Ok, so in the last entry I wrote how I like Arequipa for it´s subtlety and lack of pushy tourism like there was a little bit in Puno for Lake Titicaca.
Well Cusco is a completely different kettle of fish. It is a really pretty town, but immediately I got the feeling that it was a town that sees white people solely as a source of income. Therefore you are quietly relaxing in the square and you will have 5 people coming up to you with their mobile market stall trying to hawk their goods on to you. The peruvian (and Bolivian) market items are great, but the problem I have with all the markets and stalls is that everyone sells the EXACT same thing. I have bought a few things either for myself or for gifts, but once you have got the stuff you want, it gets a bit tiring the constant verbal stream of ¨alpaca sweatshirt, made with real alpaca wool¨
I do like Cusco but my back meant I couldn´t do any walks, and it is horrendously expensive! It didn´t help that someone from the hostel stole 400 soles (equivalent to $200NZD) while I was sleeping. It´s only money though right. I´ve met people who have had their cameras stolen and that is much worse.
So yesterday me and another 2 girls that I met in Arequipa, Hillary and Jess went to Machu Picchu. We stayed overnight in a town called Aguas Calientes (meaning hot water and named that way for the hot springs which was very good for my back although I think the town should be renamed Aguas medium temperature as the pools did not fully live up to their name). Apart from the pools though (which I did enjoy) and the proximity to Machu Picchu, the town is horrible. Everything is double or triple the price of anywhere else, the food is awful and you get harrased by people standing outside every single restaurant waving at you trying to get you to go into their restaurant.
Anyway, enough about this crappy little town. On to the main event. So this morning, we woke up at about 4.30am and by 5.30am I was in line for the bus, and at 6.30am about to enter. I wanted to get there early because I wanted to have more of a sense of isolation when I was up there. There were still people but it was definitely a great time to go. Unfortunately for that time of the morning, it was pouring with rain, and really foggy to begin with, so a drowned rat vaguely resembling me was walking around the site to begin with. So, was it all worth it? Well yeah, eventually. When I arrived it was cloudy so the impact of the scale of the place was lost on me. I walked around the site, being very impressed by the skill of the architecture, but at the same time annoyed at the rain. After a while though things started looking up. The cloud cover started lifting and I got a great view of the place. Admiring it´s impressiveness, I slowly wandered around going back higher. The view of the entire site from there blew me away. It was there that I stayed looking at this thing for at least half an hour just in awe of its beauty. I finally got why it is one of the seven wonders of the world. This place is awe inspiring. It would have taken them so long to cart up the stones up an incredibly long and high altitiude path, and then to have them fit so perfectly together is a mark of true brilliance.
So yeah, it made up for the horrible tourist town that is at the foot of it. Machu Picchu is very very cool.
