South America Part 5 - Cusco Trekin

Last night - I ate some Alpaca steak... I would bring Taeko home some but I got her a alpaca finger puppet instead. Ant and I were touted by this 8 year old boy who wanted to sell us cigarettes at the restruant. When we repeatedly said "non fumer" and looked away - he then started to breath heavily through a glass window and started whispering stuff (Jason Vohrees/ Friday the 13th style!).

Ant and I have just finished a busy (and first day) of sightseeing.

Disillusioned with the lack of MP (and the ad shown on BBC World every 5 mins about a story of tourists wrecking MP to add salt to our wounds) - we decided to catch a local bus which dropped us 11 kms out of town to Tambo Machay - a small Inca ruin with a sweet Incan made water feature. From there - we "trekked" 5 minutes down the road to another ruin called Puca Pucra which had a fantasic location (set on the top of a small valley). We were stalked at Puca Pucra by a pervian goat herder woman who hissed at us if we got too close to her goats and alpacas.

There is a complete lack of security or guards protecting the sites (other than the overzealous ticket people who demand to see your ticket). Tourists are free (almost) to walk around the ruins and do whatever... Hopefully - in the not to distant future - they will install security guards and rope off areas to protect them from crazy tourists.
We continued our trek down the road back to town and stopped at Qenko - a maze like ruin with a few caves and cliffs. There was a crazy school girl who wanted to take her picture with us both...

We walked down what we call affectionately Llama/Alpaca street where there are heaps of old Pervian woman dressed up like Incas with alpacas with clothing accessories. You pay them 1 soles (Peru cash) and you can get your picture with them. Mine hissed at me while Ant got his picture taken with several alpacas with earrings.

After attempting to chase alpacas in a paddock - we made it to Sacsayhuaman - a quite huge ruin about 2kms away from the centre of Cusco. There were several different areas including a fortress like wall, a big circle structure and a cool sun like ruin (which was hidden away from the main site and most tourists would miss it). Ant and I were definately satisfied with our Inca ruins today - and we did get a 7 cities of gold fix.

From Sacsayhuaman (I have the lonely planet in front of me for correct spelling) - we ventured across to what we call Cusco´s version of Rio´s Christ the Redeemer statue - only Cusco´s version was a bit lame. There were more llama women at the statue but the japanese tourists didn´t seem like they were taking the bait.

We then bravely walked down a path to the city. Lonely Planet says you may get mugged here - but it didn´t seem seedy. We stopped along the way for freshly squeezed orange juice for about 40c Australian (where I´m sure you would be paying $4 at Boost for the same thing).

We both go a 15 Sol Church mega pass - giving us access to a big church and a couple of churchy museums. The "Cathedral" which is in the Plaza de Armas (city square) was apparently built upon an Inca palace and uses blocks which were taken from Sacsayhuman. To add salt in the Inca ruins - the church had a couple of ditties including one statue of a Spanish solider riding on a white horse with a little Inca midget getting trampled. Don´t you love Christianity and its tolerance for other cultures...? One of the catholic museums had some interesting Cusco paintings where the church was in town and some Inca warriors looked contispated.

We have both noticed that the food here seems to lose a little "in translation" in Peru. Most resturants serve either Pizza, Italian, Mexican or Local food or all of the above. Everything doesn´t seem quite right - they served us breakfast today but the bread wasn´t toasted (despite claiming to be toasted in the menu) and the Hawaiian Pizzas don´t seem to have much in the way of pinapple or ham... I could go on here but I´ll probably rant about it latter. But one thing about the food in Cusco is that it is pretty cheap - for about $5 or 6 Australian you can get a four course meal with free beer. All the restuarants seem ultra competitive with one another for the tourist dollar - to the point that their touters almost bash one another up.

Another complaint about the touters - the worst ones are either children (who don´t understand "no") and the guys who try to sell you to go to their (non-blue) video bars and watch DVDs in rooms. I´m sorry but I didn´t travel half way around the world to watch "City of God" in a small room on a pirated DVD and pay for the privilage. (Anyway - I didn´t want to watch that movie until I get back from Rio).

Anyway - we are going to go off to dinner and face those touts again. Adios.