A vegetable seller in the market at Pisaq, which we were lucky enough to stumble into after our climb. One of the amazing things about Peru is how much fresh produce is available - I thought we had it good in Australia, but every meal here has included beautifully fresh food (although some of it is a bit interesting, such as pieces of roast cuy - guinea pig - including the head, which I almost put on my plate at a buffet before realising what it was. I did however eat some less identifiable pieces of the little critter, which was delicious).

On another interesting occasion, I found myself eating clay (yes, literally) with potatoes, which is apparently a great natural remedy for diarrhoea. Try anything once, I guess.

Triple Trouble

The climb up to the ruins above Pisaq. I called it a hill in the earlier post, but my legs would have firmly disputed the terminology if you asked them once we got to the top after an hour and a half. Unfortunately having missed out on the Inca Trail due to heavy bookings, we decided to try doing the best impression of it that we could. This was step one, and one photo doesn´t really do the trail and the ruins justice. So you get three! Aren´t you lucky - remember you can click on the photos to enlarge.

Once we got up there, the view over the ruins reminded me so much of the ubiquitous Macchu Picchu postcards, that it immediately was dubbed ¨Mini Macchu Picchu¨. Cue terrible jokes: ¨the margarine of Macchu Picchu¨, ¨the Diet Coke of Macchu Picchu¨etc. All besmirching aside, it was a beautiful, serene place, with more amazing stonework and our first taste of the brilliant water channels designed by the Incas to channel natural springs through their constructions and agricultural terraces.

I´ve had a request for some more landscape shots. Well, brace yourselves, because having just spent two and a bit days in some of the most ridiculous landscapes I´ve seen, I have ammunition. All the standard words like "breathtaking", "awe-inspiring" and, my personal favourite, "flabbergasting" begin to lose meaning when your jaw drops around every bend in the road and turn in the trail. So rather than try to blather on describing it, I´ll let the photos do the talking.

As a warm-up, this one is about three quarters of the way up the hill above a town called Pisaq, the first stop we made in the Valle Sagrado (Sacred Valle), a narrow valley dotted with Incan ruins through which the Vilcanota river (a.k.a. Willcamayu, or River of Tears in the poetic Quechuan language of the Incas), eventually making it to the foot of the famous Macchu Picchu. You can see the town and a part of the trail we took from it at the bottom left of the shot; more about that in a moment.

This is a general area shot of the Sacsayhuaman (say "sexy woman" and you´ve got the pronunciation about right) fortress ruins above Cusco, the magnifient walls giving a good example of the capabilities of the Incans as stone workers, and providing a spot with excellent acoustics for people to play the quintessential Peruvian pipe music. If you look closely on the hill on the left, you can see a Big Jesus, the first one I´ve seen, and I´m guessing not the last. Around her they call the J man "Our Lord of Earthquakes" I think because he was nice enough to leave a few things standing the last time he shook things up.

Streets ahead of their time

I realise that the photos I´ve posted probably don´t do justice to the incredible city of Cusco. The above is a reasonably typical street scene, on one of Cusco´s wider streets (I´m serious). I´ve become so accustomed to the amazing highland backdrop, which can be seen in literally every direction, that I have to remind myself to appreciate it and, of course, to post some examples.

Streets such as these are the norm here, with road rules apparently few and, in any case, rarely observed. With no real public transport system, the taxis have the run of the place (about AUD$0.75 to anywhere in the city), and you quickly learn how to keep out of their way at the same time as stepping on and off the precariously narrow sidewalks to accomodate fellow pedestrians. Much of the city is laid out according to the original plan of the Incas who founded it. Walking by the mostly Spanish architecture, you will all of a sudden be brushing your shoulder along massive dry-stone (sans mortar of any kind) walls placed there by the incredible Incan stone workers. It says something that earthquakes in the 1650s and 1950s decimated the city... except for the Incan foundations many colonial buildings had been built upon.

Cusco Commerce

A hawker who regularly sells his wares outside the Spanish school. He is much more passive than most, who will come up to you multiple times to hassle you into buying their various, ahem, high-quality goods (mostly alpaca-related). Bizarrely enough, one woman, who to get rid of I had agreed to buy something from, ran off, as I was getting out my money, to try to annoy some passing tourists into buying the exact thing I had just agreed to pay for!

We´re not in Kansas anymore...

Mauritio Pacheto, Toto to his insanely doting family, is quite the attention grabber. In a family of four adults (with whom we stayed while taking Spanish lessons in Cusco), he is the only child, and it shows. Hard not to be charmed by him, and he is certainly photogenic. The Pacheco family in general are amazing, their generousity and warm-heartedness making the stay an even more unforgettable experience.

I´d like to thank...

After having lost a orange peel slinging match with her brother, this future oscar winner called a stop to proceedings with the time-honoured sit-down-and-cry-about-it maneuvre, just outside the Spanish school.

Las Profesoras

My two ridiculously gorgeous and bubbly Spanish teachers, Mabel and Carla, on Plaza San Blas, near the San Blas Spanish School. The plaza is generally a hang out for an eclectic mix of budding local musicians, students of the language school and the ever-present Cuscovite hawkers and shoe-polishers.

Thin Air

This gentleman sat to take a short break just below where we had stopped to take a long one due to our lack of altitude conditioning. The brilliant highland light makes photography pretty interesting, throwing extremely clear shadows, and making it challenging to get contrast right. Pretty sure I´m yet to figure it out...

Agua Interesente

A shot from the edge of the fountain in Cusco´s Plaza de Armas. If I had it again, I´d frame it differently, but had to post it simply because of the movement in the water. The Plaza is a very large open space in a city of very few, although apparently when Cusco, the capital of the Incan empire, was conquered by Peru, it was much larger, and of course covered in gold. What I wouldn´t give for a time machine.

This one definitely needs to be zoomed in on to look half decent, so click away. One thing I´d like to note is that this was taken just after my first decent meal in Cusco, after a 3 day bus odyssey (no stopovers to sleep in a bed, have a proper meal or even shower... Don´t ask me what I was thinking, particularly after having just flown into South America from Australia). At any rate, this meal was, interestingly enough, Pizza d´Alpaca. You probably don´t need to know Spanish to work out what that is, and washed down with half a litre of the local brew, it was exactly what the doctor ordered!

Peruvian Fast Food

A typical roadside stall in Peru. The most interesting thing I found about taking buses in South America is the way they stop constantly to let hawkers on to sell food to the passengers - including, at this stop, a woman who sold packages of delicious roast lamb that she cut from the bone as the bus continued to the next stop.

Northern Chile - en Bus

This was the second photo I took from the bus during a pretty testing three-day voyage from Santiago de Chile to, eventually, Cusco in Peru. The leg from Santiago to Arica, on the border of Chile and Peru, was approximately thirty hours worth of the most barren land I´ve ever seen. Being Australian, that probably means I haven´t been doing the job properly in my own country. That being said, this region of Chile, between the Andes and the Pacific, does contain the driest desert on Earth. And some tyres.