Day 15, Monday

5:30am flight to Cuzco. Blah.

The Lima airport is such a strange place. It appears fairly well organized and designed, until you actually have to interact with the whole process. A lot of inefficiencies, the most annoying including an “airport tax” that isn’t simply added onto your ticket. You have to actually stand in another line, pay X amount of cash (depending on where you’re going and who you are), and if you don’t pay it, you can’t get through to your flight. I still don’t understand why this isn’t just a flat fee that’s added on to your ticket.

The view on the flight was spectacular, as we flew over snow-capped mountains and gorgeous landscapes.

The first person we met at the airport was a travel agent / tour guide / hotel representative, Danny. He greeted us with a friendly smile and talked us into accepting his travel package for the next few days. He drove us to the hostel in his car, which he was very proud of, and sold us on a couple travel packages, including a city tour, sacred valley tour, and Machu Picchu tour.

Our room was extremely cold, so we walked around for a bit, feeling a little woozy from the altitude. The cafe we stopped at for lunch didn’t help much either. I don’t particularly understand how a restaurant can function with a bathroom that doesn’t have running water, toilet paper, soap, or lights. hrmph.

At 2pm, we met up with Danny for the City Tour. He took us to the main plaza and we joined a large tour bus full of international spanish speaking people. Our guide, Jackie, led the way.

view from Lima to Cusco

screw mary, i’ve got the lambs now.

trapezoids were SO 1500s.

Jackie, enthusiastically explaining history

“sexy woman”

only the poor people used mortar

como se llama?

llama love!

Super high. 3765m!

fountain of youth

First, we went to the church, Quri Kancha, which housed the temple of the sun, as well as a few other Incan temple remains. Despite the fact that the Spanish had colonized the area and built on top of these ancient buildings, it was the Incan walls that withstood thousands of years of earthquakes, due to their advanced earthquake-proof building techniques.

Afterwards, we went to Saqsahuaman (aka “sexy woman”), which was another magnificent set of stone temples. There is a lot of symbolism in Incan architecture, including influences from their natural “gods” such as lightning, condors, pumas, and snakes. We saw a sacrificial alter where they slaughtered animals, virgin women, and children of high class families.

To round off the trip, we went to the fountain of youth, the highest point on our journey of 3765m (appx 12,352 feet). Carl chugged an entire bottle of coke so we could collect some of the water to drink and rub on our faces. Apparently the water is filled with iron, and is supposed to keep your face young forever (To prove this, Jackie admitted that she was actually 70 years old). The ancient Incan kings used to bathe in this every day, and the special thing about the water flow was that no matter how high or low the water level got, the flow was always constant.

A couple of kids got sick on the bus, which was pretty disgusting, especially when we were trying to chow down tamales. On our way back, we stopped at a factory that supplies a lot of the markets with alpaca goodies.

On our way home to the hostel, stopped for a nice pizza and ice cream dinner. Not too traditional, but apparently you’re not supposed to eat meat when adjusting to the altitude.