Cuzco - Capital of the Incas & Machuu Pichuu - The Lost City, and surrounding ruins.

Upon arrival to Cuzco we found a taxi ride from the airport to the hotel where we planned on a rendezvous with Elke and Els. The Hotel Imperio, at $5/night seemed to meet our needs. We hadn't slept much the night before, so I decided to take a nap after meeting up with Elke and Els and planning to hike the Inca trail to Machuu Pichuu the the next day. Well, 2 hours later I couldn't get out of bed! Altitude sickness had me in it's grips once again. So, there I lay for 2 days. On the 3rd day I started feeling much better so Kurt, MaryBeth and I headed for Machuu Pichuu by train. The train ride there is 4 hours. A little more on the way back since Machuu Pichuu (at about 2300 meters) is about 1000 meters lower than Cuzco. Here is a picture as we are about to enter Machuu Pichuu. The mountain you see is very typical of the region and at the bottom of it you may be able to see the train we took.


Here Kurt and Mary Beth are at the beginning of our walking tour of Machuu Pichuu.


This is a view of some of the terracing that surrounds the stone structures themselves. Machuu Pichuu was self sufficient in food from that grown on the terraces.


Here once again are Kurt and Mary Beth in front of some rather large stone windows once part of a much larger structure. Many parts of Machuu Pichuu are still under restoration. Much of the damage has been caused by the many earthquakes the region receives. Remember, this is the Andes, which is supposed to be the most active mountain range on earth.


I've recently been told (Feb 2002) that this structure was called "The place where the sun is chained". I assume it is considered a religious symbol since (as Miguel from Portugal says), "The Incas were the children of the sun, so this must have had a tremendous value to them!". The Spaniards destroyed all of these symbols throughout Peru, except this one! That was because Machuu Pichuu was never found by the Spaniards. Hiram Bingham discovered it in the early part of this century.


This is a stone structure meant to resemble a condor. Here you can see it's head stretched out to the left and it's wings are the walkway. Below the condor there were what appeared to be the beginning of a cave and some more stone work.


Here I am at the end of the walking tour. Behind me is most of Machuu Pichuu, and terraces. There is a path on the mountain right behind me, but it takes several hours to get up and down it. We only had about 5.5 hours at Machuu Pichuu before we had to take the 4 hour train back to Cuzco.


The next day we did a 9 hour day tour of ruins surrounding Cuzco. This is just to show you that the empire had many many cities and some with stonework better than that found at Machuu Pichuu. We piled into a small Toyota min-van. There was an american family (mother, father, and two boys around 10 - 12 years old), an austrailian (25yrs old), a frenchman (24 years old), Kurt, Mary Beth and myself.

The first place we visited was The Archaelogical Park of Pisaq. Once again we found large stones cut so accurately that mortar was not needed.


Here is a shot of the ruins at Ollantantambo.


Here is a pic of several large finely cut and carved stones. The gentleman in the red jacket, Martin, was our guide for the day. He spoke in English and Spanish quite fluently. These stones were brought from a quarry nearly at the top of a mountain several kilometers away!


I am afraid I cannot remember the name of this site. Our guide mentioned that researchers from Barcelona came to excavate in the late 1970s. They dicovered quite a lot of gold artifacts. They told the Peruvians of the area that they would build a museum to display the artifacts. Well, in the end they took all the gold back to spain and it has never returned. Funny how history repeats itself!


The next two days were spent walking around Cuzco and shopping a little. Mary Beth and Kurt stayed in Cuzco another couple days waiting for their jungle tour to Manu National Park to begin whereas it was time for me to start heading back to Chile. So, off I went to Arequipa via plane with Elke (who was also heading back to Chile). At a mear $60 it was worth it to fly 30 minutes versus the 20 hour bus or train ride.