Eventually we arrived in Cusco. Whoa!! What a city. It was like arriving in another country; a fantastic place, similar in many ways to Italian or Spanish hillside cities. Cusco architecture is substantial and imposing, reflective of its Inca and Spanish colonial roots. You want some stonework done? Call in the Incas. The Inca era stonework in Cusco that forms the foundations of many buildings (the Spanish tore down the rest and built their own creations on the solid base) is astonishing. You’d be hard pressed to push a cigarette paper between the huge multi-sided bevelled blocks that fit together perfectly without any mortar having being used. And it’s been standing there now for 600 years or so, withstanding some big earthquakes along the way!
Built on hillsides, Cusco has a myriad of steep, winding, narrow cobblestone alleyways lined with interesting shops and cafes. It’s an easy place to spend a week, which we did. The city is very touristy, too much so, but has a vibrant café scene providing varied food that was a welcome break from the culinary monotony of the previous weeks.
We struck it lucky on Saturday – there was a regional dance troupe competition going on in Plaza de Armas, Cusco’s city centre square. The competitors and crowd created a riot of sound, colour and action.
Cusco has been one of the pleasant surprises of our long trip – it’s a great city with ample reason to visit for several days at least. But most people who come here have another destination in mind, for Cusco is the kicking off point for one of South America’s greatest sights, the fabulous former Inca city of Machu Picchu, built around 1450 and abandoned in the late 1500s.
To get there we took a 90 minute taxi ride to Ollantaytambo, from there a 100 minute train trip on Inca Rail to Aguas Caliente (where we had an overnight stay), and the following morning at dawn a 30 minute bus ride up a steep mountain switchback road to the Machu Picchu entrance. It’s a spectacular creation in a spectacular natural setting. Machu Picchu easily justifies all the hype that surrounds it.
We also had tickets to climb Montana Machupicchu (‘Machu Picchu mountain’) that towers over the Inca city ruins and surrounding peaks. It was a hard hot slog up a near vertical rock staircase, with Machu Picchu slowly being absorbed into the landscape as we winced our way up the mountainside. We went up far enough to get some good photos of the Inca ruins below; Dylan soldiered on to the summit.
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