Cusco Day 4

We used our last day in Cusco to visit some of the Incan ruins just outside of the main city.

The first stop was Sacsaywaman. We walked to this one, up lots of stairs, but it wasn't far from our hostel. The site was HUGE! It's estimated that only about 20% of the original fortress remains after the Spaniards used the smaller blocks to build their own houses. The blocks left were massive, the largest being about 3 tons. How the Incas maneuvered all of those and built such a place is beyond me. Part of the fortress walls looks like teeth because the king who built it believed that area to be the head of a puma in the earth. It was a pretty cool site.

Our next stop was a short Uber up the hill to Tambomachay. This site was much smaller and believed to be a bathing site because of the plentiful spring water and still working fountains. Across the street, roughly, was Puka Pukara, another small site most likely an outpost or sleeping place while making large journeys. It may have also linked with Tambomachay at one point. The stones here were not the usual gray color, but had a pinkish tinge.

Our final stop was Q’enqo. This was an interesting site with some really big blocks. The main attraction was inside the site where there was a former tomb. By now, it had started to rain, so we didn't linger long and descended many steps to get back to the center of Cusco.

While on our way, we saw a tasty looking vegetarian restaurant called Green Falafel. We stopped in for a late lunch. We ordered some kombucha, blueberry for Allan and passion fruit for me. Allan got a falafel pita combo and I got some quinoa salad with falafel. The food took forever. The wee waiter was clearly very overwhelmed, which was confusing because nothing was actually happening at a quick rate. Luckily we had nowhere to go, but it was probably the slowest I've ever had food served. It was delicious though and very big portions which helped make up for it.

After our late lunch, we headed back to the hostel where I discovered I'd been a victim of fraud. I froze my debit card, that I haven't even used since we left, and failed to get in touch with RBS. After trying to deal with it unsuccessfully, I gave up and instead used the hour before w had to head out for the bus to call my parents while Allan sent some emails.

We went painlessly to the bus station and boarded the wildest bus we've ever had. The guy was a speed demon! The good news was, we got some sleep and arrived to Arequipa 2 hours early.

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