We made it out of Lima to Cusco, which is a very pretty city! I wish we’d had a little more time to spend there. Cusco is an old city built on top of Inca ruins. The streets are narrow and winding and the houses have clay tile roofs. It’s a wealthy city by Latin American standards. We visited a huge church where just about everything is covered with gold and silver. There’s a shrine to St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things. Here in Peru, he’s also the matchmaking saint. Women go to the church and leave notes asking for love. According to our guide, single men go to the church to collect the notes and ask out the women who left them! We also saw a painting done but a Peruvian artist not long after the Spanish came. The Spanish asked the artist to paint a copy of da Vinci’s Last Supper which he did. However, in the original, the last meal is lamb. The artist had never seen sheep and didn’t know what lamb was, so he painted a giant guinea pig as Jesus last meal because that’s common food here.
We’ve been in the sacred valley for the last few days and we’ve seen a lot of Inca ruins. Yesterday, we climbed to the top of an Inca temple. There were a lot of stairs! But the view was spectacular! There was a woman carrying a small child (probably 1 1/2 years) up the stairs, which was impressive. On the way down, the baby waved and and said “hola” to everybody she passed. It was adorable! There are babies everywhere here. Families are probably still fairly large. Indigenous women still carry them in slings on their backs. I’m hoping to get a picture of that before I leave. Lima is a big cosmopolitan city but around Cusco and the other places we’ve visited, many people still live in traditional ways, especially poorer people. Women still wear bright skirts and shawls. Some of the dress is for tourists, but not all of it. You can see history when you look at people. Some people look and dress European, but a large part of the population still looks and dresses like people in the Andes have for centuries. It’s really fascinating! I love being in a place where you can really experience a different kind of culture. Bill and I both had Alpaca fixed in different ways in Cusco and Bill is still hoping to try the guinea pig! That said, there is a lot of poverty here. Tourism has helped, but many people still live hard lives.
Today, we took a train to Machu Picchu. We sat across from a very nice, extremely attractive Brazilian couple. They were with a group of young, attractive Brazilian physicians who all looked like they could be cast members on Grays Anatomy! When I send pictures, you’ll notice that I’m wearing jean skirts, black leggings and tennis shoes with bright pink laces! They made some good suggestions for traveling in Brazil. Brazil has a strong tradition of cosmetic surgery. Maybe I should have asked about that!
The train ride was fun and the environment changed dramatically. Cusco is about 11,000 ft in arid mountains, with not a lot of vegetation. Machu Picchu is 8000 ft but the mountains get more rain so they are covered in semi-tropical forests. Inca architecture is amazing in general. We’ve seen temples and amazing aqueducts. Their ability to channel water was incredible and some of it is still functional. There are terraces carved into the mountains everywhere! Machu Picchu is especially impressive! It’s a huge complex on top of a mountain with temples, houses, workshops and impressive views of the valley. There was a sundial that indicated summer and winter solstices and noon each day. Way higher on surrounding mountains there are other Inca complexes and food storage sites. Some people choose to hike to those sites. We could see them as tiny dots moving along old Inca trails! You would have to be a serious hiker to do those trails! The Inca didn’t use mortar. The stones fit so tightly together that you can’t slip a piece of paper between. No one knows how they cut the granite or moved stones weighing several tons!
Yesterday, we went to a llama and alpaca farm. That was really fun. We bought clover and got pictures petting the animals. There are also women who carry around baby alpacas. For a small amount of money, you can get a picture with them. They are really adorable! We visited a workshop that makes textiles (Bill bought a sweater) and a workshop that makes silver jewelry.
Overall, we really like Peru, but we’ve been very unhappy with the Monograms travel agency. We keep having to pay for things that should be included, and we missed good opportunities to experience Peruvian culture. I’m very frustrated! Last night they put us in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, so our only food option was expensive hotel hamburgers with the driest bread I’ve ever eaten. There were good local food options in the town we had just visited. Today, we are in Agues Calientes which is a neat town with lots of great restaurants. Instead of letting us try them, Monograms scheduled our lunch in a very expensive tourist restaurant with extremely bland food and they scheduled dinner in our equally expensive and bland hotel. If their were going to provide food, they should have done so last night when we only had the restaurant as our option. There is also no tea kettle in my current room and the bedspreads my room and Bills room were wet when we got home. They had not been thoroughly dried. I’m writing a negative review when I get home!
So, I recommend Peru, but not Monograms!
Note from Bill
We have had a good tour of Machu Picchu and we had the option of going back up today but have decided to go off schedule and rearrange our trip. We are heading back to Cusco early and should get about four or five hours to experience the city. Emily really wanted to see more of it as it is a very interesting place. I think we have made a good choice. We are taking the train halfway back then have to take a car. The travel company people here have helped with the arrangements. We will have to do more of our own planning next trip to have it more tailored to our travel tastes. The nice thing is we seem to have the same complaints about how things could have been better. They really haven’t been that bad, just little things that could have really improved the trip.
The cats and dogs here are free range, they look welled care for but it’s hard to know if they have actual owners. Some are dressed well, maybe they have jobs. I seen one poor pup with a cone of shame just walking down the sidewalk the other day and appeared to have somewhere to go and was unaccompanied. Maybe it was one the way to lose the cone of shame! They also must enjoy exercising as the dogs have track suits. They all seem so well behaved, no barking or bothering people. Occasionally they will follow someone with food.
I’m surprised that as free as the animals are there is not a lit of road kill. I see what may have been a porcupine, it looked spiked and something a dog was eating freshly dead. The drivers honk at them sometimes but they always try to slow down for them.
I was surprised at the temperatures here. It has been warm at Machu Picchu. It does cool off but warms up nicely during the day. Cusco will be cooler as it is higher up. It feels like fall here in Cusco, at Machu Picchu it was more spring like as it was a little humid.
We got back to Cusco at a early enough hour to actually go out and see more of the city I really enjoyed seeing all the people, shops, different restaurants (you can get anything) and churches. Usually everything is surrounded by mountains. It is so beautiful to see. We stopped at a couple small museums.
We went and watched a dance presentation at the cultural center and it was very good!! They looked like they had a lot of fun and even though I didn’t understand what they were singing back and forth to each other as they danced it was very cute and sweet sounding.
It was a good way to end the day before another very early morning. The earliest yet, I think when we fly back that morning will be even earlier. Having to set alarms while on vacation feels the same as setting them for work. Setting alarms earlier than my work alarm…
Even with the long days I have really enjoyed being in Peru and seeing all of the sights. There really is no way to convey how beautiful it is, the history and the feelings of just being here.
I have yet gotten a chance to eat guinea pig. We did see some the other day being held out on a stick as we drive by on the bus. There have been restaurants with it on the menu, but seems like it has always been when were locked in to a meal already or late nights with early mornings.
They people who work with Monograms here seemed concerned with our choice to change out itinerary. The one at Machu Picchu and then upon our arrival in Cusco. I’m not sure how they planned the trip. I don’t think they researched how some of the timing of things happened and what would make more sense at times.
Hello All,
I’m finally getting around to writing my own update! Since my keyboard quit, it takes me forever to type messages. Bill is used to using his phone, so he is faster. We’ve been to some really amazing places in the last few days. Machu Picchu was incredible! It’s about 8000ft with high mountains all around. There were people who had hiked high up in the surrounding mountains. We could see them as tiny dots moving along the trails. We had a ticket to do a half hour hike, but as Bill noted, we decided to leave early to go back to Cusco. That was a really good decision! We had a lovely train ride with another Brazilian couple and a nice evening exploring Cusco. I really enjoyed the train rides.
Hope things are going well for all of you
Traveling with Emily! 