Ruines, the beginning!

Our day begins with an hour bus ride plus a 20 minute taxi ride away from Cuzco to a town called Pisac, where the Inca citadel lies high above the village, protecting the Urubamba valley below and also a pass leading into the jungle to the northeast.

Topping the terraces is the site's ceremoial centre with an intihuatana (literally 'hitching post of the sun'; an Inca astronomical tool) as well as working water channels and some pretty amazing stone masonry. This site is huge, we wondered around here for over 3 hours! (I won't bore you with ALL the photos!)

The terraces are amazing! They are currently under restoration.  This is where the Inca grew crops to feed their many people.  The different levels each have their own microclimate, according to how deep into the bowl it is, which allowed them to grow a great variety of crops.

The terracing is almost entirely unbroken by steps, which require greater maintenance and promote erosion.  Instead, the terracing is joined by diagonal flights of stairs made of flagstones set into the terrace walls.

The stone work, WOW, I insist they had magic powers, but Dejan informs me that the rock type is mainly small crystallized white granite which makes it easier to hammer into finely shaped blocks and sharply defined angles.  (I bet he got that online!!) It is incredibly how finely these pieces are carved - huge blocks of stone that meet perfectly together, without any gap, and multiple angles to work stones all around. Also, perfectly carved channels for water throughout the structure, providing irrigation, drinking and bath water throughout.

I could go on about Pisac for quite some time, but instead, I'll suggest you come see for yourself! Words can hardly describe!

From there, we hoped a bus bound for Cusco, and got off at the first of 4 sets of ruines.  The day went so fast, we only had time to do two more.  

Tombomachay, at an altitude of 3765, was ear poppingly high - we've acclimatized well, but it still gives me a bit of a headache on the way up, and Dejan on the way down. In the background you can see some of the native people - they often dress up and sit at tourist spots and accept a few soles ($) to have their photo taken.  They also always have llama, super cute and soft!

These ruins lie about 300m from the main road and consist of a ceremonial stone bath channeling spring water through fountains that still function today.  It's known as El Bano del Inca - the bath of the Inca, and theories connect the site to an Inca water cult.

And in distance, but just a short walk across the main highway is Pukapukara, which overlooks the Cuzco valley.  In certain light, the rock looks pink, and the name literally means 'Red Fort'.

 

After a long day of trekking, we caught a collectivo back into Cuzco.  This was the most hilarious drive -a collectivo is a mini van, but really ruff inside, no interior except for some bench seats, it was empty when it picked us up, and by the time we reached town - they had squished 23 people in - well, we couldn't tell for absolutely certain since we couldn't see very far past the tips of our noses - so lets say 23 give or take 3!  Yeah, we got out when they tried to fit another family of 5 in - YIKES! Walking the rest of the way looked pretty good! 

Tomorrow, the ruins at Sacsaywaman, then off to Ollantaytambo!

A religous day in Cuzco

It was a rain Christmas morning in Cuzco, but enjoyable none the less! After a quick skype with the mom's, and Christmas Cake for breakfast, we headed out into the streets on a walking tour of Cuzco.  It turns out, the majority of the sites were churches, I suppose appropriate for the day!

Iglesia de La Compania de Jesus on the Plaza de Armas,

A church up in the hills, not sure which one, but it looked pretty in the mist!

The church and museum of San Francisco,

 The colonial archway of Santa Clara,

Iglesia de San Pedro, and the mercado San Pedro in front,

The closed convent of Santa Catalina,

A stop for an amazing lunch, Aldea Yanapay is a not for profit restaurant, which works with many local children and youth to provide education, love and joy, free of charge! Children have access to a full library, tutoring, art classes or can play together in the games room. Their philosophy: "The most beautiful way to teach is to give possibilities." The cafe maintains this fun and magical feeling though is decor and staff - described in the guide as the circus you always dreamt of running away to as a child! What a perfect place to lunch on Christmas! On top of this, in tune with their principals, their employees are paid well and receive social benefits - very unique. Oh ya, and the food was out of this world!   

Back on the tour, we hiked a kicker of a hill to see this beautiful church,  Iglesia de San Blas,

This is the back side of the bell tower, I thought it looked so pretty looking out into the city of  Cuzco,

As we headed back to the hostal, we came across some old Inca ruins over a staircase of water,

Still raining, after a quick rest at the hostal, we headed out in search of Turkey Dinner.  Now I know it's a bit weird, but I really don't like turkey - I don't think I ever have (sorry mom!), but we managed to find dinner at 'The Real McCoy's' - Turkey, gravy, potatoes, green beans, carrots, cabbage slaw, a meatball, and a half hot dog wrapped in bacon - It was so delicious! A cup of red wine complimented the meal perfectly, and it was all finished up with a serving of Christmas pudding and mincemeat pie with ice cream.  YUMMMMMMM!

Christmas Eve in Cuzco

Over night bus rides, yuck! But very economic!! :P We slept a bit better this time as we had super cushy seats. The best part about this ride, the entire top floor of the double decker bus played a game of Bingo together! Hilarious! I almost won - only one number away! The winner got 100 soles to spend on another bus ride with the line - something we really could have used!! What a hoot!  

We arrived bright and early,  and thankfully grabbed a taxi instead of wondering around the city to find our hostal, subsequent trips would be much harder and longer - our hostal is WAY up hill, actually, everything outside of the Plaza de Armas is WAY up hill! Makes for some absolutely gorgeous sites, and a lot of huffing and puffing! As soon as we were settled into our room, we headed back out to explore the town! This is our first view of the city when we left the hostal - it was a stunning day!

Plaza de Armas was ram packed with vendors, food and people for the annual Christmas Eve market.  This photo only shows about a half of the space.   We picked up some really great gifts, stopped a few times for some eats, and enjoyed the heck out of the day! Many of the items for sale were actually made by the people selling them - hats, mitts, scarves, sweaters, ponchos - tons of stuff, and all hand made. Beautiful weaved bags, belts and bracelets, and beautiful, bright colours, all naturally dyed. What a treat!

There is two huge churches on this plaza...

And these beautiful ladies with their babies on their backs and a super cute baby llama, work the market, posing with everyone and anyone, for only a few soles ($).  Oh my goodness, these kids are just about the sweetest thing I've ever seen! And they all just hang out, all content like, on moms back for the majority of the day.

And when the sun goes down, it just gets better! The hills were lit up like a Christmas tree, and as soon as it starts getting dark, everyone starts lighting off fireworks - sporadically at first and mostly kids, but by the end of the night, the hills are alive with flashes of light everywhere!

After a very long day, we were exhausted, and crashed around 11:30... I wish we had stayed up just a little longer! Little did I know, the grand finally was just around the corner! 12:00 and we're woken back up by the sound of more fireworks than you can imagine! Unfortunately we were already tucked in, but I wanted so badly to get outside and see all the lights, I'm sure it was breath taking!

Arequipe

Arequipa, the white city, our over night bus delivered us bright and early to this beautiful city!  Each city in Peru has a Plaza de Armas, each well kept, and almost always with a church and a water fountain of some sort.  This city is quite famous for the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a full block, and what seems like the size of a small city, religious space. It has huge stone walls surrounding and a small portion is still an active convent. We opted not to tour this Monastery as it could easily have taken us the entire day, but we did walk around it's ginormous stone walls entirely! Here is a photo of the entrance...

As we wondered the city, we came across Iglesia de San Francisco and a great artisan market. Many people of the local culture spend their day in this square when not working or selling.

And Dejan even made a new friend... (must have something to do with the hat!)

After wondering much of the central part of the city, we decided to head to a Mirado, or over look to view the entire city. It was about a 4ish km hike, mostly uphill.  And Dejan made some more friends along the way!

At the top of this hike was a beautiful church, so peaceful!

As mentioned each Plaza de Armas has a church, this one was huge and perfectly white.  In front of it is a tree of poinsettias. 

We enjoyed this city, but besides the main square, I had a hard time understanding why they call it the white city.  There are many white buildings, but also many other colour buildings.  Arequipa was nice, and offered lots of additional tours - mostly to the Canyons, which would have been amazing to see, but we've already booked our next overnighter to Cuzco, and we're very excited to enjoy the huge market that takes place there every Christmas Eve day, so we're off!

Afternoon in Nazca

It was a very busy day in Nazca!  The afternoon was spent touring three different areas with Jeffery - our new local taxi man! Our first visit was to Cahuachi, about 25 km west of Nazca, where several pyramids are under excavation, and have been for the last number of years.  They treat these ruins with great importance, however we learned that an Italian archeologist is in charge of the ruins, and only works on them for one month of each year.  Excavation will take quite a long time at that rate.  While excavating they are also reconstructing, which allows you to get a better idea of the site.  The picture doesn't do it much justice...

 

This is the security guard, he showed us pieces of pottery collected from the site, and lives here all year round.

After the pyramids, we headed to Chauchilla Cemetery, about 30 km south of Nazca, which dates back to the Ica-Chinca culture around AD1000.  Until recently(about 25 years ago), ancient bones, skulls and mummies were scattered across the desert by tomb-robbers, looting whatever might be found in these ancient burial grounds.   The government has taken control and turned it into a tourist attraction.  Archeologists have collected many remnants, and organized the tombs for viewing. In the later years of tomb-robbers, they did not destroy the mummy, instead just removed it to get what they wanted then replaced it, so many of the tombs have intact dummies.  Further, during the clean up, one additional original and untouched grave was found, so it's on display for viewing and was used as the basis for setting up the others.  There may infact be more graves untouched, but the government is no longer putting funds to work here.  Some of the graves were very small, and only for a child, others were family sized, and some had separators between, indicating either members of family or deaths at various times.

Then, the Cantallo Aqueducts, about 7km south east of town, still in working order.  Below is a photo of the ventanas or windows, which locals use to clean the aqueducts each year. Dan was fascinated by these, in all their engineering wonder!  They were built over 2000 years ago to service the desert city of Nasca and the surrounding area with water from the mountains and river.  They have held up against numerous earthquakes, with little need for repair.  They are no longer used for water for the city, however continue to be essential for the surrounding agriculture supporting the city.  There is approximately 36 aqueducts scattered throughout.

This is the split where the mountain water and river water connect.

In our travels, we crossed many fields of cacti, and I commented on the white disease which looked as though it was taking over.  Jeffery clarified - these cacti are infected on purpose, and promised to show me when we stopped close to one of the fields...

He picked up one tiny white dust ball off of an infected cactus, no bigger than a few millimeters, and smudged it on his hand... and presto chango... a deep beautiful red, then burgandy colour! This is used to dye fabric and yarn as well as used in highly expensive make up products throughout the world.

Now as if our day couldn't get any better - our final gift was the most beautiful sunset against the surrounding mountains before heading back to Nazca to catch our overnighter bus to Arequipa.

What a stunner!

The Nazca Lines

Bright and early, we're on the road with Pedro and on our way to Nazca!  He has arranged for us to go directly to the airport to fly over the Nazca Lines!  En route, we pass through many small towns, desert, mountains and valley's of lush green life! It is a beautiful day!

Dejan stops to check out the plane, prior to boarding, she's a little Cessna 6 seater, it's going to be a cozy ride!

To provide a brief excerpt from the book... the Nazca Lines are spread across 500sq km of arid, rock stewn plain in the Pampa Colorada (Red Plain). This is one of the worlds greatest archaeological mysteries.  Consisting of more than 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures and concentrated in a relatively small area, some 70 animal and plant drawings, the lines are almost imperceptible at ground level.  It's only when viewed from aove that they form their striking network of enormous stylized figures and channels, many of which radiate from a central axis.  The figures are mostly etched out in single continuous lines, while the encompassing geoglyphs form perfect tirangles, rectangles or straight lines running for several kilometers across the desert.  

The lines werw made by the simple process of removing the dark sun-baked stones from the powdery gypsum-laden soil below.  The most elaborate designs represent animals, including a 180m long lizard, a monkey with an extravagantly curled tail, and a condor with a 130m wing span. 

The whale is in the centre of this photo with the line going straight through it.

This is referred to as the Astronaut, because of it's goldfish-bowl-shape head, though some are of the opinion that it's a priest with a mystical owl's head.

The monkey with the twirly tail

The humming bird

A partial shot of the condor, in the top left of the photo

There is viewing tower off the road, and on either side you can make out (left) a tree, and (right) hands, or some people say a frog - depending on how you look at it.  These two are a bit smaller than the rest and are just visible from the viewing tower.

 

The parrot (although I don't really think it looks a whole lot like a parrot!)

We saw even more than this, but not all the photos are completely visible. Pretty amazing! Lots of different theories from one local to the next on what these are all about - the one thing they all agree on - it's pretty amazing!

Adios!

Wow! I wasn't joking when I said it would be dangerous, but FUN!  Way too much fun!!!

Huacachina (pronounced Wack-a-cheena) is a small oasis in the middle of the desert. This tiny oasis surrounded by towering sand dunes nestles next to a picturesque (but a wee bit smelly) lagoon that is featured on the back of Peru's S/50 note. This was once a resort for the Peruvian elite. The lagoon's murky waters supposedly have curative properties. What a gorgeous little get away!

The lagoon...

Gorgeous blue sky and beautiful hot sand, soooo nice, especially considering there is likely snow at home right now!

Dejan in the lobby of our hostel. (Yep, that's a hostal! only one year old, I thought it was a pretty great find, and came highly recommended to us by Pedro, our cabbie!)

The oasis of Huacachina from a near by dune on our way back from sand boarding.

Dan is already strapped into this contraption they call Areneros (dune buggy)

I can possibly show pics from while we were driving - it was crazy bumpy and crazy fast! Too insane and way tooooooo much fun! (to my jeepin amigos - you'd have been in your GLORY!)

This is probably about the third sand dune we went down, some standing up, and some on our tummies, It was way fun laying down - crazy how fast you can get going! Dejan was so good, he always ended up going the farthest of all of us! Scrolling down, you'll see Dejan become a weeeee little speck, that's how big the hill was - and this wasn't even the biggest! The final hill was the largest, and I'm surprised I had a voice by the time I made it to the bottom! Holy heck, it doesn't get much better than this!

Yep, that tiny, wee little black speck, that's him! and check the desert - sooo vast, unbelievable!

We spent the evening grabbing a bit to eat at a local shop and did a little souvenir shopping, then off to bed fairly early as we're heading out first thing for Nasca! Our new buddy Pedro is taking us the two hour drive, and has arranged for us to do a fly over of the Nasca lines! Yeeee, I'm so excited!

XO