In the morning I got up (reasonably) early, and found a cab willing to try find the address I had. We went a bit out of the way and ended up calling the hotel owner twice to get directions. In the end I made it, and I got to see my mum again after over a year. We spent the morning catching up a bit (and I receiving chocolate and a plethora of other things I'd requested), then went for a walk to see what was happening in town.
Saw this guy on the walk. Turns out it's the flag of Cusco, but it was pretty amusing to see Gay Pride everywhere.
Then there was some actual Gay Pride! "Equal rights are an obligation of the government" "Homosexuality isn't a disease, homophobia is!" "Love should be legal" "Freedom to decide legally who to love!" "Some people are gay. Get over it!" And so on.
There was a big literal song and dance in front of the cathedral.
I only got a photo of this guy though.
It wasn't often sunny in Cusco :(
A monastery, built on top of an Inca burial site.
We went in to check it out because we saw a sign advertising some Dali exhibition. Turns out it was a bunch of his drawings from a set he did for Dante's Divine Comedy.
Two brothers eating each other.
One of the uni buildings. During classes all of those rooms were full. "You can be far from my eyes, but not from my thoughts." Most of the tags I saw in Peru were "I love you X." Write something interesting if you have to do it at all.
Old map of Cusco.
Mostly it turned out there's a lot of markets in central Cusco. That afternoon and much of the next day was spent buying souvenirs for mum. There were rather a lot of people she wanted stuff for. No matter, it was fun and I later realised I probably wouldn't've looked in any of them if she wasn't there.
After 2 nights in Cusco, we had a train booked to take us to Aguas Calientes (hot waters), the town by Machu Picchu (turns out it's actually called Machupicchu, but everyone calls it Aguas Calientes. First we got a bus to another town called Ollataytambo, the closest you can get to Aguas Calientes by bus, before needing the train. We had time to kill so breakfasted and wandered a little bit.
The whole valley between Cusco and Machu Picchu is full of ruins. We just saw the outside of these ones.
We didn't go in this market either.
Then it was time for the train, which was about an hour and a half along next to this river with huge mountains on either side. Quite spectacular, and I can only imagine the treks are incredible. Maybe next time.
When we arrived in Aguas Calientes we sussed out our tickets for the ruins in the morning and the bus ride up, and wandered round a bit.
Didn't buy too much here.
The ruins are away to the right somewhere, I believe.
These are the photos mothers probably don't want to hear about being taken, let alone watch (it wasn't too terrible). That river was raging.
We got up rather early to try and beat the morning rush up. We were going to walk up to the ruins and get the bus back down, but changed our mind to the opposite. This ended well. Though it was crazy foggy for much of the morning, we spent the first hour and a bit visiting the Sun Gate, which sounded cool, and ended up being much farther away than anticipated.
I think the city's in this photo.
The fog definitely added to the mystique of the place.
The cloud cleared in bits and pieces.
And the whole area was mind-boggling. Aguas Calientes, centre, somewhere.
Not sure if original or not...
Finally made it to the Sun Gate. Which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Probably better after walking through the jungle for 4 days.
The end of the trails.
We walked back closer to the city, and had a wee rest watching the llamas (alpacas? God knows). I wish I had more photos of them, but turns out I left my camera's spare battery in the hostel.
Then we decided to make good on our ticket to go up "Machu Picchu Mountain," though we didn't really have any idea what that was. Turns out it was about 2 hours of walking up stairs, though it's supposedly easier than Waynu Picchu. The views were also pretty amazing:
Not quite so grand, but he gave me a jump.
Didn't work out what this place was. Some random other little town.
When I arrived at the top of the mountain it was too foggy to see anything that wasn't on the peak with you. By the time mum arrived a few minutes later, the clouds'd gone and I was totally blown away by the whole thing. That one photo I'd seen all the time before doesn't show anything about the landscape this thing is in. Neither do mine, really, but them mountains around the place be fuckin big.
Who builds a city in this place?
Mum having a rest on the way down.
When we got to the bottom we sat and had a rest for a bit on one of the terraces around the city. A friend had said when he got there the place was basically empty by the time 2pm came around, so we thought we'd wait, then got restless and went to walk around the city.
"Ceremonial Rock"
Somehow people farmed those terraces.
A temple of some sort. There were too many tour groups around to effectively eavesdrop too much.
This thing was some kind of astronomical clock or calendar.
"Sacred Rock"
Housing area.
"The Room of 3 Doors," or some such.
When it started raining we were glad we hadn't stuck around for the afternoon. We finished our quick circle of the city, and decided we'd get on with getting down the 1200 steps we didn't come up.
Seen about halfway up. Damn right.
We found this guy at the bottom of the track. No idea how long it took for us to get to him, but I suspect a bit longer than advised.
We went out to (mum shouted me) a pretty swanky restaurant and had delicious Italian food with decent Peruvian microbrew, the best bit of which was probably the alpaca entree. Who'd've thought they'd be so tasty? Could've been the sauce though.
In the morning we got the train back to Ollantaytambo and did some stuff between there and Cusco, but I'll make that another thing.
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