leaving Machu Picchu, back to Cusco and on to Arequipa
Another word on Machu Picchu itself. Some of the pictures I took are the traditional well known angle but all in all it wasn’t exactly how I expected it. Part of this may be I hadn’t really looked up much information about it ever. For one thing, the rocks used to build it weren’t transported here, there’s a large quarry site in the city where the incas broke up rocks. That’s another thing, there’s not many large rocks in buildings, mostly just small stones typical for what you would expect in stone house construction. The city is hugely impressive, just plain huge too, spreading out across the plateau on top of the mountain with all the terraces, but there’s not a “how the hell did they do this 500 years ago?” factor. Not for me anyway. No more than how did anyone build castles on mountains in Europe in the middle ages. All of this makes me want to go visit an older civilizations ruined cities/temples.
After attempting to sleep in and giving up around 7:00 the next morning in Aguas Calientes we caught the train part way to Cusco and bus the rest of the way. Back to the hostel we were at before the trail. Just one more night here, nothing else we were interested in seeing in Cusco and it’s really annoying not being able to walk around without people trying to sell you stuff, constantly. So we got 2 of the last seats on a night bus the next evening to Arequipa.
Spent the day in Cusco looking for a cool inca trail t-shirt or other interesting souvenirs, hardly found anything. Typical, I’ve never seen more tourist shops than there are in Cusco but they all have the same lame t-shirts. Empanadas for lunch, again for dinner, I’m totally fed up with the local cuisine of flavourless rice with boring beef or chicken or even the “jungle potato”, yuca, which is like chewing starch with no real flavour. I miss the flavour highs of Argentina.
The overnight bus ride to Arequipa sucked, 10 hours, semi cama, no where near enough leg room for me. Still cost me $30 though. More expensive than the Argentinean and even Chilean buses with much less service en-route and less comfortable seats with no legroom.
We arrived in Arequipa around sunrise, saw the volcanoes surrounding the city from the bus then took a taxi to our hostel at 6:45 to wait for the place to wake up. Walked around the centre later on, it’s no Cusco but still a fair share of nice older buildings, giving it some character even if most are slightly run down.
Went out to a pizza/pasta place for dinner since we’ve seriously had it with chicken and rice dishes. (and the dodgy stomach problems they cause) Restaurant was good anyway, after that it was the Irish pub for very cheap happy hour drinks. In case you can’t tell, I’m bored of Peruvian stuff in general. This is the last stop here, flying to Colombia on Thursday.
Tags: Peru, Travel
Adam
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