Cusco

We took the worst bus we had taken since arriving in South America. It was freezing cold and it did not help that the locals who filled the bus were dressed for poles while we had light jackets on. The fact that the windows were stuck together with tape psychologically destroyed us! Anyway, we reached Cusco at 4 am which was 3 hours behind schedule or at least the time we were told we woulod reach.

Cusco is a beautiful city, and arriving a week before the winter solstice meant it was week of pagentry and parades and lots of fun. Inti Raymi, or the big Inca winter solstice festival is celebrated on the 24th of June so we planned to spend time in and around Cusco to check out the festival.

Cusco has a bunch of churches, museums and a lot of Inca and tiwanaku architecture. The Inca built one hell of lot for a civilisation that only lasted 100 years. Most Inca walls are huge, built with large blocks of stone that have multiple edges, sometimes going upto 36 surfaces in one block.

More than anything, we needed to slow down,and so we took this opportunity to do not much else. The hostel was nice and pretty reasonable, food was good and we found some great deals. We even found an Indian restaurant that wasn't too bad. I think it was our first Indian restaurant meal on any of our travels.

We did travel around Cusco. We went to the Salt mines which were fantastic! A warm spring in the middle of the Andes that is salty, and feed an entire mountainside of salt evaporation mines. Then we went to Maras Moray where the Inca's created a laboratory to test the effect of altitude and temperature on plants by creating a huge complex of concentric circles in a valley using the walls of the mountain to create differnt temperature and altitudes . Each level is about 5 feet deeper than the next and 4-5 C higher. A natural water drainage system below the circles makes sure that there is no flooding even in the rains. It is an amazing structure although I'm not sure it was really used as a lab. It is an impressive struture!