Monday 13 feb 2012     Cuzco

A big day today starting at 0900 with Julie our guide who drove us around the main parts of the centre of Cuzco, after our visit to the temple of the Sun which is enclosed within a Catholic church.  The church used the Inca buildings for its priests and other activities.  The stone work in the Inca buildings is amazing and perfect and could teach our building industry a lot when it comes to perfect quality and care to detail. It is not possible to slide a piece of paper between the stones and some of these weigh many tonnes. Apparently there are not many Spanish who visit the old Inca sites because they are embarrassed by the way their nation plundered and destroyed this culture.  There is a sprinkling of Aussies, Germans, plenty of Americans but also Canadians and other Europeans who come here. Next we visited a family business of Alpaca weavers where I bought a ladies scarf made from baby Alpaca wool and a beanie for myself. As on all holidays there is always another ancient and interesting cathedral and adjoining church to visit.  The wood carvings and oil paintings are quite magnificent and reflect strongly the intertwining of the catholic and Inca religions.  This is very similar to the early Christians adopting Roman calendar dates for special events and thereby combining a pagan and Christian religions into one.  We drove out to the massive Inca ruins of SACSAYWAMAN also referred to as ¨Sexy Woman¨, which are believed to have been a religious centre but no one knows for certain.  The blocks of stone used here weigh up to 200 ton. The weather today finally caught up with us and continuous rain made made any further outdoor activities unpleasant so we returned to our hotel at 12:30, and off to a quick lunch in a local tiny restaurant where tourists don´t go.  We had mixed vegies deep fried inside a mashed potato jacket, fried rice and a coke for 18 Solis or about $6 for two people.  Later our guide told us that we should not have eaten there as we could have been sick!  Pamela our next guide arrived at 13:30 and took us to a local restaurant to try some free local corn beer on the promise that we would go back for a full meal later. After that we drove to a wild life park outside Cuzco where injured animals are cared for. We extremely lucky to be within the vicinity of three full grown Condors who flew so low over our heads that we had to duck down.  Not many people can say that they have experienced that.  I have some great photos which will follow later.  Malcolm and I both donated $10 as the park is private and runs on donations. This was followed by a visit to a Llama and Alpaca farm where they breed, shear, colour and do traditional weaving of the wool before selling the finished product. We were very good this time and didn´t buy anything. Our drivers next took us to the Sacred Valley to take photos.  It is a real concern that everywhere we look in Peru the gum trees are taking over.  Back in Cuzco Pamela took us took a small restaurant to try the local sweet desert which is made from mashed sweet potatoes deep fried in the shape of a doughnut and doused in syrup.  Tonight we packed for early departure the next day.