Cuzco and Pisaq

10/4/05

Pisaq

The second day in Cuzco was not meant to visit only Cuzco. We went in the morning to the neighboring town Pisaq, 32 Km away. Still in Cuzco we had to walk around a little bit ...







... to find the local bus to Pisaq.

The trip is short and cheap, only 2 Nuevos Soles (1US=3.8 soles).

Pisaq has a market on the central square surrounded by well preserved colonial buildings now converted into nice hotels, restaurants and cafes.



On the market, there are tons of goods ...







... varying from waving, ...



... ponchos and sweaters ...



... to all kinds of art, paintings and handcrafts.





Doris even tried out some instruments.



The market and the tourists attract traditional dressed locals that are making some Soles posing for pictures.







When the rain came we jumped into a nice cafe, not really traditional, but really really nice. A big menu of very original juices, nice jazzy music and cozy environment where we waited for the rain to stop.



From the second floor of the building we watched life going on on the square and I really would like to know what that tourist said to the seller to make her so astonished.



Then we explored the streets away from the touristic square. Narrow alleys with a slow life pace...





For lunch we experienced what a local eats for lunch. A little restaurant, packed with families and workers, that serves only one thing, almuerzo. Indeed the sign on the entrance says, Hoy Almuerzo (Today lunch), at night the sign changes to Hoy Cena (Today dinner) and in the morning you can imagine what it says.

Almuerzo means literally lunch, but in fact it is a menu set composed of a soup, a main dish, a drink and a dessert, all for 2.50 Nuevos Soles.



Back to Cuzco

After lunch we decided to go back to Cuzco. We took the same bus back with no problems, but with one little story to tell.

We caught the bus on the last minute before it departed, so it was full, there were no available seats. The guy in charge of collecting the fares shouted to the people in the bus "Give a seat for the tourists!". The fact that we were considered entitled to have a seat was not the most absurd thing, but actually who stood up to offer the seat, a poor cholita with a baby in her arms and a big bag. We, of course, did’t accept and remained standing in the full bus with the others. The poor girl still insisted in giving her place and Angie repeated "no" a couple of times. While the cholita was unnecessarily saying thank you to Angie, the guy that collect the fares was still shouting "Give a seat to the tourists!".

Well, a couple of minutes later we arrived in Cuzco and headed to visit the church of Santo Domingo, or it is maybe better to say: the ancient sacred Inca temple Coricancha, the most important of the Inca Empire.



The wonderfully carved granite walls of the temple, probably the finest of all Inca stone carvings, were covered with more than 700 sheets of pure gold, weighing around two kilograms each; the spacious courtyard ...



... was filled with life-size sculptures of animals and a field of corn, all fashioned from pure gold; the floors of the temple were themselves covered in solid gold; and facing the rising sun was a massive golden image of the sun encrusted with emeralds and other precious stones. (All of this golden artwork was quickly stolen and melted down by the fckng Spaniards, who then built a church of Santo Domingo on foundations of the temple.)



The Coricancha (sometimes spelled Qoricancha) was also the centerpiece of a vast astronomical observatory and calendrical device for precisely calculating precessional movement. Emanating from the temple were forty lines called seques, running arrow-straight for hundreds of miles to significant celestial points on the horizon. Four of these seques represented the four intercardinal roads to the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu, others pointed to the equinox and solstice points, and still others to the heliacal rise positions of different stars and constellations highly important to the Inca.



To finish the day, we walked a bit more through the cobblestone streets lined up with Inca-built stonewalls which now form the foundations of colonial buildings.





Cuzco is the oldest continuously inhabited city of the American continent. Legend says it was founded in the 1100s by the Incas but archeological record shows that the area was occupied by other cultures for several centuries before the rise of the Incas.

After all that the stomach was calling for attention. We had a dinner at the best Peruvian style, pollo a la brasa. You would be scared to see this, Doris and Angie were so hungry that they literally sucked the poor chicken to the bones :D



All that food was a preparation for the following day, when we started walking the ancient trail to the sacred city of the Incas, Macchu Pichu.

From Puno to Cuzco

10/3/05
Well, Puno itself didn't have much to offer, so we left at 8 a.m. for Cuzco. We had a two-floor bus and we managed to get the four front seats on the upper level which provides an excellent panoramic view ...



... of the nice landscape we went through.



Mountains were all around and the vegetation kept changing as we got higher. It got drier and drier, the threes disappeared and at one point the vegetation was mainly composed of bushes. After the pass, at 4.300 meters, the road went always down until it reached Cuzco, at 3.400 meters.

We were stopped on the way by a police checkpoint. They looked through the luggage's of all the passengers and they found a lot of stuff to keep. We could watch and hear the cry of some passengers that lost some goods.



Then the bus made a stop in a smaller village on the way.





Sellers are not allowed in the bus station, so there is the fence to keep them out, but a strategically placed gap allows the passengers to buy snacks or refreshment anyway.



Because we had a reservation in a hotel in Cuzco, there was someone waiting for us at the bus station. We were brought to the hotel where we arrived around 4:30 p.m. At night we went to see this fabulous charming city built on the foundation of Inca walls.

We had also booked a trek to Machu Picchu with www.hikingperu.com. We found their office and confirmed our depart on the 10/5. Everything was perfectly fine. We had the rest of the night to walk around and explore the streets that were full of people; there was a festival going on and the students of the school of San Francisco de Assis were getting ready for a parade.

Meanwhile we walked through the Plaza de Armas, snapped into the church La Compañia de Jesus and got a glimpse of its interior. It contains stones from the palace of Inca and it was partially destroyed in 1986 by an earthquake. It has a baroque facade and it is one of the most ornate of Cuzco. It is the church on the right side of the following picture.



When enough was enough we went back to the hotel.

Titicaca Lake - Peru

10/1/05
Our second day in Peru was also the so awaited "DD Day", the day we met two great friends from NY that decided to join us on their vacation, Danny and Doris.

Angie and I spent the morning at Ricos Pan, the excellent Peruvian bakery, having breakfast, working on the pictures for the blog and waiting for the time to go to the airport, in Juliaca, to pick-up our friends. Juliaca is the neighboring town where the airport is located, one hour away from Puno.

We left around 1 p.m. in a private taxi to Juliaca, where we passed quickly by the center of the town and then headed to the airport. The flight arrived at 4:20 p.m. and we welcomed them with balloons and a Bolivian hat.



Back in Puno, after Danny and Doris checked in, we went around to visit the main street and then looked for a nice restaurant to celebrate our meeting.



Danny brought a bottle of Pinot Gris from France and we opened it at the restaurant. We had Llama, Beef, Trout and Guini Pig. Later another bottle of Casillero del Diablo and to finish Pisco Sour. Wow, after all that alcohol everyone was speaking, perfectly, Spanish.



During the dinner, out of nothing, a parade passed outside, just by the window. There were many people playing acoustic guitars while dancers performed.



10/2/05
The day started early, we left puno at 7:30 a.m. ...



... for a tour on the Titicaca Lake, the world's highest navigable lake, at 3820 meters high with 180Km of length and 60Km of width.

There are two interesting places in the lake to be visited, The Floating Islands and Taquile Island. The first one is populated by the Uros people, that found out they could build up floating islands, made of tortora reeds which grow abundantly in the shallows of the lake, to isolate themselves from other tribes, the Collas and the Incas. It took us some 30 minutes by boat to get there.



In fact there are many tiny islands; we visited two. Locals came out to greet us on our arrival.



There, our guide gave us an overview about the lake and how the tribe lives. From the reeds they don’t make only the island, but also eat it. The greener part can be peeled of and it is known as the banana del Titicaca. During the overview a family sat aside to demonstrate.



Danny and Angie could also calm their stomach.



A curious bird landed in the middle of the group in hope of some food.



Beyond the island and food, the reed is also used to make boats, very nice boats indeed.







Boats are used between islands and move out of the lake to bring other things they need, like stones, woods and other kinds of food.



Kids do not have much space to run and play, though they take a lot of attention from the tourists.



The isolation of the Uros people from other tribes and the lifestyle they developed led them to adapt physically to the unusual environment they live in. Their legs are now shorter and their feet are softer than the people living on land. That is because by living in a such tiny island, they walk very little and the soft ground modified their feet.

Here is our boat going through the reeds.



After we visited two floating islands we started a slow boring trip to Taquile, two and a half hours away from Uros.

The lake is so big that it resembles the sea.



Due to the altitude (and probably amplified by the drinking on the previous night) Danny wasn't feeling 100%, the trip to Taquile seemed even longer to him.

Anyway, at one point we got there and we found Taquile a fascinating island, where people wear colorful traditional clothes which they make themselves and sell in the island’s cooperative store. The work is divided between men and women. The women spin the wool ...





... and the kids are not spared ...





... while the men neat the clothes.



It was a sunday, the day of the week they hold a ceremony at the main square in front of the church; and we got to see it!

On the way to the main square, with the altitude and the strong sun, Danny started to feel worse. It was when a friendly old lady, a Peruvian tourist in our group, voluntarily offered her knowledge in help of our New Yorker friend, which Danny kindly accepted. But her methods were quite alternative; she jumped on Danny’s hair and started to pull selected chucks of it, after each strong pull she blowed the root of the chunk she was holding and asked Danny if he was feeling better. She kept pulling until Danny miserably announced he was ok. If Danny didn’t get better at least one thing is sure, he forgot it for a few minutes. Here is a picture of the surgery.



We arrived at the main square just few minutes before the ceremony started, women were gathering for the weekly event.





The high rank men stood and made a speech ....



... while the others gathered around.



One, very peculiar, detail of the people living in Taquile is that the single man must wear a red and white hat ...



... while a married man do wear a completely red hat.



The lunch was in a communal restaurant where we had fish from Titicaca and soup while a young musician performed traditional music, sang in Quechua, for us.



At the end of the tour, while walking back to the boat the lake was strangely reflecting the white clouds.



The boredom of 3 hours in a boat to get back to the shore, combined with Danny’s bad condition made him collapse, and our camera was there to capture this kodak moment :D