Puno to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, Peru 19 - 23 Jan 2006

Capital of the Incas

On the way to Ollantaytambo we stopped for a drink at La Casona de Yucay, a colonial house where liberator Simon Bolívar stayed in 1825 and is now an attractive hotel. With more time we would have liked to stay there and do some more hikes in the area. We arrived at the pretty village of Ollantaytambo (a name that took me a long time to remember!) just in time to visit the Inca fortress above it before dark.

21 January. By staying in Ollantaytambo, we cut the train ride from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes in half so it just took us 2 hours. As was to be expected with its proximity to world-famous Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes was mega-tourist country. Buses to the ruins left the village as soon as they filled up, and that was every few minutes. And, of course, Machu Picchu was thick with tourists. But, considering this was the rainy season, we were extremely lucky with the weather. In fact, the rain we experienced in Lake Titicaca on the day of our arrival marked the end of bad weather that had lasted for 10 days.
The 4-hour train ride back to Cuzco was rather tedious after such a long day and it wasn't improved by a Japanese man who settled himself in the seat opposite us and let out loud burps! However, the last 40 minutes of the ride were more entertaining: the train has to make a steep drop to Cuzco, too steep for normal railroad curves, so this is accomplished in four back-and-forth switchbacks. At the same time, we got a superb view of Cuzco by night with the floodlit church and cathedral on the Plaza de Armas.

22 January. We had a day and a half to visit the main points of interest in the beautiful town of Cuzco. My priority was to visit the cathedral ever since Tony Morrison had told me that The Last Supper painting shows that Jesus and his entourage were about to tuck into the Andean speciality of roast guinea pig! The excellent guide in the cathedral added another observation in that the person to Jesus´s left was the only one who did not sport a beard. The person could well have been a woman, tallying with the controversial theory woven into the plot of Dan Brown´s novel The Da Vinci Code that Jesus was in fact married to Mary Magdalene.
The other interesting site that we visited was the Coricancha which used to be the Inca Empires´s richest temple. The temple walls were lined with some 700 solid-gold sheets, each weighing about 2 kg. until the Spanish arrived and looted the place, and then proceeded to build the Church of Santo Domingo on top of it, leaving only the Inca stonework.
On our first evening in Cuzco we discovered an excellent restaurant on a street off the Plaza de Armas called the Cava de San Rafael: tasteful decor, good service, delicious food, and the jazz music performed by a talented duo made a refreshing change from the usually unavoidable panpipe music.
23 January On our return to Arequipa airport by airline, we were happy to see HoneyMooney still waiting there patiently for us. We spent one more night at the Casa de Mi Abuela and dined at a Moroccan restaurant for a change.