Cusco city tour

Today we got up early and went to visit Cusco's main square with its Spanish Churches and The fountain featuring an Inca. Then we went up "Calle del Triunfo" to see The famous 12 angle stone In The Hatun Rumiyoc street, luckily a local bloke showed us around for 5 soles so he took us to see two stones formations on the wall one depicting a Puma and the other one a snake, these walls were part of the main lnka Palace

Time to visit the modern Part of Cusco, for just 5 soles a taxi took us to "Real Plaza" , a modern shopping centre on "Avenida de la Cultura", apparently This area is becoming Increasingly popular amongst locals . My wife couldn't resist to do some shopping and later on we ended up having lunch at the food court.

We went back to the hotel and at 1:30pm we were picked up for the city tour ; after going around town collecting People the first stop was the impressive Koricancha, our tour guide Julio was really knowledgeable and did his best to show us around. We learnt about Inca's mythology and also their achievements in astronomy. The walls were also built with huge stones wider at the base so it coped with earthquakes , something not uncommon in this part of the world,

Leaving Koricancha we headed to The Sacsaywaman fortress although later on we learnt it was more a sort of religious complex, we spent some time here taking photos and exploring this rather large structure, at the exit gate we had some photo opportunity with local ladies and their llamas.

Next stop was Qenko, another religious complex much, much smaller than Sacsayhuaman but used as a ceremony temple where Inka kings were mummified .

From Qenko we went to Pukapukara, at this point of time we could feel the 3,800 masl so we avoid the walking and have photos at the entrance.

the last ruin visited today was Tambomachay, a construction used to collect water from the mountains , it was required to walk some 400m to get to the ruins so Yova and Ximena stayed in the bus.I got some photo with a pack of llamas & then went back to the bus gasping for air.

the last stop of the tour was an alpaca wool factory, we didn't bother to get out of the bus.

Back in Cusco and the rain starts. it took us at least 10 minutes to get a cab as it seemed to us that every Cusqueño was rushing to go home.

End of our first day touring around tomorrow we are heading to the Sacred ValleyRead more