Getting to know (Per)u - Cusco, Peru

I arrived in Cusco, my first stop in Peru, early on Saturday morning having caught an overnight bus from Copacabana in Bolivia. Here I would be meeting up with my friend Chris, who would be flying in from Toronto, Canada (where he now lives with his wife Nerissa) to spend a couple of weeks with me travelling around Peru.

After a day to myself getting my bearings in Cusco, Chris arrived early on Sunday morning. I got up early to meet him at the airport figuring that being new to South America and lacking any Spanish skills, he might need a bit of help finding his way to our hostel! With Chris having flown in from sea level and Cusco sitting at an altitude of 3400m, we'd sensibly decided to spend a couple of days in Cusco to enable Chris to acclimatise to the thinner air before setting off for the Inca Trail, so we had a couple of leisurely days enjoying the city before the trek began.

Cusco

Cusco was once the centre of the Inca Empire, and so is an interesting mix of Inca remains and grand colonial architecture (much of which was built directly upon the Inca temples and buildings that the Spanish destroyed on their arrival). On our first day together, we wandered down to Plaza de Armas, the huge main square and focal point of the old town which is constantly full of taxis beeping their horns and women offering massages (which I'm told are all perfectly innocent before you ask!).

Chris in Plaza de Armas

Spotting the imposing sight of the Christo Blanco statue high on the hill above the main square, we decided to give Chris some rapid acclimitisation by hiking the 45 minutes or so up to the statue. From the top of the hill, we were rewarded with great views over the city before hiking back down the hill to find somewhere for lunch. After a relaxing afternoon at the hostel, we then headed to a Peruvian restaurant to get our first taste of alpaca (similar to llama), something which appears on most menus here in Peru, along with guinea pig!

Christo Blanco

The following day, we decided to check out the main Inca site in Cusco, Qorichancha, the sun temple, which was the central site of worship for the Incas. Although largely obscured by the massive Catholic cathedral that the conquistadores tastefully whacked on top of it, there are still sufficient remains of the temple foundations and lower walls to give you a sense of this major Inca site. With the help of a guide we learned about the central importance of Cusco, and this site in particular, to the Incas, which gave us a useful taste of what was to come on the Inca Trail.

Qorichanca

Temple walls of Qorichanca

That afternoon, I decided it was about time I got my haircut. With another two months away from home and work and noone (other than Chris) to tell me I looked stupid, I decided to go for a bit of a closer cut than usual. Fifteen minutes later I was sporting a slightly brutal looking number 2 all over, which if nothing else made me look a lot younger and required me to apply sun cream to the top of my head for the first time in my life! As with the beard I grew in Africa, if you can't do these things when you're travelling, when can you!

In the barbers

Newly shorn

Today also marked the beginning of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in South America, and we soon stumbled across a parade to mark this event. Along a side street off the main square we found a mixture of soldiers and clergy carrying a very heavy looking casket with a large representation of Jesus Christ on the cross above it. The large crowd around it were throwing red flowers and confetti towards it, so we stood amongst them for a while and watched the spectacle as it went past us.

Procession to mark the start of Holy Week

Later that evening, we saw the very same procession come in to the main square and head in to the main Catholic cathedral. By this time, the square was thronged with thousands of people keen to mark the beginning of the Easter week. As a result, we couldn't get as close this time, but instead found refuge in a pub overlooking the square, where we interspersed a few games of darts with looking in wonder at how many people had come out for the evening to watch something we had seen close up on a side street only hours before.

The next morning we headed to the office of Wayki Trek, the company we had booked to the Inca Trail with, to begin our trip to Macchu Picchu. Here we met the other travellers who would be joining us on the trail - Caroline and Joanne, Lamar and Siobhan, and Luis and Paola - who came from a diverse range of countries - the UK (via Switzerland), Australia, USA, Colombia and Peru - and our guide for the next few days, Roxner.

Trying chica beer on the way to the Inca village

Wayki Trek are proud to be under indigenous management, meaning they offer a special extra to the standard Inca Trail excursion - a night spent in the remote village where most of the porters they use come from. We'd enthusiastically signed up for this experience, without really knowing what to expect, but before long found ourselves stood picking green beans in a field in the middle of the Andes! We were staying with the head porter (Balero) and his family, and so were expected to muck in with getting dinner ready, which did keenly, picking us many green beans as we could, which backfired slightly when we realised we were expected to peel them all as well!

Chris gets to grips with a field of green beans

After a delicious dinner of quinoa soup and choclo con queso (corn with cheese), we were told the porters were here to meet us. A moment of confusion followed as fifteen or so children aged between around five and ten ran in to the room to greet us and for a split second we wondered if we had accidently signed up to a child labour racket! It quickly transpired that these were the porters' children who had come to say hello too, as they were soon followed by a number of the porters who would helping carry all our gear along the Inca Trail.

Some of the porters' children

We then had a fun hour dancing with the children to some Peruvian music and taking photos of each other to show them. They were all full of energy and excited to see us, so we had little choice but to join in and try and get to grips with the rhythms of Peruvian music and the dance steps, which seem to be the same for pretty much every song.

Dancing with the kids to Peruvian music

The kids show us how it's done

Handing out some gifts to the kids

We had been due to spend our first night camping out in our tents that night, but with heavy rain falling, our guide decided to take pity on us and put us up in the 'Wayki House' - which was something of a squeeze with only four beds between six of us! With a traditional rural alarm call from the neighbourhood rooster at 4am we were wide awake very early the next morning, raring to get started on the Inca Trail, if a little tired from the dancing of the night before and the early start.