Day 2 - To Cusco, city of the Inca's - On the Road to Machu Picchu

On the Road to Machu Picchu - Day 2
On the way to Cusco. Again we were on TACA. We scurried to the airport for our 6:10 am (woke at 3am to get there). We learned, all the other airlines had flights leaving on time, but TACA’s planes were not going to be flying until 10am…or maybe later. The joys ;o) of travel.

We met our two traveling buddies Susan & Dana as we waited at the airport. But more about them later….as we do our trip. Our 6:10am flight left at 11:30am for Cusco. Airports are such great places….I can’t imagine why more people don’t elect to just sit in one of this comfortable waiting room chairs instead of checking into a hotel room for the night. Actually it wasn’t all that bad….typical airport….typical wait.

From the air, one could see right away, Cusco is more prosperous than Lima. Of course it is much smaller. I think there are 8 million people in Lima, and Cusco around 300,000. It sits in Valley…assuming that one can call something at 11,400 feet (3,416 meters) a valley. The mountains to the south look quite high, on the northern side they are much lower….but higher than anything back home in Chicago. Toto….we sure ain’t in Kansas anymore.

It was originally called Quosqo (Costco…but I don’t think any relation to the current holder of that name). Quosqo means, “naval of the world.” And the inhabitants believed it was the source of life. The city was founded by Manco Capac and his consort Mama Ocllo….sent by the Sun god Inti to find where the golden staff would sink into the ground. Low and behold…they discovered this beautiful valley. There is some ‘lite’ reading on Cusco…not the above story at
http://www.andeantravelweb.com/peru/destinations/cusco/index.html



We toured the Temple of the Sun. At one time its walls were covered with 700 sheets of gold, and when the sun would shine through the windows it would be too bright to see. This is just the outside, the round wall is rare. Guess you have to use your imagination.



Have you ever wondered how the Inca’s fit all of those stones together so tightly without morter? Well nobody knows! But here is what we did learn. The stones are actually chiseled on the inside. No pic’s sorry. But you might have a male and female part, or a channel in two blocks side by side that they would fasten together by pouring molten brass in the tow hollowed out channels to fasten the blocks together. The end result was a wall that looks like this:

The fascinating thing about these wall they were assembled without motor, and you cannot even fit a credit card in between the stones. Where the walls have been reconstructed, even in modern times, they cannot do it with the same degree of precision. They were built with a 17˚ lean toward the center of the room, which gave them a stability to resist destruction during earthquakes.



We also toured the Cusco Cathedral, which is like three churches in one. Much of the artworks expressed the Spanish exploitation of the Inca Indians. Its sort of amazing how the winning side feels its culture is so superior, and easily discount the cultural values and heritage of the losing culture (side.