Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Travel trivia: What's the difference between Alpaca wool and baby Alpaca? Softer and twice the cost. Both are difficult to distinguish from synthetic fakes by us mortal humans.
After my 10am update of Machu Picchu, day 21 pretty much progressed as expected: lunch, train ride back to Ollantaytambo, and a bus ride from there back to Cusco. We got there just in time for dinner - this part of the trip certainly revolves around meals.
We stayed at the Monasterio, and old monastery from the late 1500s, now used as a hotel. The stone arches and courtyards were stunning. A great place to stay, probably top-3 of my hotels ever - and I've stayed in a few hotels… I don't know, the Marine Hermanus Hotel in South Africa, the Old Cataract in Aswan, The Rasa Sayang in Penang… Okay, maybe top-5. We had dinner with a live opera performance. Very well done, and the acoustics were of course great, given the architecture of the dining room.
One of the highlights on this trip outside of Machu Picchu was certainly the morning in Cusco. We visited a local food market. I love local markets. It's where people gather, where you get to experience the real culture, the scents of fresh fruit, flowers and spices. Where rich tourists from America meet the salt of the earth from Peru. We weren't allowed to take (close-up) pictures of people, but I took a lot of pictures of the market nonetheless. We watched an amazing demonstration of cutting vegetables (much faster and more dangerous than I've ever seen on Iron Chef). I could have easily spent hours here, taking in the colors and the people and the interactions, but 30min definitely gave us a good impression.
We then proceeded doing a mixture of things that were somewhat repetitive, but it was like we were experiencing it for the first time. We went to the sun temple, which is an old Inca site (Cusco was, after all, the capital of the Inca empire) that the Spaniards mostly destroyed and then built their own monastery around. Hey, us Europeans, we ruled the world, once, so we pretty much did what we wanted with little to no regard for local civilization. Actually, the only regard was for the local gold and silver. I'm not Spanish, but the Dutch weren't much better those days. Most interesting at this site, to me, was to see the difference between the old Inca architecture, and their attention to detail unparalleled in this world, versus the what I know look at as rough construction of the Spaniards. For 42 years I've thought the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans et al built beautiful buildings. But none of it as refined as the Incan buildings, and you easily see that when you look at it side-by-side.
We stopped at another alpaca store. Outside of the center of town, so good deals. And yes, we bought more, because we all need more alpaca sweaters. We do.
We visited a site called Saqsaywaman (aka Sexy Woman) where we saw walls built with 70, 80, can I have another, yes, 90+ ton stones. And it all fitted like a glove, no seems, no gaps, not mortar. Just stone on stone. Lots of theories about how that was done, lots of questions, no certainties.
The best stop of the day, in my opinion, is the one where we weren't allowed to take pictures: Cusco's major church, Cusco Cathedral. We spent 15min in this church that was decorated with gold. Not painted gold, not yellow-ish wood, no: gold. Okay, 18k gold plated, but still. It was one of the most impressive things I've seen, and by the time I was 12, I've certainly seen my share of churches, cathedrals, mosques, and temples supporting a variety of religion. But after 15min in this church, we learned we were really only exploring the first part (quarter) of it, one of the chapels. Over all, it was a great education on how Catholicism blended with local Inca religion to make the church more attractive to the locals. The way they depict the virgin Maria, for example, as mother earth (or pachamama, and thus pregnant because pachamama is very fertile) is something you will never see in any Catholic church. Great education, interesting material, and 3 tons (!) of gold combined with 5 tons (!!) of silver… The fact that the Spaniards didn't take this is a miracle in itself.
The afternoon was to ourselves, as was the evening. What better way then to have a drink and some grub at an Irish pub in the Incan capital in Peru… Loved it.
Tomorrow: 4am wakeup call to get to the airport and fly to Lima, where a busy morning and afternoon await us, and then a few hours to ourselves before we (Liz, Celeste and I) leave for Atlanta at midnight.
- comments