We’ve been in Cusco for a week now and have changed locations from the quaint but quiet Pisko & Soul to the considerably more uphill Intro Hostel. It’s a larger hostel located in a quiet courtyard with rooms all around an open middle section with tables, a pool table, a very sad looking fire pit, a soggy hammock and what I can only loosely refer to as a “water feature”. It has rained a lot more over the past few days, but the weather is very changeable. This morning it chucked it down but now it’s perfectly pleasant as Dave and I sit on tiny stools, not really suited for sizeable bottoms, around what appears to be a giant empty cotton reel repurposed as a table. There’s a lot that’s been upcycled here, I suspect that during the high season it’s full of the type of people we’ve been doing our best to avoid. So far so good!

The day after our walking tour we decided that we’d better get into some sort of shape (other than round) if we’re going to be doing this 5 day trek up to Machu Picchu and taking the advice of our tour guide from the day before, decided to go and visit old JC on the hill. The Cristo Blanco (or Christophe Blanc as we took to calling him after our old landlord in France), was a gift from Christian Palestinians to the city of Cusco as a thank you for harbouring them safely during the end of World War 2. We’ve tried to find out a bit more about these Palestinians as it sounds like a really interesting slice of history, but local knowledge is patchy at best. Standing a somewhat measly 8 meters high (compared to Rio’s 30-meter-high Christ the Redeemer), JC sits atop Pukamoqo Hill which, according to the locals, contains soil samples from all 4 quarters of the ancient Inka Empire. The hike to the top involved several sets of very steep, somewhat crumbly steps up through the outskirts of Cusco, winding up through local houses, plants and at one point, a basketball court. I won’t pretend it was an easy climb, especially when we eventually got to the top and discovered that we’d come the “difficult” way up and if we’d in fact bothered to check the map, we’d have found a much gentler winding slope…but we did it! And the view from the top was breathtaking. The pictures do not do it justice. We sat at the top and enjoyed a Crunchy Nature Valley Bar ™ as we watched the planes land in the valley. Having caught our breath and taken our fill of the amazing landscape (not another bloody mountain!) we decided to take our leave of old Christophe and head down to Mr Eiffel’s market for a bit of gringo toot shopping.

Putting the dried baby llama foetus’ to one side for just a mo’ and ignoring the underwhelming architecture of the place, the San Pedro market is actually really cool. One of the first sections you come across is a long strip of white stools in front of fruit-laden cabinets, behind which stand very smiley happy Peruvian ladies waving menus at you, tempting you to come and enjoy a fruit juice/smoothie at their stall. We opted for a lady called Ana. The names of the women are written in big letters on top of the prices of the juices, once again we suspect shenanigans but have not yet been back to confirm whether they are actually their names, or they just put that so the gringos can see a nice Western name as they’re being fed mystery juice. Once again the portions were sizeable and the costs minimal. We paid 10 soles (about £2.50) for both drinks which were topped up not once, not twice, but three times by the lovely Ana during our visit. Feeling suitably refreshed, we continued on our way through the market, passing a rather hench woman hacking at a large piece of mystery meat. Needless to say we decided we would probably be eating elsewhere that evening. Having been only slightly ripped off (10 soles for a notebook and a snazzy yellow over the shoulder bag), we left the market and headed back to the hostel. Our dinner that evening of fried trout & pasta was served by Fidel Castro. It is also worth mentioning a particular quirk of Peruvian etiquette here, in so far as no matter who asks for the bill or indeed who pays for it, it is always placed in front of Dave. I’ve decided this means he has to pay for everything from now on. Free trip woohoo!

Cusco, like many large cities, offers tourists the chance to save a bit of dosh and acquire a Boleto Touristico. This gives you access to some of the smaller (read, less well funded) museums in central Cusco, as well as the plethora of ruins at varying distances outside the town, for a reduced cost than buying individual tickets. Having acquired ours the previous day and having been woken up at 2am by a taxi who decided that 2am was the perfect time to be beeping and revving his engine right outside our window, we decided to take it easy and visit some of these little museums. Who knows, we might even learn something. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. As a brief aside, we’ve noticed that the altitude definitely mucks with your ability to retain information and you find yourself reading things or repeating things several times before it sticks. Our first stop was the Museo Historico Regional, situated inside a Ministry of Culture building which follows the style of many of the buildings in the city, having a courtyard in the centre, with various rooms around the outside on two floors. The Museum follows no discernable timeline or narrative, starting with a massive, almost complete, fossil of a Glyptodont – SO COOL – before then moving on to various cabinets filled with ancient pottery and poorly translated English descriptions. Then it skips several hundred years to a small exhibition about Tupac Amaru II, a Peruvian hero during the Spanish ‘interruption’ in the 16^th Century. After this it’s just some Western style paintings of various Goddy Jesusy people. We’ve been told a few times by our various tour guides that art played an important part in the conversion of the indigenous Peruvians to Catholicism but we can’t really see why.

Our second museum of the day was Qurikancha, which is entirely underground and sits underneath what once was the Inca Temple of the Sun (before the Spanish built a church on it). We were warmly welcomed by an indigenous Peruvian chap who shook both our hands and welcomed us to Peru. On the whole, Cusconians are exceptionally friendly and happy to help, though we’ve found they have a rather dry sense of humour. This is all very well and good when you’re compos mentis but when you’ve just carried a very large, very heavy bag up a very big hill only to be told by the chap on reception that he only speaks English when he’s forced to isn’t ideal. Anyway, I digress. Qurikancha very much follows the same theme of the first museum with what can only be described as an omnishambles of a collection of various bits of pottery, arrowheads and poorly translated signs. It only took us about 30 minutes to go round the whole thing. We began to suspect at this point that the tourist ticket is a very good way of getting unsuspecting Gringos to visit some of the less well funded museums but we didn’t mind too much as we’d spotted a lovely French style coffee shop where we decided to stop for lunch after visiting our third and final museum of the day: Monumento Inca Pachacutec. This tower in the middle of downtown Cusco consists of a museum as you go up the tower, as well as a viewing platform at the top, crowned with a huge statue of the Inca king Pachacutec/Pachacuti. He’s a bit of a symbol round here, like Tupac Amaru II, as he grew Cusco from a small hamlet to a great ruling empire and won quite a big battle against a local tribe that tried to invade Cusco. He is also the subject of a cracking song in the BBC series Horrible Histories but again I digress. Recent historians believe that Machu Picchu was built as a summer home for him but the evidence, like a lot of the history round here, is lacking *shakes fists angrily at the Spanish*. We didn’t spend a huge amount of time here as it was very rainy and we were hungry but it was definitely the best of the 3 museums we visited that day. We ate at Amaranto Anticuchos & Café that evening where Dave had beef & chicken skewers and I had the biggest portion of egg fried vegetable rice ever. We were pleasantly smug that the woman serving us spoke to us solely in Spanish and spoke to the American chap dining in front of us solely in English. I’ve actually been really surprised by how much of the Spanish I attempted to absorb before our trip has managed to stick. The say that once you learn one language it’s much easier to learn a second and that seems to be at least in some parts true, which is good because we’ve noticed people are a lot more smiley and willing to help when you at least only partially butcher their native language, rather than just assuming they speak English; which I suppose is true of everywhere in the world (apart from Paris where everyone is grumpy all the time).

Up early the following day and upon the recommendation of Gonzalo on reception we decided our itinerary for the day would include the Inca Museum and the Santo Domingo Church. Paying 10 soles each for the privilege, our first stop was the Inca Museum; located just off the main square where, as usual, we were steadily approached by people offering walking tours, massages, commercially reproduced paintings, trinkets, and various illicit substances. As you walk through the rooms coming off the central courtyard you are treated to explanations and examples of the various tribes that existed across Peru/Bolivia/Ecuador/Chile before they were united under the Inka Empire. This was great as alongside the museums from the previous day, we were able to start to piece together some sort of timeline from pre-history up to the modern day and as much of the information is repeated between the different museums, some of it finally started to stick – hoorah! The only minor downside to this museum is that by the end they have just given up on translating anything into English so you just sort of have to muddle through on your own. BUT this was more than made up for however by the fact that there are REAL LIFE ACTUAL MUMMIES. This was worth the ticket price alone. Mummies in Incan culture were treated as part of the family and during festive periods, people often brought their Mummy to visit other Mummies as they believed they liked to socialise in death as they had done in life. It’s quite sweet really and memories of visiting the British Museum as a kid came flooding back. Everything else paled in comparison to the Mummies really, even the giant mural of ol’ Tupac being quartered in the main square didn’t quite cut it. That’s what Cusco needs, a good horror/gruesome walking tour. Dave can attest to how many of those I’ve dragged him on in various places around Europe, including one in the middle of summer on a sweltering hot day in Edinburgh. ANYWAY. On to the Santo Domingo church.

 

Ah not quite, we had lunch at what has now become a firm favourite of ours: JC’s Café. It’s cheap by English standards and the portions, as we’ve come to find is quite the norm in Cusco, are huge. A plate of nachos and a tuna sandwich with ‘french friss’ later, we carried on to see some more stuff that the Spanish ruined.

 

The Santo Domingo church was built on top of the destroyed Inca Palace of the Sun and its foundations incorporate much of the original structure. When it was occupied by the Spanish, they painted over all the Inca stonework with Catholic murals and they also removed all the gold that covered many of the walls. Before we went inside, we were approached by a local woman named Diana who asked if we had a tour group. We did not have a tour group and so paid 40 soles for a private tour of the ruins/church. We could have gone round on our own with the audio guide but Diana’s English was really good and when the monthly average wage here is about 1400 soles (£350), it’s good to support locals when you can. Diana told us she was born in Cusco and had lived there her whole life, only leaving a few times to go to Arequipa which, she told us, has a whole bunch of volcanos, which is why property is cheap there. Honestly the photos do not do justice as to just how impressive this place is. The precision of the Incan architecture is breathtaking and the stones are massive! Diana pointed out one stone which had 14 different corners. We spent a good 2.5 hours going around the whole site which include a cracking view over Cusco and Qurikancha from the day before, as well as a very charming garden where we tried, once again in vain, to capture a picture of a hummingbird.

And that just about brings you up to date! Sunday was a write off as we had a rubbish night’s sleep so we used the VPN on the laptop to watch some stuff on BBC Iplayer (thanks Daddy!), went out for a burger (alpaca/quinoa), then came back to the hostel with a few beers and watched The Emperor’s New Groove. On Monday morning we said goodbye to Pisko & Soul and lugged our heavy rucksacks up to Intro Hostel where I’m writing this now. Over to you Davelar!