something to see

Ahoy,

One of our days in Cusco, we got a boleto turistico. It gave us access to the ruins of Sacsayhuaman, Q'enko, Puka Pukara, and Tambomachay. We walked up to Sacsayhuaman from Cusco. It was uphill for about 20 minutes. I had A set his alarm for the bright and early hour of 6:30am. We ended up snoozing it to 7am. Our hotel offered breakfast in the morning, which we took advantage of all the days we were there. Even fresh eggs to order, which we can't say the same of a lot of hotels we stayed in the States. It was totally worth it. We spent an hour or 2 at the first site. A was not impressed. We noticed these sites rarely have information for context, often resulting in the necessity for a guide or homework. We wandered around not sure of the meaning or significance of anything. We went down a natural rock slide that but fun and terrifying.

Q'enko was another site just up the road - about 15 minutes up. We hired a guide here. A made the call that we had no idea what we were getting into. The site was pretty small. You can easily just walk through in less than 5 minutes. Our guide told us it was a spiritual site with a lot of altars to offer sacrifices. The layout of the rocks were so interesting and intentional.

We hopped aboard a bus up to the other 2 sites that were about 3 miles away. Puka Pukara was though to be some sort of military outpost, affording the Incans wide views and lavish accommodations. And Tambomachay was thought to be some sort of water aqueduct facility type. It has waterfalls and intricate tunneling  that a river runs through. I found these things out after doing homework when we got back to the hotel. The information providing at these sites I found to be less than that of places in the States, where they have informational placards everywhere to tell you about all the things.

We took the bus back down to our first site and got back to our hotel by 3pm. All in all, a thoroughly productive day. I'm glad we got up early to catch all these sites without being in a rush or amongst the crowds. We had plenty of time once we got back to have a slow afternoon and get to bed early, which I'm more and more so becoming a proponent of.

exceedingly aged,
jt