Cusco – Part 1

From the 3rd to the 19th of September, we’re based in Cusco, the former capital of the Incan empire and modern-day tourist spot. The main reason for us coming here is that Cusco is the starting point for most of the major treks and tourist sites in the area. For us, this means the Salkantay Trek and the Inca Trail. So our time in Cusco itself actually book-ended these two treks. This post is just to give you a quick overview of what we got up to in the first few days prior to heading off into the mountains.

Acclimatised!

Cusco is situated at almost 3,400m above sea level and thus is the perfect place to spend a few days before heading even higher into the mountains. Now some people don’t seem to take altitude sickness seriously but it can be a major problem. It can hit anyone, regardless of fitness or hiking experience. We saw several people affected with symptoms ranging from splitting headaches to indigestion problems.

We are lucky in that we had the time to acclimatise properly and are so glad that we did! So much of the first couple of days was spent relaxing and doing small walks within Cusco itself. It was so important as at the beginning, walking twenty steps left me breathing heavily and my heart beating faster and faster. Having said that, it didn’t help that it is required to wear a mask even when you are outside and two masks when inside – that certainly made breathing more difficult!

But given the relative ease that we were able to handle the elevation on the treks, this was probably the most important thing we did in Cusco!

Free Walking Tour

I do like a good free walking tour!

For those of you not familiar with the concept, these are walking tours where you don’t pay anything upfront and then just tip the guide what you think it was worth. So whilst called a free walking tour, in reality it isn’t the case. There are many companies in most major cities I’ve been to and I almost always enjoy them.

This one was no different. We went with the Inkan Milky Way company and the guide took our small group round some of the major sites in central Cusco whilst explaining some of the history. Especially the time just before and just after the arrival of the Spanish (spoilers – it didn’t end well for the Incas!).

Worked out the best ATMs

Before leaving, we spent a lot of time researching the best banks and debit cards for using during our travels. Ones that used good conversions, had minimal fees for paying in various currencies and that would allow us to withdraw a reasonable amount from ATMs before incurring fees. What we didn’t envisage however, would be that almost no where would accept card payments!

Okay that isn’t strictly true, most places accept card payments – it’s just that in many cases you have to pay the card fees, which range from 4 – 8 %. This is not good when you’re making larger payments, such as booking the Salkantay and Inca Trail treks. So quite a lot of time was spent researching which ATMs had their own withdrawal fees and what was their daily limit in US Dollars and Peruvian Soles. It took multiple withdrawals from multiple cards over multiple days but we were eventually able to get enough to pay for the treks without incurring any extra fees. It’s a good job we were taking it easy for the first few days so that we had the time to do this!

Just in case anyone is interested, we found that BCP was the best for withdrawing USDs and Soles, whilst the National Bank was also good for withdrawing Soles, you just couldn’t take out so many each day.

Walked round the near-by Incan ruins

So I’m intending to write about this day in full later on, but we had a really nice day exploring the four major Incan ruins situated in the hills just outside Cusco. (Update – the full article can be accessed by clicking here).

We started by getting the local bus to Tambomachay and spent the day walking back into Cusco, stopping to explore the major ruins of Tambomachay, Puka Pukara, Q’enco and Saqsaywaman (which is actually pronounced as ‘sexy woman’!). It was a really nice day and acted as preparation before the major trekking planned for a couple of days afterwards,

Said ‘No Gracias’ a lot

One of the things about travelling is getting used to how everything works in different countries. And after living in Switzerland for so long, where most people are very reserved, it was quite a shock to be in Cusco and to not be able to walk ten paces without someone trying to sell you something. These items range from sketches of llamas in sunglasses, trinkets and woollen clothing of every description to the dozens of women trying to sell you ‘ma-sack-ays’ (it’s actually spelt massages, which may give you a clue as to what they are). It might even be interesting if everyone wasn’t trying to sell exactly the same merchandise – I know you didn’t paint that because the guy five paces back that way had exactly the same picture... Out of the various culture shocks, this one is taking a while to get used to!

Investigated the Cuisine

Cusco is full of restaurants, from tiny little buildings in side alleys selling local fare to the KFC causing a blight on the main square. We wanted to try more of the local food when we first got there. This involved going to a couple of the smaller restaurants, which had set menus for 2-3 USDs and also braving the chaos and energy that is the San Pedro market. This market has a huge area devoted to food so we first had to choose the category of food we wanted (we went for rice-based dishes) before having to select from the multiple stalls that had their owners shouting at us to choose them. The result was a mountain of tasty food for a vey reasonable price – I’d definitely recommend it!

Not bad for the four days before we headed off trekking…