Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Well we managed to get up bright and early today before everyone started hustling us for a few sols. Had a slightly bitter day yesterday. We went on a city tour which ended up taking about an hour longer than advertised due to some retarded american tourists (from Seattle). I will let Hilary expand as she needs to let it all out haha. Hil don´t forget to tell them about the evil poncho woman. Ummm, anyway so because of the delay we ended up missing our massage and freezing our asses off and almost not getting our laundry. Very sad but then the evening took a turn for the better when we stumbled across the lane to a restaurant called Victor Victoria. We decided to treat ourselves to a ?fancy meal? which was very good and included dessert and a bottle of the local wine (yummy) for 73 sols...yup we were high rollers last night. Our waitor was awesome! He was overly enthusiastic and kept coming over and exclaiming ?s good seniorita?s? YES!! YESS!! It?s GOOOOOOD!!?and then he high fived us when he found out we were Canadian. We were going to check out a club last night but ended up just crashing...perhaps tonight as this might be our last big city adventure for a bit. I cannot tell you guys how much I am looking forward to Aguas Calientes and the hot springs I have been promised. Hot water is a dream to be promised but never received so far in this country. Anyway I am sure our spirits will be improved again after our self guided museum tours today and massages and pedicures (for me) and possible dancing. Peace out. XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Hil here now - right, the stupid tourists. So the tour we went on yesterday was to some of the archeological sites around Cusco - apparantly Cusco is the archeological cantre of South America (the province of Cusco encompasses Machu Picchu, so that claim really can´t be refuted). It all started out nicely. We went to a museum-type place in town, where they have the only still-standing Inca walls in the area. It´s really incredible how straight all the blocks are cut, and there was nothing used to hold them together. Apparantly, at one point, the walls of some of these rooms were covered in sheets of silver and gold, althought the conquistadors (sp?) took care of that - most of the gold from idols and decorations is now in the frames of various gruesome Catholic paintings. We were in the spot where the Incas used to celebrate summer solstice, although you can no longer see the sunrise in this area as the Spanish built a massive cathedral which blocks it out.
From there we headed out of town to Sacsayhuaman - this is where the people ended up after they danced from the temple of the sun during the sun festival. There are massive great rocks, from which the priests would watch the celebrations. We even saw a condor here, which, in its hurry to get away from all the people crowding around to take pictures of it, nearly divebombed a group of unsuspecting tourists. And this was where it all went wrong. There were 4 people on our bus - a woman, her two grown daughters, and the son of one of the daughters. This was a really large site, so for the most part everyone stayed with the guide. Well, not these two. They managed to separate themselves from us and completely dissapeared. This resulted in the rest of us sitting on the bus for a good half hour while various peole went looking for them. Their mother was completely terrified, and nearly convinced that one of them had collapsed somewhere, or that they´d been kidnapped or something (her rantings didn´t exactly have a calming effect on the little boy, either, who was asking people to please call his mom). The delay meant that we ended up visiting half the sites in dusk or dark, and it gets really, really cold here in the dark. Really cold. One woman looked at me in my shorts, said "aye aye aye", then proceeded to tell me how warm she was wrapped up in her Alpaca poncho. The poor tour guide was nervous, too, as she´d never lost anyone on a tour again. The rest of the sites were interesting. There was a fountain coming out of the side of a hill, which the royals used for bathing, called Qenqo, and a site that was used as a temporary home whem the incas wanted to harvest maize, called Pucapucara (which means red clay). In the end, the two women were waiting in the square when the bus returned, so all was well - we were just cold, tired, hungry, and slightly bitter!
A nice bottle of local red and a hugely enthusiastic waiter made it all good again, though, and today we´re off to explore some of the museums and sort out what we´re doing when we get back from Machu Picchu. Hope everyone is keeping well - love getting your messages! Take care everyone,
Erika and Hil
- comments