Qurikancha

Despite having spent considerable time in Cusco, today was the first time we had been able to explore the city sites. We had been busy in the surrounding regions and the shopping scene. As such, we headed to the first museum of the day. This explained the ancient and colonial history of the city of cusco and Eastern South America. I found the ancient history much more interesting as we learnt about the Nazca Empire, the Wari Empire, and how these civilisations helped birth the much more famous Inca Empire. A lot of the attributes, traits, and characteristics that we attribute to the Incas are often adaptions or direct adoptions from early empires. Nonetheless, it was nice to learn about their lifestyle and traditions from a much older time. After exploring here, we then headed toward the large Qorikancha, an old temple and retrofitted cathedral during colonial periods. This was a beautiful building and a quite interesting museum. This focused much more on art and building practices than the last, so it was good at completing the picture of life in the incan Empire. We tried to finish off the day in Saqsaywaman (literally pronounced sexy woman) to overlook the city and enjoy the sunset. The entry was close to 30 AUD each, however, and given we wouldn't have time to explore a large portion of the site, we figured it wasn't worth the money. As such, we enjoyed the highest view we could find and headed down for a drink. The view wasn't acceptional as it doesn't quite grasp the beauty of the city on a street to street basis. The lack of large buildings or large parks makes it not that enjoyable of a view from the mountainside. Nonetheless, we had to do it. As we headed down for a couple of drinks, we stumbled across what we could only guess was some form of corn festival. They love their corn, and as we saw in Moray, they have purposefully created over 900 varieties of corn. Because it was the last day of the wet season, and the dry season was beginning, they had a festival to celebrate. This was interesting and cool. People danced, carried golden corn, and gave speeches. We sat in admiration before going and getting our drink. This was going to be the end of our time in cusco, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I will have to come back and do some of the other hikes and activities in the region.Read more