Cusco Cathedral, Qorikancha Temple, and Surrounding Ruins

Needless to say we slept in a bit today. It was one of those mornings where interesting thoughts pop in to you head like “Hey we are in the Southern Hemisphere, let’s go see which direction the water goes when you flush the toilet”. Around noon’ish we headed out in search of lunch and found a number of celebrations for Corpus Christi, in which they march around carrying life size replicas of their saints, I think it has something to do with the whole Jesus thing.




We found a nice place with an outdoor balcony that had a lunch special for ten Sol(s) which included a decent pizza and awesome salad.




We walked around town a little and then took an official city tour.




This tour is where we would meet Bob The Second. Bob The Second looked like Indiana Jones’s father in the Last Crusade. Bob The Second is the guy that after being told in English and Spanish not to take any pictures and after seeing countless images of a cameras with a red circle and slash through it, marches in to the place with cameras rolling and bulbs flashing. Fortunately, they shut him down pretty fast. For the rest of the tour I think Bob The Second felt down so to try and lift his spirits he showed off his knowledge by correcting and adding additional information to the tour guide’s speech. I don’t care much for Bob The Second. Our first stop was the Cusco Cathedral and this time you could not take pictures not because it was sacred or anything, but because they wanted to sell you their set of pictures instead.


This place was beautiful, amazing wood carvings and huge paintings. We saw more variations on the Jesus tale in their version of the Last Supper, which showed Jesus eating Guinea Pig. Of course I had to take a close look, and my gosh, even in their version the person sitting to the right of Jesus looks remarkably like a female.


We then visited Qorikancha Temple or the Temple of the Sun in the Inca Empire. A lot of this has actually been rebuilt for tourism.




We traveled just outside the city limits to the Saqsaywaman ruins.






These stones are carved and fitted together so tightly that there is no place in the ruins that you can even fit a piece of paper in between them.






Across the courtyard there was a different terrace structure.


Afterwards we moved on to Tambomachay or The Baths of the Inca. It’s amazing how they were able to channel water, but nothing compared to what we would see at Machu Picchu. Across the road from Tambomachay was Puca Pucara or the “Red Fort”, however at this point all the ruins started to look the same.


Our next stop was at Qenqo, a cave with an alter inside that was used to sacrificing animals and small children. It was actually very cool, however I was not able to get any decent pictures. We then returned to our hotel where we would meet our guide for the Inca trail who was going to brief us on the hike. Fredy, our guide showed up around 7:30 and gave us the run down of what to expect and what to bring. He was awesome and had us all fired up to start. We had a full day tomorrow to pick up some supplies, rest, and get one last night in an actual bed.


VIDEO: Sacred Valley and Cusco City