Cuzco

Cuzco was our first destination in Peru. Once a capital of the Inca empire, it is a tourist city these days. While the colonial Spanish architecture had replaced that of the Incas in the city, there are still plenty of reminders of the Inca era in and just outside the city. The city is also a base for exploring the surrounding areas, including the Sacred Valley and perhaps the most famous site on the continent, Machu Picchu.

A night at an airport is rarely much fun. When planning our trip, because of our late arrival in Lima from Sao Paolo (11pm), we had considered going to a hotel in the middle of the night and returning back early in the morning. There were very few hotels nearby except for an overpriced Ramada right at the airport. It seemed like an expensive hassle. We ended up choosing an uncomfortable and very inexpensive alternative - spending a night at the airport and flying out on the first flight to Cuzco in the morning at 5:30am.

The airport was quite busy even in the middle of the night. It seems a lot of flights arrive and depart Lima around or just after midnight. We were entertained by a systematic cleaning crew of a food court, used some bandwidth from Starbucks to catch up on the news and make more plans, and even enjoyed a Pisco Sour to kick off our Peruvian adventure in style. I managed to get some sleep later in the night on the chairs in the relatively cold terminal.

I watched the landscape from above on our flight to Cuzco. Lima was covered by a coastal fog but there were lights higher up in the mountains. Later, the ground below went completely dark as the mountains are quite sparsely populated. Still later, we were treated to one of the most beautiful sunrises I can remember on a flight as we flew over snowcapped Andes sticking out above the clouds. Cuzco greeted us with more low clouds. Already from the air, it was hard not to notice a feature of a Peruvian architecture I had seen on my first trip to Peru 11 years before - unfinished buildings with rebar sticking out from the top floors.

We overpaid for our taxi from the airport to our hotel that we had booked a few days earlier from Brazil. Even though we showed up at 7:30 in the morning, the hotel staff at Rumi Punku let us check-in. We drank some coca tea as we waited for our room to be ready. The room was huge... And cold. The heat must have been off overnight and, as we found over the course of the following days, the heat was only on at night. The nights are cold in Cuzco in winter - often around or just a few degrees above freezing. We shivered under the blankets for a couple of hours trying to catch up on sleep. I woke up feeling a bit out of it, as Irina would put it, probably because of the altitude but I got better when we got moving again.

Trying on a chullo	Dawn from a plane	Jet engine sunrise	Window above the clouds	Curves	Airplane window scenery
	Andes	More Andes	Sea of clouds	Mountain above the sea of clouds	Diving into the clouds
Our plane in Cuzco

We were given a map and basic walk-around instructions in the reception of our hotel -- Cuzco is completely safe, one should not pay much for taxis, and the main square, Plaza del Armas, is quite close... And that was where we went first. It was a Sunday and there was a parade through the square. Marching bands and units of military parading along kept our attention for a while.

Altitude	Dreamcatcher	Models	A girl and her goat	Death penalty	Colorful balaclavas
Marching band	Officials	Army	Girls	Cathedral	Buses

Later, we continued our walking tour through some of the adjacent squares. I felt much better after having a lunch - a roasted chicken with sweet potatoes, a meal that I bought from a street vendor. We observed the street life for a few hours before taking some more rest in the hotel which gave me time to ponder a bit what I had seen. Like everywhere, tourism is a blessing for the local economy. The city has experienced tremenous growth in the last few decades and a relative prosperity. There is usually a price to pay for this popularity. Local art souvenir stores line many of the streets and spill out into courtyards. Quechua locals dress up in local costumes to pose for pictures for money. Yet, it all still seemed strangely authentic. Hopefully, it will not get past this stage to where a local art store gets pushed out by a big name brand from overseas....

Tupac Amaru buses	Bata shoe store	Mass	Lamborgini ice cream cart	Ice cream competitor	Young generation pastimes
Parfait party	Newspaper sellers	Street musician	Street musician		Street dogs on Plaza San Francisco
Street	El Che	Native old woman	Native old woman	Atahualpa	Jackhammer danger
Calle Choquechaca	An old lady on Calle Atocsaycuchi	An old lady on Calle Atocsaycuchi

It was already dark when we headed out for dinner. We picked one of the restaurants on Plaza del Armas. It was a great experience. We sat next to a window overlooking the cathedrals surrounding the square. Their quinoa soup was absolutely delicious. We feasted on ceviche with a variety of potatoes and corn, that the region is known for, as sides. In fact, potatoes originally come from this Andean region. Ceviche, another Peruvian specialty, features raw fish or seafood, and had recently become one of our favorites. The somewhat exotic tastes were a welcome change from a slightly unispiring cuisine of our destinations in Brazil. While we were having dinner, a three-man band walked in and played Peruvian music making for a great atmosphere. We liked their performance so much that Irina ended up buying their CD.

Walking back to the hotel, I could feel it had been a long day which had really started some 36 hours earlier in Rio de Janeiro. I could definitely feel the altitude too. After all, Cuzco is some 11,300 ft (3,400 m) above the sea level. I could feel it still more later in the evening when we tried to keep warm...

Quinoa soup	Quinoa soup	Ceviche and Plaza del Armas	Native band	Guitar player	Guitar player
Drum player	Zampona player	Arcade on Plaza del Armas

After having a great time in Cuzco on our first day there, we needed to take care of some business - a little over a week earlier while in Brazil we finally settled on a five day tour from Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon region. The selection process was a bit confusing as the same tour seemed to be offered by several web sites. We decided to go to the source, a website of the lodge (Wasai Tambopata) where we would be staying, and booked through a link there. Now, we needed to pay a deposit (which amounted to $632), equal to a half of our total payment, and they did not accept credit cards. As my online research turned up, an account at Western Union would be next to impossible to set up since we were already abroad. An international wire from one of my accounts would not only be expensive, but also difficult to arrange from Peru. So we worked it out over email with a travel agent, who responded to our inquiry on the website, so that instead of wiring the money we would just deposit cash into their account at Banco de Credito which happens to be the biggest Peruvian bank.

We located one of their branches in Cuzco and on Monday morning waited in a long line for our turn with a teller. Our wad of cash (US dollars) came both from ATMs in the USA and dollar friendly ATMs in Peru. We presented our cash and said we would like to deposit it into an account a number of which the travel agent gave us. They started inspecting the dollar bills. About a quarter of them did not pass the inspection. Some had a tiny rip, others were marked, and they would only accept perfect bills.

I volunteered to withdraw some more cash from their own ATM while Irina would wait. But wait, their ATMs were down temporarily. We ended up trekking back through the town to another ATM we had found a day earlier and got more cash there. Back in the line, we realized we would have a hard time making our appointment with a travel agent at our hotel to talk about our trip to Machu Picchu. So I went back ahead while Irina waited to deposit the money.

The agent was late so it did not matter. Irina came back from the bank with a tiny slip that did not show any info as far as who deposited the money. We took a picture of it and sent it to the agent in Lima arranging our trip and hoped everything would work out fine. Meanwhile, the other agent at our hotel in Cuzco offered us a good price for the trip to Machu Picchu, including our own driver for a tour of the Sacred Valley before catching a train from Ollaytatambo to Machu Picchu. So instead of running around town on our own to buy tickets to Machu Picchu, tickets for the train, and figuring out how to get to the train, we took her package and had the rest of the day off...

Incidentally, my Lonely Planet guide from 13 years ago showed prices of about one third for much of the admissions and fares. Peruvians have definitely taken to the market economy and learnt to take advantage of their country's popularity.

Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus	Taxi	Bus on Calle Choquechaca	Playing a doctor?	He's got something funny in there
	Kids	Posing for a photo	Street musician	A mother and her boy	Upside down

We continued our walking tour where we left off the day before, in particular near Qoricancha, a site of once the most important Inca temple. The Spanish incorporated some of its walls into a cathedral of Santo Domingo they built in its place.

Street craft	Making a woven bookmark	Inca walls near Qoricancha	Cell phones in a costume	Boy	Police
Police		Jesus on a cross statue	Air girl?	Church entrance	School girls
Boy	Boy again	Policewoman	Weary tourists	Beggar	Street life
Hypnotism	Irina in a parfait bar	ATM striptease	Forbidden ATM fruit

Later, we took a cab up to Sacsayhuaman, an Inca site just above the city. Who would not like to see a sexy woman? We hired a guide to walk us through the ruins. She provided some history background and pointed out some rocks shaped like Inca sacred animals, among other things. Given that Incas did not leave any written records, it is amazing how little is known about their history and culture. The piles of rocks that remain give a incomplete picture how they lived. There are nice views from the ruins overlooking the city. The original layout of the city in the shape of a puma has long been lost in a sea of houses that extend up and down the valley. The landmark Plaza del Armas was easy to spot. From Sacsayhuaman, we walked over to an illuminated statue of the Christ and then back down to the city.

Like the evening before, we walked to Plaza del Armas to have dinner. We were offered a menu in one of the arcades on the square. It looked interesting. Little did we know that the restaurant was some three blocks away. We were the only customers and they went to great lenghts to keep us happy. I ordered a "cuy chactado", a fried Guinea pig. When they brought it out, it looked like a little rabbit, and it came including the teeth. When the chef saw me try to tackle it with a knife and a fork, he ran out and recommended to just use hands. It was a bit on the dry side, so I washed it down with a local lager Cusquena.

Our guide	Llama	Guinnea pig?	Stone gate	Indians	Sacsayhuaman complex
Christ behind a barbed wire	Plaza del Armas	Cuzco at dusk	Irina	Cuy and I