Walking with llamas

We did our own tour of the Inca sites around Cuzco by foot. It was physically quite draining but was also a nice, memorable walk. We used our Boleto Turistico ticket to enter all the sites.

Our first stop was Sacsayhuaman which everyone remembers as “sexy woman” because that’s what the name sounds like. (not many sexy women around there, only rocks and llamas. I suppose if you are lucky you could see hot tourists.?)

Sacsayhuaman is also an Inca site with those large stones which fit together without any mortar. There are many theories about how the site was constructed but nobody knows for sure. It has an incredible view of the city and has a look-out point with a big cross called Cruz Moqo.

Oh, and at “Sexy Woman” there are these rock slides. It looks as if the rock was previously melted. We slid down one of the smaller slides but were too chicken to slide down the bigger ones. About fifty 7-year-olds on a school outing came and showed us how it’s done. The poor teachers were having a hard time controlling the kids and kept on shouting: “one at a time!” in Spanish.

After “Sexy Woman” we walked along the road to Q’enqo, an Inca temple dedicated to Pachamama.(Mother Nature). This looked like a natural cave with carved out steps and tables inside, apparently used for sacrifices.

The guard at Q’enqo explained briefly how to get to the next site, Puca Pucara. He said to just follow the road for about 45 minutes but we saw on the iPhones GPS that we could take a short-cut through a field over a hill. Our field trip was quite cool because we met a heard of llamas (and one random sheep). They were busy walking the same way we were followed by a native lady, who we assumed was their shepherd.

Puca Pucara ruins (Puka-Puka sounds nicer) was a military base for the Incas. It is interesting, but to me, a lot of the ruins look very similar to each other. Nobody knows exactly what happened so in a way you can come up with your own interpretation.

From here we finished off at Tambomachay which is almost opposite “Puka-Puka.” Tambomachay is known as “the bath of the Incas” and some speculate that this was used as a Spa retreat or resort.

We had the option of walking all the way back to Cuzco but we managed to squash into a local bus for one soles per person. Back in the city we rewarded ourselves with a McDonald’s McFlurry and a pizza in the main square. Mmmm…