Cusco and Ollantaytambo

We started our weekend arriving to Cusco in the beautiful sunshine! We checked into our hotel, walking slowly everywhere as most of us felt the altitude whack us in the face… We then got a city walking/bus tour and saw Sacsaywaman, the Cathedral in Cusco and Qoricancha. Qoricancha was a religious temple built to worship the Inca’s more important God, Inti, the Sun God. Sacsaywaman was the former capital of the Incan Empire. There was a lot of walking, a lot of stairs and one very small, pitch black cave that we walked through. Still feeling the altitude, it was definitely a lot of work to get around. The Cathedral was beautiful and we spent a ton of time listening to the guide talk about different paintings and statues and walking around inside. I love visiting churches so much more now than I did when I was young. These cathedrals in themselves are works of art and are filled with history and even more art! I also love the blending of cultures that can be seen in the religion and the churches here. For example, in a giant portrait of the Last Supper in the Cathedral, the food in the center piece of the table is a cuy (guinea pig) which is a traditional Peruvian meal, and not so traditional in other Catholic countries… After that we grabbed dinner and I crashed from exhaustion in the hotel to prepare for the next day!

Saturday, we bused to and through the Sacred Valley watched a wool dying and weaving presentation, walking through the Ollantaytambo Ruins and eating a tasty lunch buffet. The walk through the ruins of this Incan city was like a mini warm up for Machu Picchu! There was a plethora of stairs and beautiful mountains to be seen and more interesting facts to be learned about from our awesome tour guides. After lunch we went to a bar where we learned about a common drink in the Cusco region called Chicha, which is a fermented corn beer. It tasted okay but the Chicha with strawberries and sugar that they drink at parties, birthdays and special occasions was much more delicious. We then hung out playing this bar game where you try to throw a coin into the mouth of this frog mouth (not a live frog) although, it was pretty hard. We ended our day in the Sacred Valley by getting on the train to Aguas Calientes, the city of Machu Picchu, where we checked into our hotel and slept, again in preparation for our next big day to come!