Back in CUSCO, Peru - 12th September

12th September, Tuesday - It was comforting waking up in the familiar Amaru Hotel after a good night's sleep and also good to know there was no early tour or bus or train to catch. The hotel staff were all so familliar and friendly with us. The great thing about a small place like Cusco is that you can become familliar so quickly. There were people is the streets too who tried to sell us things the first time we saw them - the second time they tried again but with some good natured conversation.....the next time it was only good conversation.....and now when we meet them - we greet, kiss and talk about families & the day, and they even mention not seeing us for a day. We will miss Cusco.

We decided to spend the day visiting the four Inca Sites closer to Cusco, especially the very impressive fortress Sacsayhuaman (pronounced sexy-woman or saxay-woemaan). The furtherest of the sites, Tambo Machay is around 8 km out of town and the closest, Sacsayhuaman, is probably 2 Km away. Went to the tourist office first and bought a single ticket to all four sites, which works out cheaper than buying the individual tickets at each site.

We took a collectivo (a small bus) to the furthest site and would walk the way back down toward town, visiting each of them. On the bus we met Juliana, on her way to a town called Urubamba, in the sacred valley; she worked with a Peruvian organisation for British volunteers coming to Peru to teach English and sports.

Tambo Machay the furtherst site, were the Inca baths. Letay complained much on the walk up there today. We guess she has had enough of walking in Peru, especially because wherever we went to walk, was usually a climb uphill. Although we all seemed used to the altitude now, we however did it slowly for Letay's sake. Tambo Machay did not have much to impress a child, unlike Machu Picchu. After seeing this and the next fortress (Puca Pucara), or Inca Hunting Lodge, we flagged down a collectivo to the huge white statue of Christ (Christo Blanco) which overlooks Cusco, near the last site - Sacsayhuaman.












This was indeed very impressive; huge 100 tonne rocks used to make up the walls. The sheer size of each rock, interlocked with others of equal magnitude, was fascinating. It was certainly a challenge to imagine how this site was built, and how each stone was moved into place. Once a year (April?) they reenact a Sun Worship (Inca Ryami) ceremony here, with hundreds of actors dressed in Inca finery; brilliant colours, textiles, and gold, playing parts. It would certainly be something worth watching.



We walked around here for quite awhile and then walked our way down to Cusco down the steep mountain. All the way back took us 20 minutes but the walk was all downhill. We landed up at the monastery hotel square.






We were very hungry & thirsty after all the walking and so we went to a Tapas restuarant - Chiccolina, which we had wanted to go to every time we'd passed it near the Inca Wall in town.

It turned out to be a very classy place, with excellent decor and this one too was run by a young Australian lady, Tamy. She had left Melbourne to live in Cusco some 10 years ago. Had some good food here - Deepa had a very traditional Cazuela. One of the waitresses her had such a nice face, we made her blush by telling her so. Here too they all thought Australia was great.



Letay and I spent the afternoon in the hotel, whilst Rossini wandered out early evening and checked out some gold Icon paintings, with the traditional elaborate frames that he liked very much. Later that evening we landed up buying two of these paintings, along with the wooden frames. These would be Rossini's birthday present, as he loved them so much - his birthday (14th) was two days away. The lady in the shop broke the frames into individual strips that would fit into our backpacks.

Rossini also met Manfred, a young Dutch man who ran a Spanish School in Cusco's San Blas area. Loving Cusco so much, we might consider coming back just to stay a while and learn Spanish. Manfred said that lessons were approx $100 a week, and that he could arrange accomodation with a family or an apartment for approximately $100 a week too, which included meals. He could also arrange social work (working with street kids, or hospitals) to give us some better interaction locally, and some practice with Spanish. Something certainly worth considering for a future stay-in-one-place holiday with a purpose. (Anyone interested, check his website www.spanishschoolperu.com)

We still had not eaten at a Piquenteria, which are small local eating joints, serving typical Peruvian food to the locals. Walked around for over half hour but most were closed for the night. One that was opened was empty and we certainly did not fancy eating here without the local atmosphere. We settled for Filafel, Steak and hommus at a very small (two tables only) Mid-Eastern restaurant, that played loud The Cure music. Gloria, who we met there just loved the Cure and sang along to all the songs. She was Peruvian from Lima and was visiting Cusco with her mother, Maria-Gloria.

When back at the hotel we packed our bags at night before going to bed, as we had a 9.00 am bus to Puno - that meant rising at least by 7am.