There are a couple of places/sights that I still wanted to see before leaving Cusco for the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, and that excursion began this afternoon. So I had the morning. First stop, the San Pedro market, which is the center of lots of trading for residents, local businesses and of course, tourists. There are two million visitors to Cusco each year, so tourism makes up a big chunk of the local economy, and the San Pedro market is where many tourist dollars go.
Like many markets around the world, it is a big space with aisles and aisles of different goods which were being unloaded and displayed today. Lots of woven and knit goods — hats, shawls, table runners, gloves, blankets, and many stalls of food — beans and lentils and corn and quinoa and potatoes and cheese, along with just killed chickens and pigs. Then there were aisles of vendors making fresh juices, or bowls of hot soup, and some selling chocolate. It was crowded and noisy and frankly not much different from many others I’ve visited. So it was a fairly short walk through, and then I headed over to the Temple of the Sun, which had been closed when I tried to tour the other day.
Called Qorikancha in Quechuan, it was the most important religious center of the Incan empire. When the conquistadors came, they built the Church of Saint Dominic on this site in the 16th century. The existing church is baroque and typical of the period when the Spanish were bringing Catholicism to the Incans. The Priory is now a museum with many explanations of the excavations and restorations of part of the buildings and the the garden to the Incan time, with some paintings and other artifacts which help bring some of the Incan history to the museum. One example is the painting called “Incan Astronomy” which represent the Milky Way as it was viewed in the Incan tradition with dark silhouettes of mythical animals. I enjoyed the museum, but continue to be so bothered by all the destruction and covering up that occurred in the colonization.
Back to the hotel to meet the group! There are 13 of us, and it seems a good mix of people from around different parts of the U.S. Our guide is Fernando, and I had been told that he’s wonderful, and our first outing proved that to be the case. We visited Pikillacta, a large Wari village (pre-Incan, and occupied between 550-1100). It was quite big at about 13 sq miles, and demonstrated advanced engineering skills, as they had constructed an aqueduct to bring water to this arid micro-climate. We also encountered more of the Incan Camino/Trail — as I mentioned yesterday there were 4 routes which led from Cusco. I was off on the distances; the total Quapac Nan is more like 20,000 miles reaching all the way to Bolivia, Chile, Columbia and Argentina, and has been named a UNESCO site.
Then it was of to Tipon, an Incan ruin that demonstrates the skill at terracing and designing water channels to irrigate various fields of crops. It was an experimental agricultural center, and has been beautifully preserved. Parts of the Inca Trail were visible from the 11,830ft of elevation, and some of it was being restored as we visited the site.
Back to hotel for dinner and and early night. We are leaving Cusco in the morning and beginning our tour of various areas in Sacred Valley enroute to Machu Picchu. Exciting days ahead.
Oh, those pig butts made me laugh! Loved the photo of you and the baby lamb…so sweet! My favorite photos were of Tipon. I love the ancient stones and the beautiful terraces the Incas created…no easy feat! The engineering and labor that went into their making amazes me and that they still exist today. Wonderful!
llama picture – that’s a keeper!
I adore the llama photo! Tipon was cool.