Cusco and Machu Picchu (Southern Peru Part 3)

From Puno we headed to Cusco: yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cusco is the gateway to Machu Picchu and many other Inca sights.

The city used to be the capital of the Inca empire, also known in Quechua as Cosqo, "the navel of the world". We recently read the book "The Royal commentaries of the Incas" by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (which was the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish captain) and learnt lots:

Apparently, the Incas had a peaceful approach to expanding their empire and conquering neighbouring tribes. They tried to assimilate them - as opposed to forcefully imposing their rule - by means of offering education and progress in exchange for the communities accepting their gods and their laws. So the empire consisted of different indigenous cultures, who often were allowed to keep their local customs as long as they were not contradicting Inca laws. Following a "conquest", the Incas took the leaders of the conquered tribes to Cusco for a period of time, educated them in the laws and accountancy systems of the empire and then reinstated them into their villages.

In Quechua, "Inca" actually means "leader" and so only the ruling class would have referred to themselves as "Incas". For them it was very important to have purity of blood, which meant they married siblings and would pride themselves on being the children of the sun which was one of their deities.

There is a lot of material to read on the internet and it is truly fascinating stuff if you have time (wikipedia has quite a lot of info too!).

The Cusco flag bears some resemblance to the rainbow flag of which we are big fans of!

 

The full moon rising over Cusco

Cusco in itself is a fascinating city, which is definitely worth exploring (at least the historic center). Apart from all the ruins and all the obvious sights, things to do include going to the Mercado San Pedro where one can have delicious fruit juices and see all sorts of fruits that we had never seen before (such as Zapotes).

A little slide show with more Cusco photos is included below (or here for high resolution):

After a day in Cusco, we headed for Macchu Picchu. We had opted to get there by doing a 5-day trekking tour via the 4600m high Salkantay Pass. This is route is marketed as alternative to the popular "Inca Trail", which over the years has become so popular that erosion and the left behind rubbish turned into a problem. So the Peruvian Government decided to limit the number of trekkers and also the tour companies that are allowed to offer this tour. Sensible approach in our view.

Salkantay is probably on a similar trajectory, rubbish is definitely piling up there along the way in many places, as we didn't fail to notice. It's a sad reminder that the very places we tourists come to marvel at are often at risk of being loved to death or otherwise destroyed by our mere presence (... and stupid behaviour/attitudes/etc). It doesn't help that there are so many tourist agencies competing for business and undercutting prices in Cusco that many of the guides on these treks are so poorly paid and trained that they are probably not even aware of these issues. Our group, for example, didn't get any instructions along the lines of the Leave No Trace Ethics and we caused a bit of an eye-roll when we started picking up rubbish along the way on day 2.


The high mountains leading to the Salkantay pass, the fog was chasing us up the hill (and Christian with his rubbish bag to collect anything non biodegradable he found ;o))

The trek itself is not overly challenging, provided one is acclimatised to the altitude, and has many interesting things to offer - from high mountains to tropical jungle to hot springs. Not to forget the pre-dawn start on the last day to arrive into Machu Picchu before sunrise (and all the bus tourists).  A few photos in below slide show (for high resolution click here)

On the 5th day, we reached the city of Machu Picchu. The name means old mountain in Quechua but this may not be the name that it had while the Incas (or their families) were living there. It is not really known why Machu Picchu was built but there are theories that suggest it was a "second home" for the Incas or a place of worship. For some reason, however, it was abandoned and forgotten before the Spanish arrived and so it was only re-discovered a hundred years ago. Other fascinating Inca/pre-hispanic ruins can be found in many parts of Peru and to this date there are still fairly regular expeditions hoping to find other legendary lost cities like "El Dorado".

Macchu Picchu at last (after a 5am start and climbing a few thousand stone steps )

 

Machu Picchu from Wayna Picchu

Check out the mountains in the back and the rocks right behind me... look alike?

From Machu Picchu we headed back to Cusco on the tourist train (a massive rip-off operated by a Chilean company). The original plan was to leave Peru and cross into Bolivia, but this didn't happen in the end as the next blog post will explain in a few days...