Early morning had us jumping on the tourist bus bound for Cuzco, the last major city we'd be staying in for our tour. We learned from our guide that the straight drive to Cuzco is only about six hours, but ours was going to be nine and a half with all the stops we were going to be making along the way. We were hoping they'd be good stops!
Our first chance to stretch our legs came in Pukara, where we visited a museum that contained Incan and pre-Incan stone carvings. We learned about the circular symbol for water, which was obviously one of the most important things in life for these people, and saw stone sculptures that apparently proved that the Incans did perform human sacrifice, often in order to send messages to the Gods in other realms. Probably not to eat them.
Not too long after that was a very brief stop in La Raya, which is the highest point along the road from Cuzco to Puno in the mountains at 4,335 meters. We did quite well up there, I thought, with no altitude sickness to speak of, but we were only there for ten minutes and it was a bit chilly. Not really a chance to run around much.
Then we stopped in Sicuani for a buffet lunch in a pretty area in the valley. They had a nice little waterfall flowing under the railroad tracks and a few alpaca tethered as pets. One of them again almost attacked JS (he swears he loves animals, and does go out of his way to try to pet every stray dog and cat wandering around the towns). And I have to say that before today, I always thought those people in Alpaca costumes with the long hair that whips around were kind of silly and not very authentic. But this one black alpaca looked exactly like a person in an alpaca costume, so I now owe apologies to all those people in costumes.
Another two hour sprint and we were at Raqchi, home to one of the biggest sets of Incan ruins outside of Cuzco. Probably the coolest stop along the way. We walked through a whole village of ruins, where they had their grain storage, where they lived, and the walkways that only royalty could pass through. The most interesting tidbit I learned was that the Incans were big on trapezoids rather than squares, so their walls slanted inward as they went up. I had just thought the ruins were leaning because of age, but they were actually built that way.
I have to mention in here somewhere that the landscape along the way was just amazing. It reminded me a lot of Scotland, with its magnificent hills. Really gorgeous.
In Andahuaylillas, we went through the cathedral that our guide said was the South American Sistine Chapel. It was very ornate, and very reminiscent of churches in Spain. Lots of gold leaf covering everything. But one thing that's interesting about a lot of these churches that I might have already mentioned is that the Incan civilization were the builders of a lot of these churches, under Spanish orders, and they put their own symbols of worship in them as well, such as the sun. I'm not sure how sneaky they were being, but you can see a pretty good mix of the two cultures even in the churches meant to convert the Incans.
Finally we made it to Cuzco! There were a lot of neat sights along the drive to the hotel. There is a giant bronze statue of an Incan leader (no one specific) in the center of one of the squares and a number of nice fountains. The back of our hotel also runs along the avenue of heroes, which has a lot of statues of the said heroes of Cuzco. We also walked to the main square for dinner and saw the cathedral and passed the temple of the sun along the way. We'll be visiting that tomorrow!
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