This blog is coming much later than I expected because instead of spending the 5 days I had planned in this town, I was here for two weeks. That's the great thing about solo travel, if you want to get lost in a place, you can just do it.
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| New country, new border crossing selfie! |
Two weeks ago I stumbled into town off a night bus from Bolivia. Well actually, a collectivo, a short walk across the Peruvian border, a tuktuk, a minibus to the next town, a bicycle taxi and finally a coach. This may sound horribly confusing, but this was using all the local transports, getting directions along the way when my phone died and haggling down greedy drivers on prices, which all in all cost me less than half the price of the direct tourist bus. Making all of that effort isn't just a reward on the wallet, it's actually pretty fun turning an easy route into a testing challenge of wits, language and geography.
But I digress. I had finally arrived in the town of my dreams: Cuzco! The capital of the ancient Inca Empire! My inner history nerd was frothing at the mouth. Unfortunately, for the first few days the outer body was doing the same from another bout of food poisoning. Thankfully my immune system finally managed to right itself, and I was off around town.
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| Local snack - Choclo con Queso, cheese and corn! Cuzco alone has 300 types of corn. This one tastes heaps better than what you get at home |
First stop: the cathedral. I first read about this place in a young adult fantasy book years back, an incredibly intricate and grandiose church built on the burning ruins of an Inca temple. The main nave was breathtaking: a dark interior lit up by endless displays of gold and silver and saints and virgins, the transfigured treasure of a ransacked empire. There were mirrors large and small around most of the altars, which was explained as a method the Spanish used to get the natives into church: they would tell them their souls got trapped in the mirrors when they did evil things, and only prayer in the church would get them out. This was reinforced by odd paintings, such as a huge mural of the last supper with the apostles about to tuck into a roasted guinea pig instead of bread and wine.
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| *toooooooot* |
Later that day I took a free walking tour with a great guide who showed us all kinds of little things around the city. He showed us a lot of Incan walls that still stand, easily identifiable by their intricate stonework, slight lean and lack of cement. The lean makes them quake-proof, something that the Spanish never copied despite their vertical builds crumbling around them in every tremor. Later on, he took us to a music shop where I got to put out some tunes on a conch shell and a goat horn!
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| Remains of the great Sun Temple at Sacsayhuaman |
In the immediate surrounds of the city are Incan ruins large and small. I started at a place called Sacsayhuaman (pronounced almost exactly like Sexy Woman), which used to be a huge temple to the sun and moon, and while I was there I was offered a horseback tour of a bunch of other sites. Thinking back to the hard slog up the hill to the site with altitude holding me down further, I took them up on the offer the next day and saddled up for the first time in 15 years. Cappuccino, my noble steed, took me round some other sites, mostly temples and sacrificial spots and an old Inca trail, then a collectivo bus took me to a few more. Unfortunately most of these places had very little information given, which led to the sites feeling more like a pile of rocks then a relevant historical area, but it was a great day of exploring nonetheless.
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| Ser Nat of Cuzco |
After that, I didn't do anything too special, besides immersing myself in the town. It's a very likeable city: the streets are clean, the stones are old, the life is wild and vibrant both day and night, and the touts and tour operators are not persistent to the point of being rude. I began to form 'local' habits: at the San Pedro market, I found a
casera I liked in the lunch stalls and visited her almost every day for some Peruvian fried rice or roast chicken. I went to the same lady for an ice cream far too often - they only cost 60c, and besides, if I was feeling down, you can't be unhappy when you're holding an ice cream. When I was crashing at a friend's AirBnB, I got to know the neighbourhood even better while getting out of the hostel scene for a bit. It wasn't much, but it was very refreshing after rolling from place to place for so long.
The amount of parades I saw was extraordinary too. Almost every day, there was something going on, whether it was young children doing traditional dances around the main square, religious parades of saints and virgins down the narrow streets, or even military parades in front of the cathedral. I think this is mostly because it was the month of the festival of Inti Raymi, the sun god, whose festival is on June 24th, a massive event in Cuzco. Unfortunately, even I couldn't justify staying there that long.
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| They were so adorable! |
I also went to Machu Picchu of course, but I will leave that to another post to do it proper justice. Next stop is Lima for a night, then off further north to a small town called Huarmey to a volunteer gig, helping the locals recover from the recent floods. Nos vemos!
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