Cusco, Peru

Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus

Back when we were in Costa Rica we realized we didn't book our Machu Picchu trip. Being two weeks out from our ideal time and it being high season there wasn't much of a selection of tours. For some reason we were convinced that the only way you could see Machu Picchu was by booking a tour because there was only a limited amount of tickets to reach the top. The most popular trek the "Inca Trail" was obviously booked ahead of time probably about half a year ago. Two other alternatives were sold out which left us an eight day and a four day trekking tour. We didn't have too much time on our hands and the Inca trail was a four day tour itself so we figured, let's do it. You can't visit Peru and not see Machu Picchu right? We shrugged off the steep price and booked it. Later as we did more research we found out that the limited tickets are for Huayna Picchu which is the steep mountain that you always see in the postcards of Machu Picchu. Well, we already put our non refundable deposit down and read good things about this trek.

Qorikancha the golden Court Yard

The same company that we booked our trek with said we could join their city tour for free. We figure it was an easy tour and something to do on our last day before our Trek. We met at the tour office at noon and were handed off to someone, who then handed us off to someone else, who shoved us into a huge tour group of maybe 30 people. Our tour guide sounded like he was an announcer of a boxing match. Or rather he would be so enthusiastic it sounded like he was telling a children's fairytale and every other sentence was the climax. But in actuality all he talked about was how much gold and silver there was in the church and how he couldn't believe it. He also boasted how he was once a teacher and proceeded to give us lessons on the sun and how the Incas were great astronomers. It really is interesting, but after he kept repeating how the sun travels after we visit each site it seemed like that's all he talked about. The sun in winter, gold, the sun in summer, the sun again. We considered ditching the tour but the more interesting sites were up next.

Saqsaywaman [Photo cred: Steph]

This picture is probably my favorite one of the day.

So we made it to Saqsaywaman, a short bus ride right above Cusco sit's this ancient ruin of giant stones walls. I actually got yelled at because I started to climb up one of the rocks. Here's a little fun fact not learned from the guide; the name Saqsaywaman actually means "Satisfied Falcon", as most Americans will say sexy-woman. I'm absolutely sure the tour guide was talking about the sun again but i stopped paying attention. We found out the tour was to go on for a few more hours and we decided to ditch it this time around because we had to wake up at 3:30am to catch our bus for the trek.

Sacred Valley, Peru

Alpaca grazing in the Andes

Since we're taking our time in Cusco we did a day trip to the Sacred Valley. We weren't sure if it was going to be worth it because we already booked our four day Lares trek to Machu Picchu. Really, who wants to see more ancient ruins? We asked a few people and heard it was actually quite different and well worth it. And yes, they were right. Although I would recommend not doing the tour. Our dorm mate had a better deal, she somehow met someone by chance who knew a taxi driver that hooked them up and drove them around all day for free. That is my ideal way of visiting anything really; they're not trying to sell you anything, you take your own pace, and you get personal service. Lucky.

Incan family dressed up for tourists

The worst part about any tour is when they make their stops at the tourists spots where they get their kick backs or what not. So one of the first places we were supposed to visit was the Pisac ruins. We stopped in the village of Pisac and they said to get off the bus for 30 minutes. We did and walked around, looking for the ruins, getting lost in the tourist stalls. We come back and then they say now we're going to the ruins. I hate tours.

We ran into this family of Incans. Since I wanted to take their picture, we tipped them a little. This is after Stephanie stopped saying how cute the little lamb was. As we walked back to the bus I saw another five more families dolled up in their traditional clothes, carrying little lambs or alpacas, and holding a baby on their backs. All of them came up and asked for money. It kind of made me sad how people rely on tourism to make a living.

Terraces at the top of Incan Pisca ruins.

I believe the Peruvians pride them selves in how many different varieties of corn they produce. On the way up to the Pisac ruins we picked some up and it was crazy good. Each kernel was like a little plump potato. I've never seen kernels so big. The cool thing about this place was that we could spot the terraces from far far away as the bus drove around the mountains. These agricultural terraces they created allowed them to produce an abundant amount of crops which I imagine would have been hard at this altitude. That's probably why they have such a great selection of corn.

[Unimportant side note: So our tour of Pisac was done and we were ready to move onto the next site. After getting on the bus we realized two of our people from the group were missing. We had our own personal time to explore the site and then we were supposed to meet up at a certain location at a certain time. Thirty minutes pass, other members are getting impatient, they start to yell at the tour guide. Some had good reason because they were catching a train at the next site. After some bickering and another twenty minutes pass, it's decided that the bus leaves with out them. I don't exactly know what happened but they show up at the next site where we had lunch, and the tour guide wanted it on record that the entire group decided to move on with out them because people had to catch a train. So he wrote out the facts and wanted the people to sign it. The couple that showed up late grabbed the paper, crumpled it up, and threw it out the moving bus. The bus driver stops. I thought a fight was about to break out. Sorry for the anti-climax, but nothing ends up happening and Stephanie and I write down the facts on a strip of paper from my guide book and have everyone else sign it but them and hand it to the tour guide later.]

Standing ontop of Ollantaytambo ruins [Photo Cred: Steph]

Getting to our second to last and coolest place was this ruin. Ollantaytambo. It was the last resistance of the Incas against the Spanish Conquistadors. Every view from this place was scenic. Even if not the view from it, the ruins them selves were amazing. There were these giant stones which looked as big or possibly even bigger than the stones used in the Pyramids. It must have taken an amazing amount of man power to move some of these giant stones.

Cusco, Peru

Stephanie bargaining for the first time on our trip.

Someone how we spent an entire day doing errands; laundry, post cards, shopping... Stephanie was never a really big haggler, in fact neither was I. But after just experimenting a few tactics, we've managed to get away with a bunch of warm clothes for our trek up into the mountains. It also really helped out with the freezing cold weather at night in Cusco.

Peruvian women making belts on the street.

There were a lot of people trying to sell things to the tourists on the streets. Some of the things were Alpaca goods, fake raybans, and massages. Massages? At first I thought it was really strange that everyone was asking if you wanted a good massage, but after I thought about it, doing a four day trek over the Andes mountains actually sounded nice. The fake raybans were awesome. Guys would come up to and tell you they have real raybans, they would continue to bend them to prove they were real as if they were going to break it. After you would call them out and say they're fake, they would say "noooo, not fake, stolen my friend, stolen".

Plaza de Armas at night

After our day of errands, i went and climbed up the hill to take pictures at night. As I left the hostel I asked the lady if it was safe to walk around at night by myself since the book said there were lots of thefts at night for tourists. Not one problem. I deem Cusco safe.

Cusco, Peru

Sipping on Coca tea at our hostel

We flew to Cusco, Peru from Bogota, Colombia in hopes of doing day trips from Cusco, acclimating to the altitude, and psych ourselves up for Machu Piccu. Our plan was to check in to our trekking office for Machu Piccu and then spend a night or two down in Puno to see Lake Titicaca. When we got to Cusco, there were some strikes going on and apparently the 7 hour bus ride there turned into a 17 hour bus ride. Hurray for strikes. So we had some time to kill in this tourist town. We ended up sipping on Coca tea, took it easy, and did research. Luckily we didn't get altitude sickness but were close to it. I mean Cusco sits on the Andes mountains at 11,100 feet which I really didn't think we would feel any sort of effects. But we would fatigue easily, breath heavily while walking up small hills, and have slight headaches all day long. Yeah, our days were short.

Our view from our hostel of Cusco

Probably the best thing about our hostel was the view of Cusco. You can see on the mountain in the back it says Viva El Peru. Actually it seems like every town we visited would have something written on the side of the mountain with initials of something or the town name. Cusco is a beautiful town, just extremely cold at night.

Pisco Sour

Night came and we wanted to eat some local cuisine. We set off looking for a suggestion in Lonely Planet but found this hole in the wall where we only saw locals eating. Score. However it still had a tourist menu which is pretty much just a prix fix menu. I got the recommended Lomo de Alpaca, Sopa a la Criolla, and a Pisco Sour. the Sopa a la Criolla was amazing there, best one I had in town. It's a lightly spiced, creamy noodle soup with beef and vegetables. Lets just say I wouldn't order the Alpaca again. The pisco sour was surprisingly good. Here's some random facts about it; The alcohol Pisco is a brandy made from grapes. The actual mixed drink is Pisco, Lime juice, simple syrup, beaten egg whites, and bitters. You know, just in case you want to make it at home. Cheers.

The Lomo de Alpaca and fish fillet. [Photo cred: Steph]

Bogota, Colombia

Night life in Zona Rosa.

In Bogota I was sitting in the common area writing one of my blogs. A group of other backpackers come into the room and sit down with a handful of limes and a bottle of vodka. I could here some different accents; British and maybe Australian. After they asked me to take a picture, one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew Stephanie and I joined them in a night out on the town. One of the guys reminded me of my friend Charlie. He would always have his hands in his pockets, smoking a cigarette, and stumbling around. At one point he tripped on a curb and smashed into the side of wall, body slumped into the wall like a sack of potatoes. He rebounds and pretends nothing happened stumbling back into the darkness of the night. We drink a few Colombian beers at another hostel and then split up to check out other parts of the town. Stephanie, myself, and our new found Scottish friend Harry decide to check out the night life in Zona Rosa.

View of Bogota from Mount Monserrate.

The next morning we eat some food and walk up to the bottom of Mount Monserrate. We took this giant gondola up to the top. We hiked to the back side of the area where these two young police men offered to show us around. We watched the rain clouds come and go raining on parts of Bogota. The clouds would open up here and there allowing some sun in on occasion. On the way down we tried some Coca tea. I read in the guide book that it helps with calming altitude sickness. The lady at the stand poured each of us a cup. Steph's reaction; "It's really good!" My reaction; "what? it can't be th... oh my god it's hella tasty." Supposedly the mixture was with sugar cane, honey, and Coca tea.

Stephanie standing in the doorway of the church ontop of Monserrate.

We sat on the steps of the church sipping the Coca tea looking out into the city of Bogota. When we walked into the church and i looked back it almost looked like something out of a movie where Steph was an angel, standing in a glowing doorway. But nope, it was just Steph, nothing special. haha j/k.

Bogota, Colombia

Sorry for the late post; we're alive and well. We just finished our four day trek to Machu Picchu. Great pictures to come for that post later.

Hanging out in Plaza De Bolivar. [Photo cred: Steph]

So being the frugal travels we were trying to be, we booked a bus ticket from Cartagena to Bogota. The twenty hour over night bus turned out to be a twenty seven hour bus ride. Whoops. A regret we learned to live with. One of the things that you take for granted while traveling is toilet paper, something desired on bus rides like this. Since then we've stored some in our day bag. Anyway, we made it to Bogota and found it to be much larger and city like than we expected. Walking the busy streets during the day it reminded Steph a little bit of New York. Almost everything we wanted to see was pretty much walking distance. We walked through Plaza De Bolivar, dedicated to Simon Bolivar, the man who helped free Colombia from the Spanish. This square was spread out with four different types of architecture for every side. This one I'm standing in front of is the Mayor's office which is a French style Alcaldia.

Steph in the middle of the plaza.

I caught steph staring at the statue in the middle of the square while it started to drizzle on us. It was riddled with graffiti. Actually everywhere we walked you would see stenciled graffiti or tagging of some sort. I don't think it was real banksy graffiti but someone was borrowing his icon of the rioter throwing a grenade of flowers. FYI, Banksy is a is English graffiti street artist with a flare for politics. In fact, here's an example of some street art we saw on our way to the plaza.

Street art on Av Jimenez, artist unknown;

This painting is actually just a small snippet of an entire wall. But for some reason i liked the black and white punk rocker. It's kinda interesting to see street art taking up an entire building wall. I mean like three stories tall and it's untouched by other artists. You'll see people's walls tagged with random pieces of art, some even overlapping old art. But this one was thought out and had organization to it, and seemed somewhat accepted.

Looking at Picaso

Street art was not the only art we appreciated that day. We stopped by the Donacion Botero where they displayed probably ten rooms of Fernando Botero's art. Only a few other rooms were dedicated to other artists like this Picaso. You can see the pictures of his work later when i post all my pictures or you can just google him. You'll recognize his work since all the people he depicts are quite large or "fat" as he says.

Dipping bread in to hot chocolate at the Puerta Falsa

We were walking from Plaza de Bolivar to the Botero museum and of course I spot out of the corner of my eye some delectable sweets. Curious I was, I looked at the name and realized it was the place that Stephanie had already chosen for dinner. La Pureta Falsa. There were two things here we came here to try; first was the hot chocolate, second was the tamales. It was a small cute little shop with only stool bars lining the right side of the wall and an upstairs that completed the cafe atmosphere. The window display was filled with these banana leave wrapped goods and other confectionery desserts. After drinking half of the hot chocolate we realized the guy next to us and others were dropping their cheese inside the hot coco. I tried it, not sure if I was a huge fan. But damn was the tamale delicious and amazingly cheap! we ordered a second one.

We liked Bogota so much that we almost forgot we survived a twenty seven hour bus ride to it.