Whoa Cusco!
My three new room-mates from Belfast had booked a holiday in Cusco for the end of July. I had no intention of joining (I was waiting for my mom to come over to see this part of the country) but after a particularly stressful day in work I changed my mind. On the third floor of Casa Del I found one of the kids I live with. I thought she had her face into the corner for counting purposes in some game but when I turned her around her neck was slit and her hands covered in blood. I rushed her away, possibly a little too dramatically, and handed her over to the boss. One of the other kids I live with had done it in a game, never did find out was it done accidentally or what. So after that I decided maybe I should take the week off I never took and booked myself on a flight to Cusco for the following day.
Stephen, Jenny and Aisling had arrived a day before me and came to meet me at the airport. First impression of Cusco; what a pretty place! As sappy a word as pretty is it’s all I can really think of to describe Cusco. All the streets are narrow and cobblestoned. The only thing that could possibly take away from the niceness is the air, or lack of it. We were all on altitude pills and still found it hard to breathe. Our hotel Casa Del Campo, was up in San Blas, which was quite a hike from the main square, then when you reach there it’s upwards and onwards again, and when you get past reception there’s another 30 or so big stone steps. I now have major respect for anyone who survives the Inca trail. Putting one foot in front of the other is a challenge here.
Like the magnets that we are, we instantly found the Irish bar. The highest one in the world; Paddy Flaherty’s. While talking to two Irish girls we realised I hadn’t had the necessary Coca tea and mid-day nap needed to acclimatise so I set about doing the two of those before I collapsed from lack of oxygen. It’s the pressure that’s the problem here, so you really have to remind yourself to breathe, it doesn’t just go in as much as it normally does.
We decided to do some adventure-type things while in Cusco. In my absence the others found an adventure shop to see what we could do. First up: horse riding. I have had a long bad history with horses and generally prefer to just look at them from a distance. I was going to make up some elaborate excuse to get out of this when I discovered my team weren’t much better off. Jenny was still traumatised from an incident a few years back in which she rode a horse with hiccups. Stephen had never been on a horse before, and Aisling is allergic to horse hair, but figured she might be okay seeing as we were going riding in the open air. With that information I confidently got out of the taxi in Sacsaywuman (pronounced sexy woman) and started looking for these beasts. Confidence left me once I saw them riding over the horizon in the distance. I like nice, tame, well-disciplined horses, and these seemed to live easy in the wild. I made sure the tour guy gave me the smallest horse, but noticed he conveniently kept the ‘littlest’ one for himself. We were put with three British students and an Australian lady.
Once my horse got over his unfortunate twitch we all set off over the mountains. It was incredibly peaceful, even for a horse-phobe. We stopped at the Inca’s moon temple and snooped around where they sacrificed animals. Then set off up over the mountains looking at other random things for a few hours. Saw some people herding sheep, one horse drank some water. It was nothing crazy but it was just really amazing to be up there, on a horse and have no one else around for miles.
We stopped at a little town for lunch, but being cheap we had a packed lunch ready to go. The other four in our tour were taken off to check out a water fountain the Inca’s had but, again, we couldn’t go for financial reasons. The four of us had decided we didn’t want to do enough of those archeological things, to fork out $21 for a tourist ticket needed to see them. So we sat in the sun and enjoyed our cookies.
When the other four rejoined us we set off over another mountain on the horses that I was now starting to like. But they seriously need to change their diets. Even with limited horse experience we figured it couldn’t be normal for them to ‘break wind’ so often. I freaked out whenever my guy went to close too the rear end of another horse.
On the last leg of the journey everyone got a little more confident and broke into a gallop through the forest. To savour the scenery I decided to scream at my horse everytime he attempted to go faster than a slow walk. Some pedestrians passed me out at one stage but they were walking fast-herding sheep. Eventually I was alone in the forest but perfectly happy as I could see the others racing each other in the clearing up ahead. Silly gringos, someone should tell them what happens to people who ride horses without helmets.
The horse day ended up being one of the best in Cusco. I can’t believe I’m recommending horse riding as a thing to do but for $10 it’s well worth it. And the most fun is to be had on the smallest and slowest horse, remember that.
Tags: 2 - Peru, Cusco, Peru
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