We had breakfast at our hotel, the Tierra Viva Plaza, and set out to find the Llama Path office to check in for our trek in two days (they require an advance check in so they can verify that you've been at altitude for at least two days before setting out on the trek). The office was hard to find, and we had to go back once to the hotel to look it up again. Then they weren't open when we finally found it, so we sat in Regocijo Plaza for 10 minutes. It's a smaller square just a block away from the larger Plaza de Armas.
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| Regocijo Plaza, Cuzco |
When Llama Path opened, we were the first ones in. The lady that helped us kept calling us "my friends." Adam had to go all the way back to the hotel to get more US dollars to pay off our balance. That took a long time because he got lost... Finally we got out of there after more than an hour and went back to the hotel and got a taxi for the 10 minute drive to Sacsayhuaman.
But first, we stopped at McDonalds. They have one right in the Plaza de Armas square. I was in a sort of perpetual state of hunger throughout my time in Peru, and even though I don't indulge in McDonalds much at home, I needed something familiar. I ordered a medium fry and a coke. I had difficulty asking for "no ice" in Spanish, but a British guy next to me helped me out! When you're in the Cuzco McDonalds and you look outside, you're experiencing such a contrast. Inside, you're hearing loud hip-hop music, and just outside you're looking at this ancient but preserved world. McDonalds seemed out of place, but I was ever so thankful for it, as you will see in this video:
Sacsayhuaman was great! the ruins are absolutely huge and beautifully laid out.
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| Sacsayhuaman overlooks the city of Cuzco |
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| They call it "granadilla." Outside, it looks like an orange, inside it's full of alien-looking seed pods. |
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| To give you an idea of size, I'm standing near the center of this photo. |
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| Sacsayhuaman |
We didn't really have a plan for the rest of the day, which turned out well. When we were on one of the paths, we came to a lookout where we ran into some people from Atlanta. They were a father & daughter named Dale and Christie, and we must have stood there and talked with them for 45 minutes. Eventually we went our separate ways, but ran into each other again later in front of the ruins. They said they were going to walk over and try to find the Templo de la Luna, and that we were welcome to go along, so we said sure!
TMI alert: I really had to pee, so we found the bathroom nearest to Sacsayhuaman and it was your typical Cuzco bathroom -- no toilet seats, no toilet paper. I tried and tried (MIND OVER MATTER, I kept telling myself), but I could not go. I was almost in tears over it because I had no idea when we'd see another bathroom. Also, it was getting very hot out and my black hiking pants, long-sleeved hiking shirt, wool socks, etc. were getting uncomfortable. But, I wanted to be adventurous so I pushed on past all the things that were irritating me.
We started walking to the northeast, walking and walking, and it seemed like forever before we unexpectedly came to Q'enko, which was another stop on our boleto turistico, so we checked that out.
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| Q'enko |
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| One of the caves at Q'enko |
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| An altar inside a cave at Q'enko |
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| Climbing around the ruins at Q'enko |
After Q'enko, we kept walking in the same general direction (northeast), but stayed mostly along a road now. Everyone we asked said to just keep following the road and we'd soon find the Templo de la Luna. We were way out in the country by this time walking along some highway, four of us who couldn't possibly look any more like gringo tourists than we did!
After a long time, we came upon a place where there were a group of Peruvians with horses. They wanted to have us ride horses to the Templo de la Luna. I was really tired and not too comfortable with horses, so we were going to keep walking when Dale said "let's just do it, my treat." So I got on this horse and right away it wanted to do its own thing, which was mostly to eat. I really freaked out a couple of times, totally embarrassing myself. Those Peruvians were probably making fun of me so bad.
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| Horseback riding through the Peruvian countryside |
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| Disembarking the horses at the Templo de la Luna |
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| The Templo de la Luna with foreboding clouds |
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| Inka stairs |
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| More Inka stairs at the Templo de la Luna |
We had arrived via horseback at the Templo de la Luna around 4:00 PM (~6 hours after arriving at Sacsayhuaman). I still hadn't peed and didn't even need to by this point. No idea how to explain this one. Anyway, it looked and felt like a storm was coming, and had cooled off to the point I was wearing my jacket again.
The templo was pretty cool though, and I'm glad we found it. It had two caves that we found, and lots of neat Inka stairs.
The people with the horses quickly disappeared after we arrived at the Templo, and we had no other course of action than to attempt to walk back to Cuzco. I'm guessing we'd walked well over 6 miles by this point, possibly 8 or 9.
We began walking. We came upon a village and saw a couple of people who thankfully were friendly! After that, we were finally over the mountain we were on and could see the city. From this vantage point, we realized we were much closer to the airport than we should have been if we had any chance of making it back to anywhere near the Plaza de Armas on foot.
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| The road we tried to follow back into Cuzco |
We started walking down some curvy (but paved) road in a rough-looking part of the outskirts of Cuzco. There was a man washing his old Toyota Corolla "taxi" along the road, while what appeared to be his wife and daughter watched. We discussed amongst ourselves whether to take the risk of asking for a ride, and decided I would be the group spokesperson (as the only fluent Spanish-speaker). The man seemed friendly and said it would be just 8 soles to take us to the Plaza de Armas. We got in. There were no seatbelts. This was probably a huge risk but there were four of us and only one of him, and he was small so I really wasn't too worried.
It all worked out and we exchanged email addresses with Christie so we could share photos. We said goodbye and wished them safe travels as we got out at the Plaza, and returned to our hotel.
Using google maps, we figured we walked more than 10 miles over steep hilly terrain (great practice for the Inka trail I think!), with no food and no bathroom break for me the ENTIRE time. We got back around 5:30 PM. It was a long, but adventurous and FUN day!!!
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