peru – 24-november, 2009
tuesday – 24-november, 2009
we got a slow start to the day and ended up sleeping in a bit longer than we’d hoped. after grabbing a quick bite at the hotel we ducked down to the ATM machines to extract the balance of the necessary cash to pay the balance of the inca trail tour. we were able to quickly settle up with llama path and made our way to the Museum of Art Precolumbian (MAP). it bears noting that this place seems to have the toniest cafe in town. you got the opportunity to eat in a stylish glass cube in the middle courtyard of the museum. we were sufficiently non-plussed by the menu to skip it for lunch.
the MAP is actually one of the nicer museums in cusco. the displays are nicely laid out and there’s a considerable amount of content. they had a large collection of ceramics and sculpture from all over peru. it was well documented in both spanish and english which made it a fairly engaging museum for us. in addition to the ceramics they had a surprisingly large collection of wood sculpture, metalwork and some post-columbian painting. all of this was well organized and largely, well documented.
lunch – chez maggy. if you read the local reviews and the lonely planet writeup on this, you’d think that this was some orgasm inducing pizza. it’s not bad, but it’s not worth writing home over. we opted for the “super macho” pizza (sausage and red onion) which was tasty.
after lunch, we struck out for saqsayhuaman (aka: sexy woman) in typical fashion, this involved hauling ass uphill. both in town and on the stairs / trail leading to the ruins. an interesting (and annoying) feature of cusco is the presence of stair streets. resbalosa is one of these, “stair streets”. after reaching the top/end of resbalosa, we hugged the edge of a winding road leading up to the entrance of the trail to saqsayhuaman. it was a little disheartening to see so many people on their way down while we were climbing up. then it started to sprinkle.
when we reached the top of the trail to saqsayhuaman, the officials descended on us for our boleto turistico. at this point we also appreciate that it would have been a 5 minute taxi ride and there was no shortage of offers to take us back down. the easy part.
saqsayhuaman is a truly impressive site and it’s interesting to note that it’s still under active excavation. while we were up there they were actively digging out portions of the site and documenting it. it’s easy to see why the inca’s chose it for building their defenses, there’s an impressive view and assaulting armies would have a hell of an ascent.
we got about halfway down the trail to the winding road leading back into town when it started to rain in earnest. the descent in the rain while on the road wasn’t at all difficult. however, descending resbalosa when it’s wet is a bit taxing. this stone stair street has had years of foot traffic and flowing water to wear the stones smooth and it’s quite slippery.