Cusco

After a fair bit of wandering around trying to get my bearings from the bus station (street name signs are few and far between in the town outskirts), I finally gave up and got a taxi to the first hostel recommended by our guidebook. It turned out to be a lovely wee place, and surprisingly cheap too - it's still supposed to be high season here so I was expecting the prices to be quite high, but I reckon the place we have is just another really lucky find, and we get a nice breakfast included every morning too.

So for the past week or so we've been mostly relaxing here in Cusco, with the odd excursion to Inca sites. It really is a lovely town, worthy of all the hype I've heard about it. The first day we bought the tourist ticket you need to visit 16 of the local sights that includes a number of city museums, a cultural dance show (that was really good), and a number of Inca sights scattered around the general area (some are over an hour away on local buses).

The first day we got an early local bus to the site of Pisac, which had it's weekly market that day. It's supposed to be a big impressive market, but in fact all they sold were the usual tourist tat like traditional weavings, hats and general crafts, so we didn't spend long wandering around there (and it wasn't that big anyway). The main attraction in Pisac is the very impressive collection of fortress ruins on top of the mountain looking down over the town.

So we spent a good few hours hiking through all those ruins, all the time surround by fantastic views of the mountains, valleys and the town down below. It was a very impressive introduction to all the Inca and pre-Inca ruins of Peru, the most famous thing being the incredible stone masonry where huge stone blocks fit perfectly together without any cement or filler.

A couple of days ago we were about to get a bus out to another site when the nice owner of the hostel (Francisco) told us there was a big strike and no buses were running. Instead he suggested we rent bikes from across the road and visit some other, more local sites instead, like the temple fortress site of Saqsaywaman. This was a great idea, and something I was planning on doing on another day anyway (although I'd already checked with bike places in the centre I hadn't realised there was a great bike place just down the road). Anyway with Francisco's help knocking on the shop door (they were closed due to the strike), we got the bikes sorted and headed off.

Turned out we couldn't have timed our bike ride any better, as the strike meant there was practically no traffic on the roads at all - normally there would have been endless trucks, vans and tour buses flying around the place belching out huge plumes of dirty black exhaust fumes. The ride out of the city was up a constant hill, not steep just relentless. Sarah did great though, just found a good rhythm and kept going. It was funny for me though of course, as years ago after I bought her a bicycle for her birthday, I told her she'd be well able to cycle up Howth head (with a bit of practice to find a suitable riding rhythm of course). Naturally enough, she completely denied that she'd EVER be able to cycle up that hill, and in fact she had absolutely no intention of ever even attempting to do such a thing. She claimed to hate hills and was never going to cycle anywhere with me if it involved a hill!

She's slowly over the years gotten more and more confident in her own ability though (with only little bits of encouragement now and again from me), and has gradually discovered more and more about herself and what she's actually capable of. After the climb up to Saqsaywaman, she now confidently claims that she could easily ride up Howth hill, which of course she was always capable of. Finally she sees what I always knew all those years ago, but it still seems so strange to me how long it can take someone to get through even a small piece of their own fear, self-doubt and paranoia, and what terrible life-inhibitors they can be for most people.

So anyway it was a brilliant day out. We got to see four different sites, and having the bikes was the perfect way to get to them all. We saw a good few people walking between the four sites (spread out over about 8km), since there were no buses running, but having the bikes made it far more enjoyable I reckon, and gave us much more time at each site to stroll around. We also saw a couple of small groups cycyling but with a local guides. For the life of me I have no idea why they needed a guide, as all four sites are on the same main road, and the only slightly tricky thing was getting out of the city centre, but with a basic map and directions it was easy-peasy.

At this stage we only have a couple more sites to see that are bus rides away, so we'll probably do them in the next couple of days (you only have 10 days to see all 16 things on the tourist ticket), and then we'll make our way to Machu Picchu, the highlight of the entire area, or country, or continent even! There are quite a few options for getting there, nearly all involving a lot of money, but we'll probably take the one and only cheap option - getting a couple of local buses from town to town and then hiking the last part to the town at the base of the site, Aguas Caliente. From there you can overnight and then hike around Machu Picchu early the next morning. So that's the rough plan at the moment, but sure there's no rush...