Cusco (part 2)-on our own

Trip Start Feb 23, 2008
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Trip End Jul 04, 2008


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Sunday, June 22, 2008

We booked our flight to leave Cusco a week after my family left.  Originally when we booked it we thought we would hike the Inka Trail.  But since we had already spent 2 days in Machu Picchu and the trail was really expensive we decided against it.  There were other hikes that we could have done but it got really cold at night and I was not in the mood to sleep in a tent in freezing weather.  So for the first couple days we laid in bed most of the morning/afternoon watching Wimbledon (we had cable TV in this room!).  We were feeling very tired and lazy.

Finally, we decided to buy a "tourist ticket" which is a ticket to most of the museums in Cusco and all the ruins in the surrounding area.  We walk up to Saqusaywaman to try to see the Inti Rami celebration.  We decided not to buy tickets to the celebration because they were $90.  It is a rip off and we feel bad for the locals because now they can't afford to go to their own celebration.  But we ended up getting there too late and the celebration was over so all we saw was empty bleachers.

So the "tourist ticket" motivated us to go see the museums in town, except most of them were not that great.  We were glad we didn't have to pay for each individually.  We went to Museo de arte popular (a lot of wierd small statues), Museo de Sitio del Qoricancha (repetitive to the Museo Inka), Museo Historico Regional (this actually had some cool old black and white pictures of Cusco), Monastereio de Santa Catalina (not much to see), and Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporaneo (had a great national geographic photo exhibit but it was not permanent). dancers in the parade
dancers in the parade

The next day we took a crowded and very smelly local bus to Tambomachy ruins which is 8km from Cusco.  From there we walked along the road back to Cusco through some cute little villages seeing lots of farm animals.  We also stopped at Pukapukara ruins, Q'enqo ruins, and Saqsaywaman ruins.

Then we took the same smelly local bus (which was not as smelly today) to the town of Pisac.  From there we hiked 7km to the Pisac ruins.  The hike was through mountains full of crop terraces and the ruins were spread throughout the hike.  The main ruin was large and very cool except it was so windy at the top we could not stick around long to check it out.  The town of Pisac is also know for its artesian market.  We walked around a little bit but it started to rain so we didn't shop much.  But we were surprised what a cute town it was.

The last day we took a local bus Maras.  Once we got there we had a slightly difficult time trying to find the hiking trail to Moray ruins.  We had to ask a few extremely friendly locals to point us in the right direction a few different times.  The 8km hike had a snow capped mountain range in the back round and we passed by people working in the fields.  The ruins are perfectly circle terrace that go down in a valley.  There are 3 circles next to each other.  It is quite impressive to see.   

From Cusco we flew to Lima -the last stop of the trip.
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