The city of Cusco (also spelt Cuzco) is perched 3,330m high up in the Peruvian Andes and was the ancient capital of the massive Inca empire. At its peak, the Inca empire extended as far North as Ecuador and Columbia and as far South as Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. The name Cusco is derived from the Inca name for their capital which was “Qosqo”. This means “Navel of the World” in their language and was so called because the Incas believed the city to be the source of life. The Inca spoke a language called Quechua which, despite the Spanish conquistadors usual talents at eradicating indigenous religions, cultures and languages, is still spoken today by many of the Inca’s descendants including most of Cusco’s local inhabitants.

Our very early morning flight from Lima meant that we were checked into our hotel in Cusco before 9am! We were strongly advised by our tour manager to take it easy for the rest of the morning in order to acclimatise ourselves to Cusco’s high altitude - our “Traveller’s Handbook” actually uses Cusco as a prime example of a place where visitors who arrive by air can really suffer from the effects of altitude sickness. Unfortunately, our itinerary over the next 2 days meant that this free morning would be our only opportunity to explore this city by ourselves, so we ignored this advice as well as resisting our urge to catch up on this morning’s lost sleep and forced ourselves to go out to explore this city.

Our hotel was a short walk from Plaza de Armas - Cusco’s main square. Cusco is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Peru and therefore a high proportion of its population make their living from these tourists and most of them operate around this square. People were selling their colourful crafts from the pavement around the square and there were plenty of souvenir shops as well as a street market nearby.

Our guidebook and the travel brochures all contained pictures of Peruvian women dressed in very colourful costumes and we wondered if we would get to see any of these on our tour. We were worried that these pictures might have been taken at one of the many festivals that take place in Latin American countries. We needn’t have worried though, as there turned out to be plenty of women in Cusco dressed up in similar costumes who were more than happy to pose for photographs. We had been told that it was customary to give people 1 Sol (about 20p or 13¢) when taking their photograph so it wasn’t surprising that there were so many women out trying to attract the attention of photographers. These women had obviously dressed up specially for the tourists’ benefit but the clothes worn by other women going about their daily business also tended to be fairly colourful and they almost always wore hats.

We tried not to spend too much of our free time browsing the souvenir shops and photographing the colourful costumes being paraded because we wanted to make the most of this opportunity to wander around places that we didn’t expect to be taken to during our afternoon guided tour. We were hoping to glimpse some of the real Peruvians away from the main tourist sights. We wandered randomly around some of the narrow streets away from the main square and eventually found a covered wet market selling fruit, vegetables, meat and fish. We find that local markets are always good places to get a feel for the local way of life but wet markets are often not for the squeamish as live animals are often kept in cramped conditions and sometimes slaughtered for the customers and Cusco’s market was no exception.

When we returned to the hotel for our afternoon tour we both felt like the walking dead. We had already been up for 10½ hours and we were probably also suffering from the effects of the altitude. We desperately wanted to rest but instead we bravely freshened up and joined our afternoon guided tour of Cusco (although others in our group were weaker and skipped the tour). We were taken back to the Plaza de Armas where we were shown around the square. We were then taken into Cusco’s cathedral (La Catedral) entering it via the adjoining El Triunfo church. El Triunfo was Cusco’s first Christian church. Its name means “the triumph” and was built following the Spanish victory over the Incas. Although nothing special from the outside, it was quite spectacular inside as its altar and walls were adorned with dazzling gold leaf covered friezes.

Our guide concentrated on showing us the Peruvian influence in the artistry and he continued this theme when we went through into the cathedral. This was much darker than the church we had come from and unfortunately it was also undergoing some major renovation inside which limited where we were allowed to go. We were shown the Peruvian version of “The Last Supper” in which Judas looks distinctly Peruvian and their table is laid with indigenous Peruvian food like guinea pig and local fruit and vegetables. The Cathedral also contains Cusco’s most revered statue: a crucifix called “Nuestro Señor de los Temblores” (or “Our Lord of the Earthquakes”) so called because it is believed to have stopped the 1650 earthquake from destroying the city.

Surprisingly, we missed out what both our guide and guide book said was Cusco’s “most beautiful church”: La Compañía de Jesús which is located just a few yards away from Cusco’s cathedral (built on the site of the Inca’s palace). Luckily, we had popped in to have a quick look around during our morning’s explorations which allowed us to decide for ourselves if this claim was true. It was disappointingly dark inside this church but we could see that the walls and the altar contained some impressive gold leaf covered friezes. It’s possible that with better lighting this church might be Cusco’s “most beautiful” but, as it was, we think that the chapel in El Triunfo is more deserving of this award as its equally impressive gold covered friezes are illuminated well.

We were next taken to El Templo del Coricancha - the Inca’s Temple of the Sun. This was the most sacred temple in the whole of the Inca empire and by all accounts was a truly awe-inspiring sight. The mummified bodies of previous Inca leaders were kept here on thrones made of gold inside a room with walls that were lined with gold studded with precious jewels. The outside was said to be even more spectacular - the patio was apparently filled with life-sized gold and silver statues of beautiful women, llamas, sheep, fruit, flowers, corn, trees etc. Sadly, this priceless treasure was precisely what the Spanish conquistadores were looking for when they arrived in Cusco and, despite them being seriously outnumbered by the Incas, it wasn’t long before the Spanish were melting all this gold and silver down into more manageable ingots to send back to Spain. We therefore had to make do with our guide’s description of this treasure and use our imagination as we were shown around the temple.

Without this treasure to distract us, our tour concentrated on the Inca’s outstanding stone work in the temple. This would probably have gone unnoticed or at best played a very poor second to all of the gold and silver treasure had it still been on display. Of all of the civilisations that lived in Peru (and probably all of the Americas too), the Incas were the undisputed masters of stone masonry. They may not have built such outstanding structures like the pyramids we saw during our tour of Mexico, but their exceptional skill at cutting stone to fit almost seamlessly together was amazing. They were also well aware of the destructive power of the earthquakes that occasionally devastate this area and used a number of techniques which made most of their stone structures survive many earthquakes: their stones were fitted together using interlocking joints; the walls in their buildings deliberately leaned slightly inwards so that they supported each other (you can see the walls in this picture leaning slightly away from us) and, although the Incas hadn’t discovered the arch, their characteristic trapezium shaped windows and doors were almost as strong.

The Spanish initially attempted to completely rebuild the city, following their conquest, in order to remove all trace of what they considered to be a “pagan” culture but this proved too big a task so they ended up just constructing their own buildings on top of the Inca foundations and walls. However, the Spanish didn’t possess the Inca’s skill and knowledge of the area’s seismic activity and so, when the earthquakes inevitably struck, the Spanish structures came tumbling down leaving the Inca walls and foundations intact. We saw many examples of these hybrid constructions around the city: buildings with the classic Inca stone walls at ground level with more modern looking plastered brick forming the floors above ground level. The Inca’s sacred Temple of the Sun obviously couldn’t escape this attempt at cultural eradication - the Spanish converted it into a Catholic place of worship - the Iglesia Santo Domingo church but luckily, as with other buildings, much of the Inca’s original stonework remains.

Sacsayhuamán & Qenko
After our tour of the city we were taken up into the mountains to the north to visit the Inca fortress of Sacsayhuamán. This sounds a bit like “sexy woman” but it is actually a Quechua word that means “the satisfied falcon”. This fortress commands an excellent and presumably strategic view over Cusco and we had the opportunity to take some pictures looking down on the city and across at the mountains that surround it.

The Incas are supposed to have built the city of Cusco in the shape of a puma with the urban area of the city forming the puma’s body and its head being formed by the fortress at Sacsayhuamán. This puma shape is actually quite difficult to be convinced of when looking at either modern aerial photographs or city maps even when the shape has been drawn in. However, standing on the wedge shaped area of land between the two long, zigzag shaped terraced walls that represent the Puma’s teeth certainly helped to convince us that maybe in the past the whole puma could be made out so easily.

The Inca’s used some huge stones when building this fortress which weighed as much as 125 tons each. Sadly, the majority of the fortress complex is no longer present as almost all of the smaller stones that were part of it were taken down into the city by the Spanish to build their churches etc. so we can only imagine what this fortress used to look like. You can see how the walls in this fortress differ from those in the Temple of the Sun (see above). As well as being significantly larger, the stones they used in the fortress were left in irregular shapes. Our picture shows that the Incas were true masters at working around odd shaped stones and could make these huge stones fit as seamlessly together as the regular shaped ones.

After the fortress, our tour continued to the nearby Inca shrine at Qenko. Unlike the other stone structures that we had seen which had been built from cut stone transported from quarries, this shrine had been carved in situ from a huge, 5m high limestone outcrop that is supposed to resemble a puma. There is a cave that has been carved out below this rock in which the Incas utilised the very dry, cold mountain air to “mummify” their important people. When the mummification process was complete, the desiccated bodies would be placed in the foetal position and then completely wrapped up in cloth before being placed upright in niches located around a circular amphitheatre carved out of the ground next to the shrine.

Despite being well within the tropics, it had been fairly cool in Cusco due to its high altitude but this was just about offset by the strong, mountain sun and the shelter that the surrounding mountains provided. However, it felt significantly colder when we were up in the mountains around Cusco as they were more exposed to the wind and the afternoon sun was also getting lower in the sky and so most of the people in our group had to wear their coats. The sun had gone down completely by the time we returned to Cusco and what little warmth there had been earlier had quickly disappeared through the clear, thin atmosphere and we definitely had to wrap up well when we went out to sample the local cuisine in the evening.

The Sacred Urubamba Valley
Our tour itinerary left our second day in Cusco free to explore by ourselves (or just rest). However, our tour manager had arranged an optional full day tour (for an extra US$35 each) of the Urubamba valley finishing at the sacred Inca fortress at Ollantaytambo. This tour was highly recommended and the only people in our group that didn’t go on it were those that were still suffering the effects of the altitude.

To get to the Urubamba Valley, we had to go back up the mountains to the the north of Cusco and down the other side to Pisac (which is 300m lower than Cusco). On the way, we stopped at Tambo Machay, the sacred bathing place of the Incas. Here, the Incas have constructed underground channels which still carry fresh spring water to this site where the Inca rulers bathed and performed other rituals.

The town of Pisac is located beside the Vilcanota/Urubamba river. This river flows through the fertile Urubamba valley then winds its way through the mountains passing the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu and then, after merging with the Ucayali River, it becomes part of the mighty Amazon River.

Pisac is famous for its Sunday market which is a popular tourist attraction - not just because it’s a good place to buy cheap souvenirs but mainly to watch the colourful locals gather and unwind on their day off. Unfortunately it was a Wednesday when we visited Pisac and so we missed out on this photo opportunity. We had to make do with a smaller selection of opportunist market stalls that had set-up in the main square on this non-market day. We still found a reasonable selection of locally made handicrafts, T-shirts and alpaca garments. We were supposed to haggle over the prices but everything we wanted was so cheap that we just paid the full asking price.

After lunch, we were taken down stream to the sacred Inca fortress at Ollantaytambo. It is hard to imagine that these ruins were a fortress although their location definitely has a good vantage point over the valley. The main features that remain are the terraces that you can see in this picture (sorry it’s a little dark) and the sacred Temple of the Sun (shown below). Our guide told us that these terraces were apparently built for the purpose of growing crops which was quite puzzling as the river valley is not only very fertile but also obviously quite arable judging by the amount of farmland we could see from this vantage point. The best theory is that the crops that were grown here were considered sacred and used solely for religious rituals.

The Temple of the Sun is located at the top of these terraces. It is called the Temple of the Sun because of its unique position on the mountain side with respect to the path of the rising sun on the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year - a very important religious day for the Incas). There is a mountain opposite the fortress which obscures the rising sun each morning. On the winter solstice, the sun apparently first appears from behind this mountain through crevice, casting its very first rays directly on the Temple of the Sun. We were also told that a similar occurrence takes place on the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) with the sun’s first rays shining through a different crevice in this mountain directly onto the Temple of the Sun. We have only been able to confirm the part about the winter solstice but if both are true then the position of this temple truly is unique.

After our guided tour of the fortress, we were taken for a walk around the nearby town of Ollantaytambo as it is considered one of the best preserved Inca settlements left in Peru. Apparently this town has hardly changed at all since the Spanish conquest and people are still living in the same stone houses that were built by the Incas in the 15th century. These houses are separated by narrow alleyways like the one shown in our picture. The Inca walls on each side of this alley may not be of the same quality as a temple but they were still built with the same classic techniques to make them last. For example, you can see how these walls are sloping away from the centre of the alley (and into the houses on the other side).

To our surprise, we were actually taken in to look around one of these houses and it really was quite primitive. It consisted of a small open-air courtyard with a few stone rooms around it. We went into one of these rooms and there was very little furniture to speak of with everything except for a small wooden bed being made of stone. There were about 20 guinea pigs running around freely in this room which were all feeding on some leaves that had been put down in one corner for them. However, these were not being kept as household pets - they are a speciality of the Andean cuisine called cuy and would no doubt be a regular feature on this family’s menu. You will read all about when we tried guinea pig ourselves in our page on Peruvian food but first we’re off to Machu Picchu - the Lost City of the Incas.