CC Travel Blog

I arrived on a Sunday morning at Cuzco. After settling into my hostel, I took a walk outside to maximize my experience.

Cuzco is a small town situated at 3326 meters above sea level, and it used to be the capital of the Inca Empire. Although small, there are a lot to discover in this city which the Inca ancestors have left behind.

Hiding high and above in the Andes Highland, altitude sickness is a common discomfort to visitors who first landed. As I later learned, being fit and all have offers no protection from it. The symptons include headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, malaise, insomnia and loss of appetite.

I did not pay much attention to it at first and as I rushed to leave the hostel and walked to the main plazza, all of a sudden I felt nausea and dizzy. Naively I thought I was just hungry and had low blood sugar, so I slowed down. Luckily, my hostel was only a few steps away from Plaza de Armas, the main plaza in the city. As I walked in and it was early in the morning, I saw a parade.

It started with the military men lining up and marching in.

And lots of citizens sitting on the stairs in front of the Cathedral watching.

The ceremony started with some high rank officials exchanging salutation.

The band started to sound off.

Then the flag raising started. There are usually two flags flying in the plaza, one is red and white Peruvian flag and the rainbow colored one is for Tahuantinsuyo, representing the four quarters of Inca Empire.

Military marched in with the Peruvian flag.

Then various parties followed with their own flags.

After the ceremony, I was able to slowly walked around and observed this beautiful city.

This is the main plaza, Plaza de Armas. La Catedral is the main construction on site. In February, rainy days are not uncommon and the temperature is quite cool. Keep in mind that in the highland, the weather can be dramatically different from the coastal Lima, which at the time was a heated summer.

Inside the cathedral, the massive woodpane altar is most attractive to any visitor’s eyes.

The catehdral is one of the city’s greatest repositories of colonial art. The most stricking example is suggested to be “the last supper” by Marcos Zapata. But the dim light inside the cathedral makes a clear photo hardly possible.

Stepping out of the plaza, along the narrow alley, you’ll see Inca walls and the locals wearing their traditional customary dresses.

This is the Inka door and the 12 sided stone. Inkas are famous for their scientific and artistic ways of architecture. For example, here, the design of the door for the nobles were double layered and with a 13 degree inclining angle, 3 earthquakes in Cusco did not manage to shake it down. The stones were cleverly carved that each piece fitted perfectly well to each other and one stone supported 2 near by so that a wall was perfectly intact. A 12 sided stone on the right side of the wall was just a show off of the skill I think.

Check out how the 12-sided stone can effortlessly fit into the wall with other stones.

In the narrowest street of Cuzco, there’s the Courtyard of the Serpents. On the left side, both walls have 7 serpents on them each. The wall on the left is called the “wall of the women” and the wall on the right is called “wall of the men.” The arch connected them together represents union.

Don’t worry about finding these details, a random walk near the plaza will almost guarantee that some young people will walk up to you and offer a free tour. They’re students and usually won’t charge any fees except some tips.

Along Marquez Mantas Street near the plaza, there is the food market for the locals.

Traditional Peruvian bread.

All different kinds of beans and corns.

The locals were pretty surprised and amazed seeing a single Asian girl wandering into their local market, but they were friendly. I walked along the juice stands and they pointed at various fruits and tried to offer me their freshly squeezed fruit juices.

As I sat down and looking around to see what they were eating, shyly they pointed at their food and said the names. Lovely people!

During the afternoon, I took the city tour to visit Qorikancha and 3 other Inca sites outside of the city.

Qorikancha, in Quechua word, means “golden courtyard.” It is an Inca temple. When the invading Spanish destroyed the temple, they built a Christian temple on top of it to spread the Christian gospel.

Today, all that Qorikancha left is the stonework.

Once an Inca temple, the “golden courtyard” was named because all the walls were covered with gold, 700 solid gold sheets, each weighing about 2kg. After the Spanish discovered this treasure land, all the gold were gone, leaving the stoneworks here, yet still reflecting the intelligence of the Andeans.

Courtyard in Santo Domingo church.

Can you imagine all the walls along this simple temple room are covered by shining gold?

Around Cuzco, there are 4 ruins. We started with Saqsaywaman (pronounced like “sexy woman”). The real meaning is “satisfied falcon”. It’s both a religious and military site with great significance. Today, the site probably only has 20% of the original structure left after the Spaniards tore down most of the walls and used the blocks to build houses in Cuzco.

Big stones were transported by the smart Inkas in the 11th Century and built these big walls for temples and fortifications.

The remaining zigzagging fortification has stones as heavy as 300 tons and they fitted neatly together. The Incas envisioned Cuzco in the shape of a puma, with Saqsaywaman as the head, and the zigzagged walls from the teeth.

From Saqsaywaman, you can look across to the valley.

The second ruin is Puca Pucara, which we briefly passed, noting it is the gate to Cuzco.

Then we arrived at the third ruin, Tambomachay. This site consists of a set of finely carved stone structures and water falls originating from near springs and thermal sources.

These water has been running from the source for thousands of years.

Since the ruins I visited are popular tourist sites, the locals will stand on the side of the road flashing their alpaca goods for sale.

The most significant item in this site is the carved rock altar. It is said that blood is discovered on this stone, indicating that this is the sacrafice altar where the Indians kill the humans as sacrafice to the gods.

The last ruin is Q’enqo. The name means “zigzag”, and the site consists of lots of symbloic carvings and zigzagging channels that resulted in such a name.

These are the channels and caves.

Don’t smear at this stone, found inside one of the caves. archaeologists discovered blood on this stone, indicating that it is the head-chopping board for the Indians to offer the sacrafices to gods.

The next day, I’ll be hopping on a train to Machu Picchu. Seeing Cuzco and its ruins is like having a preview of what the Incas and Andeans are like, intelligent, amazing and religious.