27.0 Three A's

We had made the decision to move so it was bye-bye Cusco. Our objective was the coast but it didn't really matter. There weren't many roads out of Cusco that Paul thought were feasible for us. In fact there was only one major road if you ignore the way we came in - but let's not get excited by the terminology 'main road'. After quite a bit of research Paul was as reassured as he could be that there were no dirt or gravel sections on the road to the coast. There would always be some small sections due to roadworks etc and we would just have to deal with those.

Google  Maps gives it as just over 900km to the coast somewhere near Pisco. It is nowhere near that if you measure it in a straight line. It is worth having a  look at Cusco to Abancay, the first of the three A's, on Google Maps but really zoom in to have a look. Average speed on this 'main road' is also about 30mph.One thing to note is that there is absolutely no problem with petrol in Peru. There is a plethora of brands and petrol stations and you would really have to try hard to run out of petrol here. In fact the majority of HGVs on the roads are petrol tankers.

Generally the road was in pretty good condition; there was just a lot of mountains and turns and it was pretty disorientating. Unfortunately Francoise had a problem with the memory card in the camera, so no photos.

Next stop after Abancay was Andahuaylas, the second of the three A's. A short stop as otherwise it would have been a very long one the following day. More mountains and more high altitude and not much to say about the town. One thing we did notice but didn't quite work out at the time was the signposts indicating a Geological Fault. Very educational and informative we thought. We mentally filed that with the Volcano status signs we had seen in Chile, or the Tsunami escape routes again in Chile or the Safe Zone signs for seismic activity that a lot of our accommodation has (though that glass roof above our heads isn't laminated or even toughened, can see the cracks...). All signs we don't see that regularly in London.

The third of our three A's was Ayacucho, presumably Cotswold Outdoors was on the same trip as Decathlon when it came to naming their own brands. We stayed in a historic colonial building with a super courtyard. Ayacucho was a mini Cusco in architectural style with lots of Spanish architecture like our courtyard, and loads and loads of Spanish churches. This was also the place we think that the South Americans kicked the Spanish out in the 19th Century. We also now realised that Françoise had lost the photos from the previous days.

In order to get to the coast we had one big day left. We had exhausted the A's and were aiming for Paracas. To get to the coast we were crossing the Andes again and we climbed to about 4,700m with our Coca leaves. The roads were also in a pretty poor state. We worked out that the Geotechnical Fault sign meant that there was going to be a 100-200m stretch of road that they were just not going to bother repairing. We also worked out that the Geotechnical instability sign meant that it was going to be longer than 200m. There were plenty of rockfalls on the way but one side of the road had always been cleared. The potholes were both intense and serious especially at altitude. Despite it being bleak there were people there trying to sell things to passers-by - and as passers-by we were not that numerous. There were also people, including children, filling in some of the potholes with soil and gravel. We didn't understand this at the time, but we now believe they were looking for a tip. It was very sad.

Paracas was about relaxing at the coast - albeit in a swimming pool, and also about taking a boat trip to see Humboldt penguins who seemed out of place so  close to the Equator. We also saw the giant prehistoric Candelabra sculpture that is still a mystery (along with the Nazca lines which we gave a miss to), sealions and some seabirds on some white topped islands just offshore Paracas. The white is guano. It is scraped and sold off every five years or so. Apparently there are a number of islands like this off the Peruvian Coast and they all have National Park Reserve status which means that you can't go ashore on them. But the guano harvesters can. What joy.

26.2 Cusco 3 - Saqsaywaman, Pisac and more colourful mountains

As we had made the decision to lay low in Cusco for a while, we also went visiting things. Overlooking the town is a large white Christ on the cross sculpture - so we walked up to it as a viewpoint, 592 steps... Next to it are the archaeological remains of Saqsaywaman which, pronunciation wise, you can get away with as Sexy Woman. It was a massive Inca fortress, again on the top of a hill; there were some truly massive stones here. Some of them had smaller, notches at the bottom where we think levers had been placed to help position them. Just as in Machu Picchu the grassy areas were very trim indeed; thanks to the llamas, or were they alpacas? It was a day where we got more than our required number of steps in...

A lot of Inca archaeology is about walls. Not all Inca walls are finely cut and dry jointed. But the more important the building was, the finer the joint and the smoother the face of the stone. So some Inca walls can look like dry stone walling as we know it and some as mud mortared wall as well as the classic Inca carved blocks.

Another visit, again all by ourselves, was to the Inca archaeological remains at Pisac. It was a 45 minute drive in a 'colectivo' minivan which cost just over £1.00 each. We had no idea of any timetable, so we just turned up and sat in the minivan. A young lady with Asian ethnicity sat next to us and,after we got going, we started chatting. She was Australian. From Sydney. She was intrigued by our bike trip as she had had a boyfriend in Sydney who had had a bike and whose parents also had bikes. She hiked a lot especially in the Royal Park and Blue Mountains around Sydney and hung out with a lot of climbers and was a member of a number of 'outdoor activity' social groups. And yes, she had had a boyfriend called Xavier Marc Nuttall... Yet another example of 'it's a small world'... If we had chosen a different day to visit or we had taken a different colectivo or she hadn't sat next to us...

We did get a bit lost in Pisac. The signposting wasn't as good as elsewhere and the overall site was very spread out with lots of quite big terraces. It took us 4.5 hours to find the exit. We then had to get back to the town, and then to Cusco and finally to the hotel. We were exhausted.  Really got our steps in that day too.

We also took a day out to go and visit the local mountain of seven colours, Vinikunka. We say' 'local' as there seem to be a number of similar features across Northern Chile and Argentina, with the record being In Argentina where they boasted fourteen colours. Most of these places require a significant off-road stretch to access them, which is why we haven't bothered previously, except to view what we could from the road. This one, near Cusco, was no exception. But we had the time, so we booked a tour. As is often the case with these things the weather is best early morning. So our pick-up in the ubiquitous white minivan was at 0400. We have asked ourselves about the lifespan of these vans. The tyres, the suspension etc. Are there special versions just for South American tour companies? How come they can overtake 4x4 cars? On dirt/gravel/stone? Going uphill? On hairpin bends? In fact everything that gets Paul in a tizz, without even talking about the vertiginous drops.

Anyway the minivan dropped us off at the carpark and we are not sure as to the exact elevation. From there you could walk to the top or take a horse that was led by a local or be a passenger on the back of a motorcycle. The horse and motorcycles options didn't take you right to the top, there was still a bit of walking to climb the last 150m or so. Health and Safety requirements were in full force if you chose the motorcycle option, which is only natural when you are going up tracks on a mountain. Helmets were obligatory for the rider. Some of the riders even fastened their helmets. Gloves were not in evidence at all, but some of the riders had wellies as it was a tad muddy in places depending on recent rainfall. The fee paying pillions got nothing - you rode in what you were wearing!

We walked. To the top. Elevation 5,036m chewing on our coca leaves; we felt very proud of ourselves. 

We have now left Cusco and our lovely hosts at No-name Hotel on Qheswa Street. We were the first guests and they now have bookings for more.  It was a home from home for us and the ten days we spent in Cusco  - including the night we played away at Machu Picchu - represents the longest we have ever stayed in a single place on any of our travels.

26.1 Cusco 2 - Machu Picchu

The main reason for coming to Cusco was not to admire the architecture in the old centre, but to use it as a base for visiting Machu Picchu. This is what most people do. Machu Picchu is ticketed with only 4,000 people a day allowed to visit. Travelling made things difficult for us as it was hard to pin down exactly a date for any visit. So we spent a lot of our budget on getting someone to organise things for us. It might sound a bit like a cheat, but it worked very well for us. As they are also currently refurbishing a small no name hotel in the historic centre they also sourced our accommodation where we are the only guests.

Machu Picchu is difficult to access. You either walk in to it via the Inca Trail,  which we think has to be organised and with a guide, or you access it from Aguas Calientes, a small town nearby. Aguas Calientes is only accessible by rail. So we took a minivan from Cusco for a couple of hours and then changed on to the Inca Rail train at Ollantaytambo. It was a very joyful experience. There is then a very efficient bus service, you can walk if you want, that takes you from Aguas Calientes up the hill to Machu Picchu. All these transport interchanges, but they all worked very well and efficiently.

We made a two day trip out of it. A relaxed day to get there and then the visit the following day. Despite it raining consistently in Aguas Calientes, it didn't rain at all when we were higher up on our visit. One of the strange things we found out was that Machu Picchu is the name of the mountain, not the 'town' and it's not the mountain that you see in the photos, that's Waynapicchu sometimes spelt as Huayna Picchu. The architectural remains of Machu Picchu were found just over 100 years ago after being abandoned for about 400 years. It is thought that it was a religious and educational facility or sanctuary for the Inca, located on top of a mountain for security reasons as a lot of these places were. It commands the valleys around it. A series of runners connected it to Cusco, taking about 11 days to get from one to the other.

Various theories exist as to why it was abandoned and the two most prevalent are that the Incas did not want the Spaniards to find it - and destroy it - and that fundamentally it had grown too big to be self-sustaining. The local food supply was capable of sustaining a population of about 150 people, but it had grown to 500. The culture was a manual culture; there was no talk of wheels and wheels wouldn't have been able to deal with the steps over the mountains and apparently llamas have weak backs and can only carry 15-20kgs. But all this is conjecture anyway.  We had a superb visit with a great, very intense and spiritual guide. It is probably something we will never visit again in our lives and we are very glad to have experienced it, even if it has (severely) limited our resources for future visits to other things!