Cusco - Part the First

Cusco was off to a fine start with a driver there to meet us for our free airport transfer to Amaru Hostel. The hostel itself (really more of a hotel) was very nice and our room was cosy with an extra bed in a loft. There was a nice view of the city from the walkway outside our upstairs room.

With the day already about half gone we had to concentrate on finalising arrangements for the next few days rather than doing much in the way of sightseeing directly. Since this was our first day at altitude we also wanted to take it a bit easy. Thus a short stroll to the tourist office was followed by visits to a supermarket, the department responsible for selling entrance tickets to Machu Picchu, and the office responsible for selling combined admission tickets to about a dozen sites and museums in and around the Cusco region. This latter ticket meant we could sign up for a tour of the Sacred Valley tomorrow and use our combined ticket for entry to the sites visited on the tour. This all involved a fair amount of walking around the city so we managed to do some incidental sightseeing and market inspections in the course of events. Otherwise it was an early dinner at a nearby eatery and and early night to prepare for tomorrow.

First impressions of Cusco? It is a nice looking place with cobbled streets and traces of Inca style stonework. It is a friendly place - especially if you look like a tourist! Pity about some of the smelly vehicle exhausts, but it seems you get that nearly everywhere.

The Sacred Valley tour was nearly off to a false start when I realised as I boarded the tour bus that I had left our combined site entry tickets in our room. I was able to dash back and get them and then catch a taxi to the last pickup point and rejoin Laura who was hoping we were getting all of the bad luck out of the way early!

The ruins at Pisaq

 The tour involved a circuit from Cusco through a number of attractions in the adjacent valley - known as The Sacred Valley in Inca times. We could really have done without the first 20 minute stop in Pisaq at a small craft market that you could stroll through in about five minutes. Especially since this limited the amount of time we could spend at the next stop which was far more interesting - the remains of former Inca city on the mountain above Pisaq. Our guide was quite knowledgeable but it would have been nice to have had more than the 45 minutes we had to explore more of the ruins which looked very interesting and extended much further up the mountain than we had time to reach.
Our next stop was at another larger market in Pisaq, where there were not only handicrafts but fresh fruit and vegetables. Laura and I treated ourselves to a slice of watermelon each and it was delicious - though we were a little concerned about the quality of the water used to wash the knife before slicing the watermelon. In the handicraft section Laura managed to negotiate the purchase of a pair of small metalwork lizards.

Next was the lunch stop. We had deliberately declined the extra buffet lunch option thinking we would explore whatever the local streets had to offer. So we were a little peeved when we (and everyone else who had declined the lunch option) were dropped at a different hotel which provided a buffet lunch, assured that it was the cheaper option and that there was nothing much on offer in the surrounding streets. As it happened the lunch was pretty good, and more reasonably priced than the prepaid alternative, and there really wasn't much in the area. At least we were able to fill up so that we wouldn't need a big dinner.

The fine stone work at Ollantaytambo

The next stop was to see another Inca site at Ollantaytambo. This was another multi-tiered site and even though we were a little lower than Cusco the lungs were forced to work overtime in climbing to the top - in stages. Our guide gave us further information about the site at each rest stop on the way up. It was very interesting to see the quality of stone work that went into creating the walls. The stones, some of which weighed hundreds of kilos, were not all square but were nevertheless fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle with no gaps between the joins.

The demonstration of wool dying in progress

It was getting late in the day by the time we reboarded the bus but we had one more stop at twilight on the way back to Cusco. This was at Chinchero where we stopped at a lookout offering views of another Inca site at twilight before sitting down to see a short demonstration from three local woman about how they prepared and dyed the alpaca wool for using in weaving and knitting. Even with their limited English they had a few funny lines down pat to make it all entertaining as well as interesting.

So it was quite late by the time we made it back to Cusco, more than 30 minutes later than the advertised end time of 6:00pm. Not that we minded (we didn't have any wild parties to go to!) but it was a pretty long day, though certainly very interesting too. As with many such multi-site day tours it would be nice to have more control over how long you could spend at each place, and even which ones you could skip entirely.