Inca Ruins

Today I went exploring Inca ruins outside Cusco on my own and it was awesome! I hiked up to a large Inca fortress above the city with a couple I met yesterday, and we wandered around giving ourselves a nice self tour, trying to guess what all the different parts of the fortress were for. The Incans dragged these giant rocks to the fortress, then shaped them all to fit together perfectly like a puzzle. Apparently it took over 70 years to build. The word impressive doesn´t really begin to describe it. Then I wandered through the countryside by myself, to visit some other Incan ruins in the area. I was quite proud of myself, my Spanish has improved enough to ask directions from locals about where the ruins where. It was really nice to be able to just sit and enjoy the place, instead of being rushed around on a tour. Tomorrow I am off for 4 days to hike the Inca Trail, which Im really excited about! There are several different ruin sites that you visit on the way, I think it will be the most amazing thing I have seen by far.

Thoughts on being a tourist …

As I work my way through Peru I am noticing the many different kinds of tourists.  There are the backpackers like myself that have come here to go trekking.  There are the drunken 20 year old Brits who have just come here to party and have no respect for the local people.  Then there are the people who get on their tour bus, view everything through the windows while getting off at specified stops for an hour here and there, but dont really experience the culture.  Unfortunately today I was one of the later, and I have mixed feelings about it.  On the one hand the tourist industry exists becuase it makes it easy for people like me to see amazing places like the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and it hopefully brings some money into places with a lot of poverty.  But on the other hand I found stopping in each of the towns for an hour, being constantly inundated by people trying to sell me things, and led around by our guide a bit disconcerting.  It is nice to learn about the history of the ruins we saw, and we did have an excellent guide.  But I also feel like you dont actually get to experience a place if you only spend an hour there.  Especially the Inca ruins, which despite the tourist hords still have a bit of am mystical feel to them.  And I wonder what the local people think of everybody getting off their giant buses, taking a few dozen photos and then climbing back on to leave.  It doesnt seem to me that you have really visited a place doing it that way.

That said the Inca ruins around Cusco are very impressive.  There are lots of old ruins, and the mixture of old Inca structures, and the ones the Spaniards built on top is very interesting.  In a lot of places they dismantled the Inca structures and temples to build new catholic churches.  We visited two ruins today – Ollantaytambo and Chinchero.  Tomorrow I think Ill just go and wander around the ruins close to Cusco by myself so I can spend more time there.

Cusco

This morning I woke up at four thirty am to catch a taxi to the airport. I seem to either get up before 5am or after 10am, and nothing in between. Its really messing up my sleep schedule. Then off to the airport for my flight to Cusco. Im also pretty sure the taxi driver ripped me off, but at 5am you arent really paying attention to how much you should be paying for a cab. And arguing when you dont speak Spanish is not something I am very good at yet. The hostel I am staying at in Cusco is HUGE, there are over 100 beds, but the place is way up on a hill with a gorgeous view of the city.  Unfortunately it also seems to be full of British partiers who have created a home away from home for themselves where they can actually avoid having to interact with the culture of the places they are visiting.  It makes for a fun time, but is kind of disturbing as well. Although sometimes you meet really neat people like a girl I talked to this evening who spent 4 months volunteering teaching young children in Columbia.  Or this odd mother and son duo who were pretty funny because the son was obviously very embarassed by his 40 year old mother chatting up all the 20 year old partiers in the bar.

I spent the day trying to get ahold of my tour company for the Inca trail, with no luck yet which is a bit disconcerting.  I also booked a tour tomorrow of ruins close to Cusco in a place called the Sacred Valley.  One really awesome thing about South America is that it is pretty cheap.  I could have taken the bus myself to the ruins, or pay $10 for a tour bus and a guide for each of them.  Having a guide for Inca ruins is always nice too because you actually learn a lot more about them.