I’m back stateside but I seem to have brought a visitor in the way of bacteria with me. I was actually meaning to get this post up much earlier in the week but as I was coming back from dinner in Puno on Friday, I started to feel a bit of a chill. That chill turned into a raging bacterial infection that I carried with me to Arequipa the next morning on the plane. Luckily my travel company knew I was feeling bad and arranged to have a doctor visit me at my hotel. By the afternoon, I was visiting with a doctor who was soon drawing blood and taking samples. By late in the afternoon, I was geting to know my new best friend, Ciprofloxin. Luckily my fever broke during the night and I felt well enough to take my city tour before coming back to the hotel and crashing for the rest of the day.
From Arequipa, I returned to Lima for the day and then caught the red-eye back home. Unfortunately my buggy hitchhikers have been tough to evict and I’m still feeling a under the weather. Fear not though, I am sure that another round of Cipro will have me back in the swing of things before long.
As promised in the last post, here’s a few photos from Cusco.
My tour of Cusco began with the archeological ruins located above the city. The image above is from Tambomachay and shows of the Inca fountains. Of course we think of fountains as cherubs spitting water into the air but an Inca fountain is more like a flowing spring. This double fountain is one of the focal points of this area.
After exploring the ruins, we went back down to the city and spent some time wandering around the central market. The market used to be a once-a-week affair on Sundays outside the cathedral but some time ago a more permanent home was built and now the market is open every day. I always say that if you really want to see a country’s culture, check out the market where the locals shop.
We continued on to some of the more important sites around the city like the Temple of the Sun, Coricancha. This was actually the focal point of the city in the time of the Inca and helped the people know things like when it was Winter Solstace, which is pretty important in an agrarian society. When the Spanish came to Cusco to conquer the city, the striped the temple of all its gold and built a church. After several earthquakes, the Spanish found that the Inca walls were the only things left standing so they built their church on top of the walls of the Inca temple. Now it is a mix of both cultures.
We ended up back in the Plaza de Armas to tour the Cusco cathedral and enjoy the last bits of warm sunshine of the day. Most of the architecture is Spanish Colonial but everywhere you can see the original Inca walls that are super-stable and provide the much needed stability to the traditional building techniques employed by the Spanish.
That’s all for now. Have a great weekend.
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