On Monday, the alarm went off at 4.30 am and we got up, packed up and had a rushed breakfast. After checking out of the hostel, we walked to the bus stop to try and catch the first bus at 5.30 am to Machu Picchu. We wanted to get there early because we wanted to climb Wayna Picchu (the big mountain that overlooks the ruins) and only 400 people per day were allowed. We arrived at the bus stop at 5.00 am and there was already a long queue of people waiting. Despite this we managed to get on one of the first buses and we arrived at Machu Picchu at 6.00 am. We walked up the long trail to the Hut of the Caretaker of the Funerary Rock which gave us an overview over the site. The cloud was billowing around and we managed to get a few atmospheric shots. The size of the site was impressive and the setting with huge mountain peaks all around and cloud rising out of the valleys was picturesque. The mountains fell precipitously down to the river winding far below. We walked through the middle of the site with temples, buildings and terraces all around us, to the start of the trail up Wayna Picchu at the Ceremonial Rock. We followed the trail as it went past a turn off to a smaller peak and then down before the really steep climb started up Wayna Picchu. It took us an hour to get to the top and we were sweating profusely. Near the top, huge flights of rock steps led straight up in a vertigo inducing climb. Then we had to crawl through a small cave tunnel to get to the summit. Unfortunately it was clouded over when we got there but we rested on the jumble of rocks at the summit before climbing down to the first terrace. It rained on and off and most people gave up and left. Just when we were ready to give up ourselves strong gusts of wind started blowing up from below and incredibly the clouds blew away and the whole site was revealed below giving us the classic postcard of Machu Picchu. We took a few photos and left, very happy that the climb and the wait had not been in vain.
It was now much wetter because of the rain and the descent of the steep steps was nerve wracking. Many of the steps were rounded or at the wrong angle and extremely small which made it harder. You also had to really concentrate and keep your eyes on the steps or you could lose your balance and there was precious little to hang onto. Once down to the zig zag path it was a lot easier and the harder sections had a thick wire hand rail. When we got back we had a short rest in a hut next to the Ceremonial Rock to get out of the rain.
When it stopped raining, we wandered through the ruins of the residential and industrial sector admiring the buildings and the views off the edge down the steep terracing or cliffs. The site was exceptionally well preserved because of its remote location and the fact that it had remained undisturbed for so long. There was a sophisticated channelling of water around the site with a small channel carved in the rock winding in and around and down the terraces and buildings. We saw the head of a condor carved into a rock in the floor of one building and two circular stones set into the floor of another. By the time we reached the end of this section and the start of the cascade of large terraces we were tired and hungry so we walked back to the entrance where we had lunch and bought more water before we returned to the site feeling restored.
We walked via the long trail to the Hut of the Caretaker of the Funerary Rock to take the path to the Inca drawbridge. All over the site were llamas grazing on the grass on the terraces. They were obviously the Machu Picchu lawnmowers. We walked along the flatter path to the drawbridge with spectacular views down the mountainside. There were hardly any people here and a little sun had begun to appear. The path ended around a corner where it descended to the drawbridge which was sealed off. The mountain rose above and fell below and the path hugged the side of the cliff. The Incas had built with stone a supporting wall for the path and then left a gap of about ten metres with some timber now bridging the gap. The way through was only wide enough for one person. On the other side overgrown stone steps continued but were soon lost making it difficult to see where the path continued. It was a miraculous construction made more impressive by the incredible natural setting. We walked back to the site and had a short rest atop a terrace before wandering through the side of the site we hadn't seen yet.
We walked through the Sacred Plaza, the Temple of the Three Windows, up to the Intihuatana (Hitching Post of the Sun) atop a small hill with a carved rock connected to the passing of the seasons. We descended a staircase to the flat grassy central plaza with a solitary large tree and wandered back to the circular tapering tower of the Temple of the Sun built atop a massive rock and the only circular structure on the site. It was sealed off but below it was the slightly sinister altar with carved steps hidden inside a natural cave. By this time we had been at the site for nine and a half hours and felt tired but satisfied that we had seen all we could. We walked out of the site with the warm afternoon sun perfect for some last photos.
We caught a bus back to Aguas Caliente and grabbed a quick snack before our train left. On the train we chatted with Larry and Dona, a Jewish couple from LA. Larry was extroverted and eccentric, and meeting them made for an entertaining journey back to Cusco. We shared our taxi back to Cusco from Poroy station and went to Jack's Cafe for a late dinner. We said goodbye to Larry and Dona and went back to the hotel for a much needed shower. It was great to go to bed in a warm comfortable room.
We spent Tuesday morning in our room reading, updating our diary and uploading our Machu Picchu photos.
After lunch, we walked to the Cruz del Sur office outside the historic centre to buy our bus tickets to Arequipa. Then we strolled back into the centre, past Pampa del Castillo (pork street) which was full of budget eateries selling "chicharron" – deep-fried pork ribs.
We paid a brief visit to the colonial church of Iglesia de Santo Domingo built on the remains of the Incan temple Qorikancha. The interior of the church was a combination of whitewash and stone and was quite restrained. However, there were several large oil paintings on the walls and some beautiful frescoes around the arches. We walked around the block looking for the Qorikancha Museum and found a site enclosed by walls and glass doors. Entrance was free and we walked in to find some Inca foundations and lamas, alpacas and vicunas grazing on the lawns. We found the subterranean entrance to the Qorikancha museum on Avenida El Sol. The museum consisted of three rooms containing several displays of Inca pottery, metalwork, textiles, painting and other artwork. The best items were the three mummies in foetal position, some grossly deformed skulls of the social elite and some skulls with holes in them (trepanning). We exited the museum via a stairway up through a hole in the grassy lawn next to the Church of Santo Domingo. We slowly made our way back to the hotel, stopping to admire the textiles in the handicrafts stores and to try a maracuya (passionfruit) sour at Fallen Angel.
After breakfast on Wednesday, we caught a taxi to Tambomachay, a site eight kilometres outside Cusco. It was cool and overcast when we were dropped off in the mountains above Cusco. We walked up a path for a hundred metres to a stone carved complex of niches and water fountains. They were called the "Inca baths" – a set of finely carved aqueducts and fountains originating from nearby springs, set into three parallel terraces with four trapezoidal niches built into the uppermost stone wall.
We walked a hundred metres across the road to Pukapukara, or the "red fortress" with successive reddish stone walls built up a hill and panoramic views from the top.
Then we had to walk a couple of kilometres down the road past an artificial lake and small farms to the next site called Q'enqo. It was built into a large limestone outcrop with a path leading into the rock and down steps into a subterranean cave with niches, altars, steps and channels carved into the rock. It was similar to a temple we had seen in Machu Picchu and both had the eerie feeling of having had living beings sacrificed there.
Another two kilometres downhill, was the entrance to the much larger site of Saqsayhuaman. This was an enormous fortress above Cusco in the shape of a puma's head with the city of Cusco forming the puma's body. It had a large central plaza with three-tiered terraced zig-zag walls forming the puma's teeth, constructed from enormous blocks of stone. It was the location of a Sun Temple destroyed by the Spaniards. After a rebellion by Manco Inca the Spaniards harvested 80% of all but the largest blocks of stone for building Spanish Cusco in order to destroy the fortress.
We walked down the Inca road back into Cusco for lunch.
After lunch we walked up Calle San Augustin to the stunning colonial building of the Mueso de Arte Religioso. The museum contained colonial religious paintings, and was located in the former Archbishop's Palace with an impressive portal and Moorish-style carved wooden doors, balcony, carved-cedar ceilings, stained-glass windows, courtyard with Moorish-style arches and fountain, and small chapel.
Then we walked up to Templo de San Blas, a simple colonial whitewashed adobe church, with an intricately carved 17th-century cedar pulpit (from a single tree trunk) dominated by the triumphant figure of Christ, topped with a skull (supposedly the craftsman). It also had an impressive baroque altar painted in gold leaf.
Then we walked down the hill stopping at a bakery for a disappointing tea and cake. The tea was delivered with hot milk instead of hot water! Te con leche!
On Thursday we checked out and left our luggage at the hotel. We walked to Plaza de Armas and sat in the sunshine planning where to start. We walked across the road to the Templo de La Compania, a church on the plaza. It was built of the same brown rock as the Cathedral with excellent carving. Inside we saw the sacristy, a subterranean chapel with a hole in the stone floor through which we could see crypts and Inca stone foundations, and then we took the stairs behind a side altar to the choir stalls and then up into the bell tower. We had a great view of the plaza below and through a circular window onto the town rooftops and hillside. At the highest point we could reach there were a jumble of large dusty ceramic amphora lying on the floor and abandoned and corroding old clockwork machinery.
From here we crossed to the Cathedral complex, which was three buildings that had been incorporated together over time. Firstly was the Iglesia de la Sagrada Familia constructed in 1723 with plaster work painted to look like imitation marble. It was very simple inside with a whitewashed dome ceiling. We walked through a connecting entrance to La Catedral where construction commenced in 1534. It was only completed 134 years later due to disruption by earthquakes and the size of the large Maria Angola bell which caused technical difficulties. The builders used stones harvested from Saqsayhuaman, massive columns of the black rock supported arches in both directions. It had 64 choir stalls intricately carved in Cusco cedar – under the elbow rests were partially clad women with protruding bellies (looking very much like potatoes), above the choir stalls were 83 sculpted figures of martyrs (one with his head in his hands). Two restored seventeenth century pipe organs rested above and there was a magnificent wooden rotating book rest in the centre of the floor. We visited a small crypt and walked around the large space dotted with artworks and chapels before taking another connecting entrance to the Iglesia del Triunfo. It was constructed in 1538 to commemorate the Spanish victory over Manco Inca in 1536. It was South America's first cathedral with a plain whitewash stone dome, an underground crypt containing the remains of Garcilas Inca de la Vega (Inca chronicler), a sacristy containing oil paintings of archbishops, and intricately carved wooden doors.
We emerged into the sunlight and returned to our bench in the plaza to plan our next move. We saw the Museo de Historia Natural across the road and went to have a look. It had stuffed mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, and fossils. Most interesting were some beautiful stuffed birds (eg Azulejo, Amazon Umbrella Bird, Motmot) and the water birds we had seen from the train in the fast running Rio Urubamba. There was also a very large caiman skull, various sloths, anteaters, beautiful ocelots and a stuffed condor overseeing the specimens from above. Some horribly deformed animal foetuses were on display in glass jars and tanks full of formaldehyde.
We walked out of the plaza and onto Avenida El Sol to the Museo de Arte Popular where we saw a rather bizarre collection of brightly coloured terracotta figures and ceramics, clay masks, interesting old photos, carved shrines and 3D pictures.
After lunch, we walked to the Convento de Santo Domingo built on the Qorikancha or "Gold Enclosure". It was a Dominican priory built on Inca temple foundations. The Inca empire was divided into four regions with Cusco (or Q'osqo) at the centre as the navel of the world. The main temple in Cusco was Intikancha or "House of the Sun", where mummies of previous Inca emperors and their wives were kept. It was built from andesite rock, green diorite and limestone with parts of the Inca temple incorporated into the colonial structure. Oil paintings of religious art adorned the walls inside the colonnades of arches around the central courtyard with an Inca stone fountain in the centre. Outside, beautiful gardens spilled down the slope towards the Avenida El Sol and there was the Inca trilogy of Condor, Snake and Puma engraved in a grassy circle below. There was information about Inca beliefs including the bizarre concept that the mummies of dead Inca emperors could wield just as much power as the living and their instructions were just as valid! The upstairs section contained a small library and a modern art exhibition. From above we could see what remained of the Inca temple with its massive stone walls and trapezoid niches and doors.
We walked up the Avenida El Sol and at Plaza de Armas we took a laneway through to the Plaza de Nazarenas which housed the Museo de Arte Pre-Colombino in another beautiful colonial building. We walked through a series of rooms downstairs and then on the upper level, each with a different theme - Gold, Silver, Shell, and Ceramics. Then there were a series of rooms with artefacts from individual cultures representing particular regions and particular periods of time – Nasca, Machica, Huari, Chimu and Inca. We also saw a small gallery of indigenous weaving with a couple of women in traditional dress doing the laborious work. The weaving was complex and consequently expensive.
We walked to Jack's cafe and had dinner before collecting our backpacks from the hotel and getting a cab to the Cruz del Sur office. The bus was very comfortable and they were very serious about security. As we checked in, we were filmed and scanned with a hand held metal detector. Once on the bus we were filmed again and asked to put our seat belts on. We did the diary and then tried to get some sleep.
On Friday morning we arrived in Arequipa, Peru's second largest city, half an hour early after having very little sleep on the bus. We caught a taxi to our hostel, where we found that our room wouldn't be ready for another four hours or so. However faced with the prospect of us bedding down in reception for the next few hours, a room was suddenly found for us. To get to our room, we walked through a couple of geranium-filled sun-drenched courtyards. Our room was at the back of the hostel, and was really quiet and peaceful. The hostel was an eighteenth century bishop's residence and was built from "sillar", a pearly white volcanic rock. The walls were at least a metre thick, the sky-high ceilings were arched, and the rooms filled with antique furniture and fittings. Suzie went to sleep for an hour and a half, while Keith reviewed his photos for the last couple of days. Eventually, Suzie woke up and we showered in our surprisingly modern bathroom, had a cup of coffee and then went out for a walk.
The sun was high in the sky by this time and the city was dazzling. It was full of colonial Spanish buildings built from the white volcanic rock, from which it gets the nickname "La Ciudad Blanca" (The White City). The rock was quarried from the three volcanoes surrounding the city – El Misti, El Chachani and El PichuPichu. We had brunch at a nearby bar/restaurant and then we headed to Plaza de Armas – the city's main plaza. The Plaza de Armas had the usual flower beds and fountain and was surrounded by stately white buildings. We walked around the square and then all the way along the pedestrian mall. We paid a visit to "La Casa del Moral" - a large single-storey colonial house with a central courtyard built in the early eighteenth century. It is considered one of the best preserved examples of baroque-mestizo civil architecture in Peru. Some of the rooms were furnished and some just contained art on the walls. We climbed up on to the roof where we got a rather hazy view of the three volcanoes surrounding the city.
Further on, we stopped to browse through the cloisters of La Compania, now full of Alpaca boutiques. There were two courtyards with columns and arches on all sides. Then we headed back to the hostel for a rest.
Our room was quiet and the wooden shutters blocked out the light so we didn't wake up until 8.30 am on Saturday morning. We had a leisurely breakfast overlooking the garden courtyard and then spent most of the morning doing some research on the internet and planning the rest of our time in Peru. We bought our bus tickets to Ica at the travel agency across the road from the hostel and then walked around town. We had lunch at Cafe Capriccio on the pedestrian street and spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around town, visiting the Compania de Jesus church, and then bought some wine and olives in a supermarket to have in our room.
We went out later to El Turko for dinner. After dinner we went to the hair salon a couple of doors away from the hotel and Suzie had her hair cut. Keith was convinced that the hairdresser and the only other client were lady boys!
On Sunday we walked to the Monasterio de Santa Catalina – a convent founded in 1579. The convent was almost a city within a city with its own streets named after Spanish cities, covering an area of almost 20,000 square metres and surrounded by a high wall closing it off from the rest of the city. It was a large complex of cells, brightly painted walls, picturesque courtyards with ornate fountains and a maze of tiny cobbled streets. Around the courtyards were colonnades of columns and arches with religious scenes painted at the top of the inner wall. In the centre of each courtyard was either a tree or a bed of flowers or a fountain. The cells generally consisted of a couple of small rooms containing a large niche with a small bed, a water channel, a mud brick oven, and grinding stones, with a covered hole in the roof to let in light. There were also communal areas for dining, cooking, bathing and prayer. Outside there were several flower and vegetable gardens, fruit trees and a beautiful laundry area with huge terracotta jars split in half lengthways serving as wash basins, placed on either side of a raised water channel. We wandered around for hours taking photos and enjoying the peace and quiet. Within the monastery was a more modern complex that was still inhabited by nuns, but we didn't see anyone except the caretakers. In some areas we were able to climb onto the roof and enjoy views of the walls around the convent, the city of Arequipa outside and the volcanic mountains in the background.
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