restaurant Vicki had recommended where they served guinea-pig, and I was right to follow her recommendation, since it was almost half the price there as everywhere else in Cusco. I was surprised when it came out of the kitchen, I guess I was expecting some sort of “fillet of guinea-pig”, but what I got was a spread-eagled, fried-up, whole animal sitting on the plate. The waiter told me not to bother with cutlery, that it was traditional to eat it with your hands. It occurred to me that he may have been taking the piss, but I took my chances and went in fingers first. Guinea pigs have a high bone to meat ratio, so really hands is the only sensible way to eat them. The skin was crispy and the meat tender. It was delicious but I would have liked to have more time to really taste and enjoy the meal, and not have to wolf it down in order to get to the airport in time to catch my flight. I caught a taxi back to the hostel, got my bags together and was just about to catch a taxi to the airport when my jeans finally turned up from the laundry! Rejoicing at the fortunate timing, I jumped in the taxi and said my final goodbye to Cusco as I was riding along in the brilliant sunshine. Cusco is such a pretty and friendly city, and, although being there feels like stepping into a bygone era, it has a lot of charm and uniqueness to recommend it as a city, not just as a place to sleep in order to see lots of Inca ruins.

Of course, once I got to the airport I was playing the waiting game. I had plenty of books to read but insufficient energy to concentrate enough to read them. What I really needed was a trashy magazine, “Cosmopolitan” or similar, but I only had a couple of soles left and I wanted to keep those for dinner. Besides, a trashy mag would keep me occupied for a maximum of about two hours, and I had a marathon 27 hours of flying ahead of me. I wasn’t even going that far (to Denver in Colorado) but to get there I was flying Cusco – Arequipa – Lima – LA – Phoenix – Denver. I amused myself as best I could, particularly during the eight hour layover in Lima, and was finally on my way to the next continent – North America.