Down in the Valley

This morning I had to leave Cusco for the Sacred Valley of the Incas. So sad, but it's the only way to get to Machu Picchu, and I'll be back before long.



Of course, since this trip is a month long, any time I need to go somewhere I take the scenic route. This is Ccorao, the first city outside of Cusco in the valley.



And this is me, overlooking the Urubamba river valley, where I will be for the next couple of days.

First real stop on today's tour was the market at Pisac.




It's a fruit and vegetable exchange for the residents of the valley, some of whom walk for miles and miles to sell their hard-wrought goods.




But of course, like everything else here, a substantial portion of the market is dedicated to tourism.





I don't know if you know this about me, but I hate to shop. For anything. Much less things I don't want or need. And if there's one thing I hate more than shopping, it's haggling. I always wind up either feeling cheap or stupid, and usually both. But everywhere you go here, and I'm talking everywhere, from the museums and ruins of Lima to the homes of the Titicaca islanders, everywhere you go someone is trying to sell you one of those hats, or a doll, or a tapestry or a postcard or a bottle of water or something. And the markets are even worse.



"Amigo! Amigo! Pregunten! Mira! Mira! Ameeeeego!" And in such plaintive tones, as if they'll die of poverty if you don't buy a ceramic bull right now (which from the look of some of them, they might, so that makes it even harder).



It'd be one thing if I liked souvenirs, but I'm kind of a "take only photographs, leave only footprints" kind of guy, so all the charm of these markets is lost on me. Anyways, I didn't meant to rant there, it's just EVERYWHERE.



Oh look, a pretty flower. Ahhhh. This is called the Flower of the Incas. I think it's a kind of lily.

So after the market (where, yes, dammit, I bought something), we drove on through the valley, and I started to doze. I awoke to find I was being kicked off the bus. Evidently my included lunch buffet was at a different restaurant than everybody else's included lunch buffet. It's too bad, too, because that's when I was going to make my move on the lovely Australian Sheila traveling alone across the aisle from me. Now I look like I think I'm too good to eat with the rest of the bus.



Lunch was delightful, though, underneath thatched roofs surrounded by exotic wildlife.



Awww...he's sweeeeping...

Then it was on to the ruins at Ollantaytambo. Yep, that's the name of the town.





The town is actually built on the ruins, using the original Incan foundations, so you can see how they planned their communities. More on that later.



On the mountain facing the temple, the face of one of the important chiefs was carved in massive scale. (Mostly destroyed by the Spanish, though.)



I learned a lot from Clara (the tour guide) about the history of the Incan conquest, how there had been a civil war around the time the Spanish arrived, how the Spanish used African slaves and enlisted tribes from all over Central and South America to help them defeat the Incans, how the Incans built their massive temples in much the same way as the Egyptians built their pyramids, how they had no system of currency but citizens paid their taxes in labor, but I won't bore you with all that stuff. Oh crap, too late.



So on that same mountain (facing the temple) on the edge of it, they carved the face of the emperor. See it? How about a close-up?



Supposedly on the winter solstice, the sun shines right through his eye!

Since I was staying the night in Ollantaytambo (not returning to Cusco), I was supposed to be dropped at my hotel. But evidently the bus was too big to fit down the road to my hotel, so they put me in a mototaxi (or Tuk-tuk, as they're called in some countries).



Looks sturdy, right? Like, enough to carry me and my giant suitcase? Yeah I didn't think so either. That's why I've been avoiding taking them anywhere.




Inside, the thing looks like it's held together with bubble-gum and willpower. Thank Pachamama it wasn't that far.



My hotel is right next to the railroad tracks, so that tomorrow I can head into Machu Picchu town.



It's just behind that mountain, shrouded in mist(-ery).

Pachacútec Was a Rolling Stone

This morning I met up with Monica, (the sweet German lady who helped me plan this whole trip) and a guide named Miguel to go mountain biking through the ruins surrounding Cusco.



Evidently my repeated blasphemy on this blog is not falling on deaf ears, as the beautiful weather I've been blessed with so far on this trip turned into dark cloudy skies, threatening to rain and washing out my pictures. Try to enjoy, and I will sacrifice a small animal in order to appease something (maybe just my appetite) and get the blue skies to return.



First stop was Tambomachay, a temple/bathhouse built on a natural spring where high-ranking Incas would wash their souls, waited on by servants.



Water still flows from the spring, and along the little aqueducts and canals. Pretty amazing.




Next up was Puca Pucara, which was probably some sort of military outpost (great view of the city) and/or a waystation for chasquis (the messengers that ran all over the Incan empire relaying verbal messages (no writing system)).



This is me, looking awful bad-ass in my helmet and gloves. It was majorly extreme, yo. I only ate it once, when I tried to hop UP some rocks. Miguel made it look so easy! I didn't land on my face, though, so the thousand-dollar-smile is still intact.



Next we rode down to the Temple of the Moon, which isn't a main draw but I thought was one of the coolest spots. It's a natural cave, but then when you go inside it's been carved to form an altar that is lit by the full moon.




Carved on the entrance to the cave is a snake. I can't remember if I mentioned this before, so I'll go into it. The Incan naturalistic belief system is that there are three worlds, that of the gods (represented by the condor), that of the earth (represented by the puma) and that of the dead, or the underworld (represented by the snake).



Me again, this time sitting on the throne reserved for the Incan priests. I just love how the man-made structure is incorporated right into the natural landscape. So much cooler than a giant ornate cathedral. Oops, there I go again.

We stopped for a picnic, then rode on to Q'enqo.




Another temple, with another cave/altar carved into it. There's these little channels going off the altar, where evidently the sacrificial blood (or possibly chicha) would run off. Depending on which side it ran, the priest would predict whether there would be a good harvest or a bad one.



This sculpture out front may have been a giant puma, but we don't know because it was destroyed by ... well you know the rest. I wonder if that's why I keep seeing the Autobots symbol on taxis everywhere here in Peru. Because it looks like a cool futuristic puma. Hmm.

Finally our bike tour led us to Sacsayhuamán (or sexy woman, as British tourists and jokey tour guides call it), the greatest of the Cusco ruins.



Built by the emperor Pachacútec over a hundred years, out of giant stones that were brought in by thousands of workers from as far as twenty miles away, it's pretty stunning. There's a story that the city plan of Cusco was originally laid out in the shape of a puma, and Sacsayhuamán is the head, with its zigzag walls forming the teeth.



The site is also famous for being the last stand of the Incans against the Spaniards. Spain had already conquered Cusco and installed a puppet regime, but there was a resistance movement that took back Sacsayhuamán and nearly defeated the Spanish in a siege of the city.



Thousands died, and when the Incan troops were defeated, most of the stones were carried off to build houses and other stuff in Cusco.




Across the field is this crazy structure of volcanic rock, well-worn with grooves by years of people using it as a slide. No, seriously. But I think it must have looked to the Incans like it had been left behind by the gods.



There are also some caves here (check out the man-made v. natural contrast...love it) that supposedly led to underground tunnels that travel all over Cusco, maybe even under the churches (since they were originally Incan temples), but the Catholic church isn't saying.

We rode back to the city, stopping for juice along the way.



Then I headed out to the Central Market. Wow. What a crazy place. I saw a woman literally selling snake oil, a man pushing a three-tiered handcart that contained live chicks, eggs, and full-grown chickens, and people with all manner of dental and spinal abnormalities. Unfortunately, I didn't take a single picture, because I had been repeatedly warned about thefts in this place, and after all, it's not a freak show to them. I'm sure Wal-Mart looks just as disturbing to a Peruvian.

After the visual and auditory overload of the mercado, not to mention the throbbing pain in my knees and lungs from a morning of rock-hopping in the Andes, I decided to treat myself to a relaxing lunch at a San Blas quinta, which is a traditional open-air restaurant.




Oddly, I was the only one in the place (I guess they're more popular with locals on the weekends) but that didn't stop me from ordering the trout ceviche. Which was excellent, by the way.

Tomorrow I head into the Sacred Valley, and then on Wednesday and Thursday I'll be up in the Machu Picchu. Does this trip just keep getting better or what?



This was over the door to the quinta. I don't know what it means, but I like it.

And That's When I Got Religion(s)...

Not surprisingly, I woke up Sunday morning (barely in time for the laundry service, which is charged by the kilo, which doesn't seem fair to the big man) with a wicked hangover. I could claim it was the altitude, but I think it might just be my old pal vodka. Anyhow, the guidebook recommended ceviche, but my crusty throbbing brain and oogly-moogly stomach couldn't possibly comprehend ingesting raw fish marinated in lime juice. So I found this second-floor coffee shop with a great view of the Plaza de Armas (all these cities have one, it's like a town square) and ordered something called a club sandwich.




But friends, it was like no club sandwich I'd ever seen in my life. On three slices of white bread was shredded chicken, ham, bacon, AND sausage, cheese, tomato and a fried egg. Oh, and there were fries, too. This is a club I want to join.

Then, as it was Sunday, I went to church.



This is La Catedral, the main cathedral of Cusco. As you might expect, it's all kinds of Baroque, with a giant silver altar and amazing wood carving. As you might also expect, no photos allowed. It's chock full of religious paintings in a style they call Escuela Cusqueña, or Cusco School, which seems to me just like Spanish Renaissance style devotional paintings, only elements of Peruvian life will show up. Like they got this Last Supper where Jesus and the apostles are drinking chicha and eating guinea pig. Nice place to visit if you like Bible paintings designed to convert illiterate indigenous people, which I don't.




This is the Jesuit church kitty-corner to the cathedral. But with a name like Templo de la Compañia de Jesús, I just couldn't bring myself to go inside. I decided instead to visit the Convento de Santa Catalina (because I heard it was built on top of the temple where the Incan emperor stored his virgins) but it's closed for renovation.

One of the most interesting things about Cusco to me is that all these Spanish buildings from after the conquest were built right on top of existing Incan structures. This is mainly because, despite their appetite for destruction, they recognized the value of good stone masonry. Or maybe they just couldn't destroy everything. In any case, the streets of Cusco are full of these Incan walls made from cut stones put together without mortar and locked in place like some kind of giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. More on that later. (Plus, I figured nobody wants to see a bunch of pictures of rock walls. I swear, though, it's really cool.)

First, a couple of reasons why I don't even bother asking for directions in this town:




Wha?

So one of the most striking examples of this (Spanish buildings with Incan foundations) is Q'oricancha, or the Temple of the Sun (or Santo Domingo).



This place must have been something. It was the main astronomical observatory of the Incas, their biggest and most important temple. Evidently the walls were covered with giant gold panels, the courtyards full of life-size gold statues of people and animals, and at one end was a giant golden disc in the shape of the sun. The sun would shine in and reflect off the sun disc and light up the whole place. The Spanish (of course) melted down all the gold, then used the stone walls to build a Dominican convent.




Thankfully, you can still see the Incan architecture, and they've removed some of the cloister so you can see the other chambers, temples to other celestial natural gods like Venus and the moon.




Check out the symmetry. They loved trapezoids, for some reason. Which to me seems a lot more difficult, especially considering they still don't know exactly how the Incans were able to cut stone, seeing as how they didn't have iron.



This wall is amazingly smooth, perfectly curved, and has withstood earthquake after earthquake (some of which have crumbled the Spanish churches you saw earlier).

Oh, this is cool:



Evidently the Incan concept of constellations was a little different than ours. Instead of connecting the dots of the stars to form pictures, they looked at the Milky Way as this river in the sky that animal gods came and drank at. So the shapes they saw were the blank spaces in between the stars. This is an artist's rendering. See the snake in the upper right, and the llama with a blue eye? Neato.

Anyways, then I walked around the neighborhood of my hostal, an artsy part of town called San Blas.






This is the view from the courtyard of the hostal.

"But enough with the architecture already, Max! We wanna know about the girl!"

All right, all right, you gossip hounds. You're just lucky I have no sense of shame or common decency. So we talked on the phone (I think she was a little surprised that I was calling the day after, but what was I supposed to do? I'm only in Cusco a couple of days!) and made a date to meet at the Plaza at 8. Although it could have been seven. She insisted on speaking English, which she wasn't that good at. Anyways, Peruvians are notoriously late, so I waited the expected half an hour, then another half an hour, then bravely accepted the fact that I got stood up. Or got the time wrong. Both seem perfectly in character for me.

But before you get all weepy and pitying, you should know I then went to dinner and met a charming young Cusqueña named Irma, and we flirted for hours. Yep, I still got it.



Hell yeah.