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.
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.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 5:20 AM
3 Comments:
Hey Guys
I was wondering what kind of camera you have been using ?
Your pics are amazing !
Hello,
Thanks for the comment. The camera is a Canon Powershot G3! It is a bit too big to carry around in a trip like this but it has good lenses, not to mention that it is rock solid. It survived 5 major falls.
Hey adriano & angie!
Happy new year! Hope you guys had good time in Alps! Thanks for refreshing of those beautiful memories! I have forwared your blogger to some of my co-workers. they all love it, specially, those beautiful pictures. by the way, there are also some pictures from doris' camera, too!! ;) he...he...
doris
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