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Greetings from Cusco!!
I have been here for one fabulous week already and I really don´t want to leave! Cusco is incredible, such a melting pot of history, archeology, pisco sours, bar dancing and alpacas. I have been an utterly shameless tourist and have been to all the major sights, brought a small family of alpacas worth of wooly souveniers and generally chilled in cafes people watching and soaking up the atmosphere.
I arrived here last friday after an entire days travel from Buenos Aires and spend the night being taught American card games by a group of scrummy Californian lifeguards (its a tough life). The cold up here was a shock after thrity degree days and air conditioning down in the south. I was also pretty chuffed to not have been affected at all by altitude sickness. I have been out of breath after climbing a flight of stairs but that is as far as it has gone :-) On my first full day I headed into the town, camera in hand, armed with my tourist ticket and went to every museum and art gallery that I could. There are some fascinating relics here, like the preserved mummys that all sit in foetal position with their thousands of years old hair still attached to their skulls. The pottery is also pretty impressive and you can really see the development of the first crude designs to the amazing stuff they were churning out towards the end of the Inca empire. As with every town, I can´t walk past the catherdral without checking it out! The ones here are mindblowing! In the jesuit cathedral the altar is about twenty meters high and covered entirely in gold and paintings and statues. I got talking to a local man who was there praying and wanted to know if all British people were druids who danced around stonehenge. He seemed pretty suprised when I told him I wasn´t a druid, nor religious, infact he had never heard of anyone who didn´t believe in god! Its incredible how much relgion still has a strangle hold over here. That night was spent , as with all good nights, drinking in the hostel bar and then dancing down Roots (which is a little nightclub with an eclectic mix of locals and tourists.)
The next day I was up bright and early to go on the sacred valley tour. This was well worth the shockingly early start because the sights we went to were amazing. The first stop was an agricultural centre beginning with C (sorry- i´m really bad at Inca names) which took a long walk to reach the top. It was like a mini Machu Picchu with temples, trapezoid doors and windows and terraces as far as the eye could see. The view was postcard stunning - the Incas built on the tops of mountains to be closer to their gods (but I reckon the views would have also helped boost the property prices!) We then headed to a little village named Urumbamba for lunch of traditional Pervuian food (but alas no guinea pig) which is pretty much stews, rice, beans and loads of potatoes. We then went to Ollyantambo which is a really well preserved little town. It has the same fixtures as every Inca town, a big road into and out of it, a fort, an agricultural centre and the living quarters. This town would have been a stopping off point for Incas travelling on the huge Inca roads, although there would have been a permemant population based there. After seeing ruins all day it was lovely to go to Chinchero and watch the local people spin and dye alpaca wool. You need the patience of a saint to be able to weave in the way that they do, their patterns are prefect, without a single mistake. I also indulged in more souveniers, and hugged a small boys pet alpaca - it smelt just like a musty, muddy horse. I finally arrived back in Cusco and headed straight to the bar and then out to Roots (again) where the dancing, drinking and body painting went on until the eraly hours. After which time we decided the party was not over and were taken to the only gay bar in Cusco by an Irish lad. This place had a hint of dodgyness about it but since there were four of us, and a Peruvian lady who seemed to have adopted me as her girlfriend (I couldn´t understand what she was saying because it was all in drunken spanish, but I got the gist from the continual hugs!) we stayed for a few beers.
The next day was a general strike in Cusco so I had a well deserved sleep in and popped into town to do laundry, send packages home and generally people watch, which I did with a coco tea in a lovely little cafe. That evening took the same route as normal, bar, Roots, then we ended up in hospital because somebody had spiked Jaap´s drink when he put it down (all those years down the Embo have taught me to guard my drink as though it were my only child!) After we realised that no doctors worked during the nights and with out friend talking again we headed home to bed.
Tuesday was spent horse rding out to the sights aroundd Cusco, such as Tambomachay and Sacsaywayman (this is more then likely spelt incorrectly) which was fun, although the horses we so thin and the guilde kept on hitting mine even after I had told him to stop - they just dont have the same respect for animals here that we do back in the West. The ruins around Cusco are really well preserved and to top this off, they are restoring them using Inca methods of carving the stone by hand and then dragging it up the hills by ropes and pulleys. We saw the famous twelve cornered stone and marvelled at how these people managed to drag huge blocks that weighed well over a ton to the tops of these hills, at high altitude! Then Heather (who was riding with me) and I went to the highest Irish bar in the world here in Cusco and had a Pisco sours or two. Being at the hostel has been like being in Ireland - I have never met so many Irish before in one place in my life! Before going back to the hostel I had a pedicure in this local womans house which was hillarious because neither of us could understand each other and we just mimed everything and laughed a lot! But I came away with amazingly soft feet, so it was well worth the three US dollars! That evening Heather came to the hostel and we had a few dirnks and an early night because the next day I departed for Machu Picchu!
At 6am I left the hostel to board the train to Aguas Caliente, which is the closset town to Machu Picchu. The ride was long and soocramped, it was like a sleazy jet flight excpet you faced the people opposite you and having long legs does not help in situations like this! I finally arrived around midday and set off to explore the town, which is far smaller than cusco and much more modern. This place is really geared towards the tourist, to the point where all the restaurants sell pizza. So there wasn´t much to do, but I spent a pleasent afternoon relaxing by the Urambamba river, drinking frozen lemonade and chatting to the locals who wandered by. My hostel room looked right out over the river and it was such a relaxing sound to fall asleep to (I finally had a night without dancing!) The next day I was up at 5am to catch the earliet bus to I could see the sun ride on Machu Picchu and I wasn´t dissapointed! Even through the coluds you could see the outlines of the ruins begin to appear, it was simply magical. After getting my ticket to climb Waynapicchu (the big mountain in the background of all the famous pictures) I had a few hours to wander around before my tour began. I wandered through the relgious area and looked out over the valley with not a soul there apart from me - I think truley magical is the only way to describe it. After a really insightful tour of the town I climbed all the way to the top of Waynapicchu and spent a good hour checking out the temple of the moon, where Inca astorolgers worked, and the surrounding views. The way down was hillarious and I ended up slipping everywhere and chatting broken french and english to these french and japanse guys who was also headed down the mountain! That afternoon I got the train back to cusco, in another long and cramped journey.
So now I am getting ready to head to Lima on the bus. I can´t believe that my time in Cusco has gone so quickly, I really wish I had a month here to see everything that I felt I have missed and would like to see again. I have met so many fantastic people who I will hopefully bump into again and had such great experiences. This is a place I will remember forever. But who knows what the next week will bring?
Much love
Charli xxxx
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