Inca ruins and pig

Wednesday 18 April 2012

An early start today as we were getting collected at 06.30 for our plane at 08.30. A bit annoyed with the hotel as they only gave us a continental breakfast, which was your choice of two type of bread (roll or sliced), one choice of jam, tepid hot water for tea and tepid coffee. The full breakfast didn’t start until 06.30. A bit cheap and rude on their part considering we got woken up yesterday morning by a large tour group having breakfast around 04:30am and then the noise of them cleaning up, it sounded as though they were throwing the cutlery around.

Anyway, a quick 1.5hour flight to Cuzco and we are now up at 3,400m. We went for a short stroll around the city, Plaza de Armas and then stopped for lunch.

We had an afternoon tour that took us first to the Iglesia de Santo Domingo and Qorikancha. This Church was built by the Spanish on top of the old Inca temple, Qorikancha. The temple was once the riches in all the Inca empire and only some parts of the temple and large parts of the Inca walls still exist today.

Next we did a slow drive around town past the Plaza de Armas and then up the hill to Saqsayhuaman. It was an important religious place for the Incas. The stonework in amazing, particularly so since they didn’t use mortar, just made sure each stone fitted properly.

Next stop was Tambomachay which is a series of canals and aqueducts that the Inca people used as a religious place. Beside it is an Inca outpost (possibly guarding entrances to Cuzco).

Now it was time to head back to the hotel. We headed out for an early dinner as we are both a bit tired due to the early start. We wandered around town until we found a nice little restaurant that served cuy (guinea pig).