Cusco 10th July

MONDAY 10th

CUSCO

Arrived by bus at around 6:30am. Transferred to our hotel where breakfast was served.

Quite a nice hotel but our room was cold and there was no heating.

10:30 a guided walk of the central city. Our first view of Incan construction.  Some amazing walls with huge stones and the intricacy of the angled cuts of each stone and the seamless joining together still has archaeologists dumbfounded.

How did the Incans place this huge rock here and cut it and the surrounding ones so precisely?

These walls have survived several large earthquakes whereas a lot of the later Spanish buildings have succumbed.

 13:30 and we went on another tour to  Sacsayhauman, Quenqo and another Incan site that I can't remember the name of.

Once again the construction of the walls astounded us and the Incan history followed by the Spanish conquest was interesting.

At the end of the tour we were taken to an upmarket Alpaca, Vircuna outlet where it was explained to us the difference between synthetic garments sold in the markets as Alpaca and the difference between Baby Alpaca ( the first shear) and Alpaca.

The garments in the store were stunning.  Vircuna are protected so the only fur available is from dead animals hence that was by far the most expensive as well as being the finest.  Baby Alpaca was at least twice the price of ordinary Alpaca.  Lindsey bought an Alpaca hat and gloves. An Aussie couple bought some beautiful Alpaca shawls for their mothers.

A view of Cusco from a lookout showing off her new hat and gloves.

Tour over. Back to the hotel.  We had a meeting at the hotel where we met our guides, Lenny (Lenin) and Rosa (Rosaelizabeth) for tomorrow's Inca Trail, four day hike.  Here we were told the bad news that there was a teachers strike and they were intent on disrupting tourists as best they could.  This meant that we had to leave at 4am instead of 6am to avoid any road blocks.  We were also given duffle bags which we were allowed to put up to 4kg of belongings in for the porters to carry.  Our hired sleeping bags would be added to this tomorrow.

Afterwards we went across the road for a not so great dinner and then made it another early night.