Cusco – Part 2

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 after returning from the mountains. If you want to review our first few days in Cusco, then please click here.

Relaxed

Doing the Salkantay Trek and Inca Trail back to back was an amazing experience but it left us absolutely shattered. So the first thing on the to-do-list was to do very little. This generally involved sitting on the terrace of our hostel, sorting photos, trying to get this blog up and running, and enjoying the view with a beer or two. I feel that it is very important to rest and recuperate after any major activity so that you can reflect on it and appreciate what you have just done, whilst it also allows you to enjoy the next thing that you do.

Ate non-Peruvian food

I don’t wish to do a disservice to the chefs on the treks, as their food was amazing, but after about two weeks of eating almost exclusively Peruvian-style meals, we were both craving a bit of what we would consider usual meals. I don’t want this to sound like we didn’t enjoy the meals we have had in Peru, quite the opposite – the food here is really good. It is just that after a while, we both missed the meals that we would normally cook and the variety you might get from going to a restaurant when you’re at home.

This ended up with us getting some food from the shops to make our own lunches for a couple of days, whilst also looking for a more diverse range of restaurants. Our favourites were:

1) Tacos Wey Mexican restaurant near Plaza de Armas. Now I am not a fan of spicy food, so I was worried about trying out a Mexican restaurant in a latin-american country but I needn’t have been. The food I had wasn’t spicey, just full of flavour. The service was also very friendly (if a little slow) and this was one of the few places we went that you could pay by card without having to pay extra fees.

2) la Casa De Los Crepes Organicos. This little shop on a side-street near Plaza de Armas was amazing. We ended up going there three evenings in a row. It does a range of savoury and sweet crepes for a reasonable price. You can either go to the take-away window or sit-in in the little shop that is two doors down from the window. Whether for a whole meal or just a desert, you should definitely try this place.

Visited Rainbow Mountain and the Red Valley

The Rainbow Mountain has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in Peru in recent years, and we can certainly see why. This was an amazing day trip. The mountain itself is beautiful but we probably preferred the walk to the viewpoint overlooking the Red Valley. The variety of colours on offer just made the scenery so different to what you would expect with a walk in the mountains. It really makes you look around and just go ‘wow’. The trip was so good that I thought it deserved a page to itself. So if you are interested in reading more about it, then please click here.

Visited Pisac

We had always intended to investigate into visiting the Sacred Valley once we were done with our treks and seeing Machu Picchu. But once we were back, we were a little ‘over-ruined’. By this I mean that we’d seen such amazing places on the Inca Trail that we weren’t sure whether it was worth visiting the Sacred Valley to see more.

In the end, we decided just to visit one of the sites in theSacred Valley – Pisac. The main reasons for this choice were that Pisac is the closest site to Cusco and thus is the easiest to get to, and that we had heard that there was a nice walk to the site from the village.

It turned out to be a really nice place to visit and a thoroughly enjoyable day out. The site completely exceeded our expectations for the day in every way. I’ve written about the trip in more detail on a separate page, so if you’re interested in reading more and seeing the photos, then please click here.

Learnt about the cosmos at the planetarium

When I was in Cusco seven years ago, one of the best things I did was visit the planetarium. You learned about how the Incas viewed the skies and the importance to their society, and I can remember finding it really interesting. Thus, I pushed to take Radka so that she could experience it as well.

Unfortunately, it was no where near as impressive as I remember it being. The whole evening felt rushed, like they were just trying to get us finished so that another group could come in. I can’t remember if the last time I was there, whether the tour was just in English or not, but this time it was in both Spanish and English. And the guide was speaking so quickly that it was actually difficult to tell when she switched from one to the other as there didn’t seem to be any pauses. I found this difficult as a native-English speaker, I can’t imagine what it was like for those where English was a second language. The second part of the evening, where you are outside using the telescopes to look at celestial objects, such as Saturn, was still quite fun but this is obviously dependent on the weather.

So, overall, I’m afraid this second visit to the planetarium was a bit of a disappointment. Given that it is reasonably expensive it is no longer something that I’d recommend you to do if you visit Cusco.

Planned the next stage of our journey

As our time in Cusco drew to a close, it was obviously important to decide what we were going to do next. We had had an amazing time in Cusco and spent longer there then we had originally planned to do so. But Peru is a huge country, with plenty to see and do, so after about two weeks, it was time to move on. As to what we decided to do, I’ll make you wait for the next blog post…