Cusco or Cuzco

October 14 - 23, 2012

Cuzco used to be the capital of the Inca Empire and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983. The historical part of the city is extremely quaint and picturesque. Lots of narrow, cobbled streets lined with colonial style buildings with red tiled roof tops; several squares - the main one ¨Plaza des Armas¨ (named the same in every other city) was the largest and contained beautiful cured garden beds and a fountain with a statue of an Inca. The city is within the ¨sacred valley¨ and surrounded by mountains dotted with houses etc. Cuzco is at an elevation of 3400m or 11,200ft! Luckily, neither of us experienced any altitude sickness and were pretty well acclimatized after being in Arequipa and Colca Canyon!!

When we first arrived, it was too early in the morning to check-in to our room at the hostel, so we decided to begin touring the region, even though we were a little bleary eyed! We grabbed some breakfast from a food stall at the Plaza de San Francisco (just so we could feel like we were back at home, haha). It consisted of a delicious drink that the locals have for breakfast - freshly made hot apple juice with quinoa!! We shared a fresh "maracuya" (passion fruit) juice and tucked away at an apple cake. Best "on the fly" breakfast ever!

We then hooked up with a couple from Norway, that we had met earlier at our hostel, and took a local minibus to the town of Pisac (also in the Sacred Valley). There, we visited the Pisac market consisting of artisanal crafts/clothes etc. and produce. We also sat up on a porch, overlooking the market, to have some quinoa vegetable soup and to people watch. It was the best place to take some sneeky photos of the locals. Shame, shame! (NB. Apparently, people here don´t like being photographed because they associate it with their soul being taken away!).

The next day we spent most of the day exploring the historic part of Cuzco. This included wondering down to a road filled with artisinal stores and quite a few tourists in order to check out an original wall built by the Incas. An incredible wall showing the unbelievable and mind-boggling  skill of the Incas who carved HUGE stones made of granite and pieced them together like a puzzle! Once we located the wall, we found what we were looking for - the 12-angled stone! It wasn´t hard to find, as a bunch of tourists were lining up to take their turn for a snapshot alongside it (yes, we did, too!). The Spanish repurposed remains of Inca walls for their buildings, as in the above case. It was very evident that the portion of the wall, built by the Spanish, was inferior in quality (i.e. much smaller stones, without any purposeful shape and the use of mortar!). The wall was filmed in "Motorcycle Diaries", where a joke by the Cuzco locals is referenced: "Here is the wall built by the Inca. Here is the wall built by the Incapable".

We also explored the local, San Pedro Market, where we bought some produce for our homemade dinner at the hostel that evening (Rakesh´s Indian chickpeas and rice...yummy!). The market included both, food and artisanal products. While there, we were pretty disturbed by the sight of a pile of cows heads, all skinned and with their eyes intact! Yikes!

It was during this day when we first became aware of women standing out on the sidewalks, attempting to lure tourists into purchasing a massage session. We were approached every other block (or so it felt) by these women. How I wished I could have said "yes! sure!" On another day, Rakesh and I laughed as we answered "no thanks", the lady replied "after Macchu Piccu?!". Yes, it sure would have been nice to have had a massage after our 4 day trek!!

On Tuesday, we spent most of the day relaxing, as I was feeling a little run down. We did, however, venture out in the afternoon to buy a guitar from a store outside of the historic center of Cuzco. The reason for buying a guitar is that Rakesh had asked the owner of the hostel, whether there was a guitar in the building that he could play. Her response was "no", but then asked Rakesh if he wouldn´t mind buying one for her to keep in the hostel, as apparently their had been others asking for a guitar, too. We ventured to a more local part of town in order to find a few guitar stores. We were a little disappointed to find out that in most of the stores the guitars were all made in China! We did, however, find one that had some guitars made in Peru and so that´s where we bought the guitar for the hostel at quite the bargain (300 soles ~ $100), well, ofcourse they paid us back. It was an fun experience though to venture around the non-touristy part of the city. We, in fact, were the only tourists around, as far as we knew. The area consisted of one store after another, with merchandise pouring out onto the sidewalks; swarms of people and traffic! As with many other similar situations thus far, asking for directions was often a feat. For example, in this situation we needed to find an ATM, to get some cash out to pay for the guitar. The answer we received was often an arm and finger pointing in the general direction and a few words, like "a la esquina" (at the corner). We would proceed to the crossing, and there we would have to ask for further directions as finding the ATM was not evident. As a result we got another finger pointing to yet another direction! We we eventually found an ATM, but several blocks away from the store!

The day before setting off for the Inca trek, we visited an Inca Museum. There, we looked at various artifacts, including tools, ceramic wear, and jewelry. We learned about the various Inca tribes (which unfortunately, we cannot remember the names) but that lived at different elevations in the Andes and, therefore, cultivated different types of grains, cereals and potatoes. FYI: there are a few thousand varieties of potatoes in Peru! We also saw clothing of the Incas, mummies (mostly skeletons) and colonial artifacts. Another, interesting (but gruesome) tid-bit, is that the Inca nobles were subjected to a deformation of their skull, so that it was elongated and appeared more oval. It was a way of indicating their status! This was quite clear in some of the mummies we saw!

The rest of the day was spent preparing for the Inca trek, including the purchase of walking sticks, which were well worth it!! Rakesh also bought himself a nice hoodie top made of llama wool and I bought a pair of Peruvian style pants, a hoodie and scarf, also made of llama wool.


Return from Inca trek on October 21st, 2012 (Cuzco October 21-23):

After returning from the Inca trek, we were exhausted! We needed another whole day in Cuzco to sleep in and relax before setting off for Puno. On the 23rd, we purchased our tickets for a tourist bus ride to Puno, walked and also ventured out to another very local area called "Plaza de Santiago". There, Rakesh was in search of "charrango" (Andean guitar). Again, we were possibly the only tourists there. We had been told that it was not a safe area and to watch out for our day packs. We, however, felt fine. Maybe it´s thanks to Rakesh, who blended in pretty well, even though he often got curious stares due to people not quite figuring out where he is from. It was this area, where we should have bought the guitar for the hostel. A road was filled with actual musical instrument workshops. We found an affordable charrango, though due to crazy directions (just like the example described above), we did not return to the store to make the purchase. By the time we found the ATM we were looking for, the walk ended up being to far, and it began to get darker and decided to walk back towards the hostel instead. We grabbed some more groceries at the supermarket and made our last hostel-made dinner (Rakesh´s chickpeas, again). A Russian couple, working at the hostel, kindly gave us some of their quinoa balls that they had made the night before. Likewise, we gave them some of our food, too.

I want to mention that because Cuzco attracts so many tourist, it caters to all palates. It was the first place where we found many restaurants serving vegetarian food. We did eat out a few times, and had pizza, pasta as well as local food, such as Ceviche for the first time! Overall, the food in restaurants was very good!