Sept 14 - Sept 16
Elevation 11,024 ft
Puerto Maldonado to Cuzco
Return canoe trop to Puerto Maldonado
LAN 074
Departs Tuesday, Sep. 14 - 11:45 AM
Arrives Tuesday, Sep 14 - 12:40 PM
Things to see and do:
Tuesday, September 14
We arrive in Cusco. It’s nice to be in a place where we don’t need bug spray and we’re not sweating all of the time. The temperature here seems to range from about 75 deg F down to about 50 deg F at night. This is a huge change from the Amazon.
The hotel we’re staying at is a small family run hotel. They arrange for a driver to pick us up from the airport. Fidel (not the Cuban dictator) finally arrives after we call to find him – we finally got our first use of that Peru SIM card. Fidel takes us to our hotel which is in the San Blas Barrio (neighborhood) of Cusco. It’s pretty high up on a hill and is a very old section of town that dates back to the 16th Century. The streets are barely wide enough for a car, since they were built at a time when mainly donkey-drawn carts went through them. It’s quite nerve-wracking when you approach another car and then it’s essentially a “Peruvian Standoff” to see what happens next. The streets are made with all cobble stones with an occasional section of stone pavers, and for the most part, they are pretty slick. They’ve been walked on for centuries and it definitely shows. Many of them have an irrigation channel down the middle of them. It's not just the streets that are slick in Cusco though. Our hotel has highly polished floors and you take a risk anytime you walk in them in socks or barefooted.
We get situated at the hotel. And we’re pleased to report that we both survived being “off the grid” for a few days and we’re very glad to be back on. We have electricity and WiFi!!! We arrange to have some very stinky laundry sent out and go find some lunch at a local artist-run café. There is original art work on the walls and even a guy playing a guitar while we eat. We’re guessing that Cusco is a very artist-friendly place. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon constructing the Amazon Leg portion of our website and took a nap.
Dinner approaches and we get a recommendation from the hotel which is near the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, downtown. There’s a stock photo of the plaza on the main page of our website, and we even try to recreate the same shot. The restaurant is full and is only accepting reservations which we don’t have, but not to worry, the city is chocked full of all kinds of restaurants. We settle on pizza and it was really good pizza too! We look around a bit, take some pictures and start on our short but high climb back to the hotel.
We don’t seem to be suffering much from the altitude. Travis’ friend, Collette, clued him into some recommended medications for this trip, one of which was for altitude sickness. It seems to be spot-on. We’re only sucking lots of wind when climbing lots of steps (and there are LOTS of steps in Peru). Thanks Collette!
We hit the sack and get a good night’s sleep in preparation for another day of exploring.
Wednesday, September 15
We have breakfast at the hotel and get ready to head out. We have a discussion with the front desk manager about transportation tomorrow to the train station for Machu Picchu and ask his opinion of what to do about our luggage. You see, we learned something just a day or so before we left that we are very limited on bringing luggage to Machu Picchu. Most people (of course, not US), just take the train up to Machu Picchu for the day and return back to Cusco in the afternoon. They just need a backpack or day-pack depending on what they’re doing or maybe more if they’re going on the Inka Trail hike. Their official limit of Rail Peru is 5kg (11 lbs for the non-metrics). We have much more than that! So going into this we came up with the maybe brilliant idea to each bring two bags, one to store and one to take. Adding to the complication is that we’re not going back to Cusco, so we can’t leave our bag at the hotel. We ask the hotel manager if he can arrange to have our bags sent to our hotel in the Sacred Valley which we’ll be arriving after Machu Picchu. It takes a while for the communication to flow, but eventually he gets it and calls Fidel to arrange transportation for us to the train station and our bags to the Sacred Valley.
Next, the exploring begins. We start off at the main plaza, Plaza de Armas, and there happens to be some sort of pretty big demonstration going on. We believe that it’s the staff and students of the university here complaining to the university president about either the quality of the drinking water or water rights. Perhaps one of our Spanish speaking followers can read the protest sign and let us know what it says. Big rats seem to be a common theme. We sit down to watch some of the protest and all of the souvenir street vendors smell fresh meat. We get pestered a lot, but we both bought stuff, so we guess they know what they’re doing.
We need to get away from the street vendors and walk over to La Catedral. It’s the main church in town and it’s actually three cathedrals built at different times, but connected together. We buy tickets and go in and are approached by a tour guide. The guides here are independent, so if you want to learn something about the popular sites, you practically “hire” them for the tour and then pay them at the end according to the quality of their tour. It’s an interesting concept. We learn a lot about Cusco and Peruvian history, little of it we could remember by the end of the tour, but there were some important parts.
Cusco was the capital of the Inkas and was filled with many of their shrines and buildings, not to mention lots of gold and silver. The Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the 16th Century and brought with them communicable diseases which turned into local epidemics and the idea to conquer the area in the name of Spain (the gold and silver may have encouraged that decision). One of the last battles was in Cusco. The Spanish Conquistadors demolished all of the important Incan buildings and built new colonial buildings as replacements, reusing a lot of the demolished material.
The three cathedrals that make up La Catedral are a mixture of Incan and Spanish Colonial art and architecture. For example, there is art work all through them that at first glance look just like any other cathedral art. At closer glance, however, it becomes clear that the artists wanted to maintain their Incan culture so the figures often have Incan rather than European faces. The most famous painting is one of "the last supper", except in this one, Jesus and the Apostles are dining on traditional guinea pig.
There is a silver alter in one of the alcoves. At first, it just looks like another silver alter but then suddenly you realize it has a steering wheel and rubber wheels! They use this alter in a parade after Easter each year. We weren't allowed to take photos inside but did find a picture of the silver car on the internet.
Okay, here’s another history lesson. Peru has experienced several major earthquakes, one of which was in 1950 and was very devastating to Cusco and the surrounding area. Some of the artifacts in La Catedral actually came from some of the area churches that were destroyed by those earthquakes and weren’t rebuilt. There is also quite a bit of discussion during any tour about whether the building survived the 1650 earthquake which did tremendous damage throughout the city.
All-in-all, it was a pretty good tour.
We then walked to Qorikancha, which is the remains of an old Incan temple which was mostly destroyed and a colonial church and convent of Santo Domingo built on top of and around it. History has it that it was once the richest temple in the Incan Empire and was abundantly adorned with gold. The walls were supposedly lined with gold sheets and had an array of gold art. All of the gold turned up missing sometime after the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. Even though there is no gold there now, there is enough of the original Incan structure left to get an idea of their amazing stonework craftsmanship.
It looked like some serious rain was approaching and we decided to start heading back to the hotel to avoid getting drenched.
We started shuffling out clothes between our two sets of bags – those to take to Machu Picchu and those to forward to the Sacred Valley. We also learn from an e-mail that our train ride from Cusco to Machu Picchu has been slightly altered by Peru Rail. It appears that they’re working on a section of track outside of Cusco and we’ll be bussed, by Peru Rail, to Ollantaytambo where we’ll pick up the train. We’re not sure if this is good or bad for us, but we’ll deal with it (mainly because we have no other choice).
We had gotten a recommendation for a Cusco restaurant from one of the British couples that we did the Amazon tours with. The restaurant is called The Fallen Angel and was described as being very funky and offering great steaks. We decided to try it for dinner. Funky was about right. Some of their tables were actually bathtubs that were turned into aquariums with a see-through glass top and some of the dining chairs were actually four-poster beds where the dining guests were propped up with bean bags. There was artwork of flying pigs and all sorts of other strange things. It definitely was good atmosphere and the steaks were okay too. And just to finish off the funkiness, the dining bill came in a gold box. Very unique!
We head back to the hotel and crash for the night. Fidel is picking us up at 6:00 am to take us to the train station.
Thursday, September 16
Morning comes very early and we have to wake up the night desk clerk (he sleeps in a nearby room) to check out. Fidel arrives promptly and we head to the train station. Two of our bags stay in Cusco to be forwarded to the Sacred Valley later in the day to go on a vacation of their own. You’ll have to wait, along with us, to see if they make it there or not.
Some interesting observations:
We believe that residences and businesses are very storage challenged. All of the residences seem to be on very small plots of land, and even some of those may be sub-divided. There are laundromats everywhere, some of which are even open 24 hours a day, which leads us to believe that most people don’t have room for a washer and dryer. We noticed that the hotel we’re staying at never has a supply of water. When a guest asked for water, they actually sent out one of the staff to go purchase a bottle. We thought this may be just because it was a family run hotel and well, costs must be conserved whenever possible, but we saw at The Fallen Angel restaurant one of the bartenders leave just to come back a few minutes later with a shopping bag full of something. Everyone here may be using the “just in time” inventory system to the extreme.
The spelling of the city seems to be either Cusco or Cuzco and both seem to be used interchangeably.
The streets are so narrow that sometimes it's necessary to make a 3-point turn just to turn a corner. Often drivers have to back down long stretches of street because there is no where to turn around.
We ran into a procession on the way from the airport to the hotel. We couldn't figure out what the celebration was for, but everyone seemed pretty happy about something.
One of the members of the procession. Looking sharp!
There were also gorilla's! And we thought we'd left the Amazon behind.
Our hotel is up on a hillside overlooking Cusco. This is the view from our window.
Many of the roofs have figurines on the top. We're not sure why but thought this one was neat.
Travis at lunch in the 5 table "artists" cafe where we ate the first day.
This is the street our hotel is on. It's a bit hard to tell what's considered pedestrian only versus streets OK for vehicular traffic.
Travis posing near our hotel.
This is the view from our room at night.
These steps were near our hotel and had to be navigated pretty much every time we went anywhere. The altitude became very apparent every time we walked up them!
There was a protest Wednesday morning, by University students and employees, perhaps to protest transfer of water between departments (Peruvian states).
Perhaps this sign tells us something. If only one of use spoke better Spanish.
Participants in the demonstration.
Doug in front of La Catedral
This is this silver car from La Catedral. if you look just right of center, you can see the drivers head.
Travis at the fountain in Plaza de Armas.
A panoramic of the Plaza de Armas
Doug in the plaza at Qorikancha
Doug under one of the Incan arches at Qorikancha
Travis at Qorikancha
Travis on Loreto Street on way back to hotel. Both walls are original Inca - the right one the best and oldest in Cuzco. It belonged to the Acllahuassi (House of the Chosen Woman).
Another night view of Cusco.
An appetizer at the Fallen Angel, where we had dinner Wednesday.
This is what the bill came in!
A night view of La Catedral and fountain in Plaza de Armas
Apparently they don't want trumpets? Or perhaps just horns in general.