The tooth about Cuzco: A city worth flocking to

Having spoken to many a fellow traveller on our way around South America we came to learn that Cuzco was, by all accounts, a shit hole not to be lingered upon. But if like us you want to visit the revered Inca site of Machu Picchu, Cuzco is, in it's proximity to the Gringo Promised Land a logical base camp and a necessary evil. We stayed in Cuzco twice, both before and after our big trip to the Inca ruins, and were relieved to find that the city wasn't nearly as much of a tourist-robbing stab spot as we had been led to believe.

We stayed at the laughably titled Walk-On-Inn. Situated as it was at the top of a very steep hill at an altitude of 3,400 meters, it would more accurately be named 'The Claw-Your-Way-Up-What-Seems-Like-A-Mountain-All-The-While-Panting-Like-A-Dog-In-A-Hot-Car-Before-Collapsing-At-The-Entrance-In-A-Crumpled-Heap-A-Shell-Of-The-Person-You-Once-Were-Inn'. Despite this minor drawback, we liked the hostel for its beautiful views of the town below and for its friendly staff, who took great pride in meticulously polishing every leaf of the hundreds of indoor plants.

Our lofty hostel served as a good base for exploring the many eccentricities of this much maligned place, one such quirk being the local attitude to animals.

Exhibit A.

Yes, this picture is what it looks like. A trio of Peruvian women knitting and clutching small lambs. Yes, the lambs have woolly hats on. The ladies have gone with this seasons must have head accessory - the lampshade. This photo pretty much encapsulates the sublime/ridiculous balancing act that characterises many a custom the continent over. It wouldn't have surprised me to see these women weaving their garments using yarn straight from the backs of these little sheep. If there was ever an animal less in need of a woolly bonnet... No matter. We wandered into another hostel in search of a travel agent and found a tiny lamb frolicking about with his green parrot friend. Yep, that's something you see every day. Also commonly sighted are people walking around the streets of Cuzco with a llama on a rope. Unblinkingly we accepted this to be the Peruvian equivalent of the classic British tramp with a dog on a string.

Another thing that I will remember about Cuzco is its inhabitants love of gold bridgework. When looking around for trips to Machu Picchu and conversing in fractured Spanish to people in little travel offices, I couldn't help singing my own little song - 'The Man With The Midas Tooth' - in my head, of course. On a trip to San Blas (the area that is to Cuzco what Montmartre is to Paris) we came across two initially intimidating but eventually amiable policemen. The one with the blingy, Jaws from James Bond teeth was called Ebert while his sidekick was introduced as John Rambo. Our delight faded to disappointment as this turned out to be no more than a nickname. Eddy was Rambo's crime fighting name by day. 'Thank god it's their job to protect us and not rob us of our valuables and lives' we breathed as we said our goodbyes to the chatty rozzers. The fact was, the two men were built like brick shithouses and Ebert had a handshake vice-like enough to reduce a man's digits to an unrecognisable pulp. The presence of such hulking policemen certainly seemed to do the trick. We roamed the idyllic cobbled streets of Cuzco largely unmolested, except for the occasional offer of a massage (insert own happy ending gag here).

Much to Matt's chagrin he had forgotten to bring out his knitting needles and flock.

Inca-redible Machu Picchu

All those many months ago, when Matt and I first declared our intention to go travelling around South America, the immediate response from our friends and families was always "are you going to do the Inca Trail? You have to do the Inca Trail. INCA TRAIL! The Trail of all the Inca shit. Blah blah blah!" Over-brimming with excitement and anticipation at our forthcoming adventure as we doubtless were, the concept of the Inca Trail was at once a distant, mythical figment of our imaginations as well as an imperative of our trip. You can't go to Peru without doing the Inca Trail, can you? And now flash forward approx. four months. We have visited Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia... and now we're back in Peru. For the best part of three months we have schlepped around, explored, hopped on buses, taken planes, traipsed around a bit more, slept for a few hours here and there... and carried on walking around, and around, taking in as many of the amazing sights, sounds... (maybe not the smells) as possible. When in Cuzco a traveller is but a llama's spit from the gringo Mecca that is Machu Picchu. It would be an abominable slight to all those Incas and their nifty architectural skills to not go and have a butchers. But after three months of high octane 'dash and flash', speeding around the continent taking pictures of everything, can we really be arsed to embark on the Inca Trail? We're talking a four day trek, people. With camping. And no showers. Or bogs (this is a significant factor for reasons I can't possibly relate with any couthness). After at least eleven seconds consideration, the decision was made. Hell No. Not a chance. Fortunately for us, Machu Picchu has become such a boon for the Peruvian peoples that there are now measures in place to transport lazy, bloated tourists such as we are to the hallowed viewing spots of the promised land. Day trip to the Inca ruins anyone? Yes please! We decided to make things easier for ourselves by visiting a travel agent in the form of an American man called Erick. It soon became apparent that Erick had been in South America too long and had adopted the manana approach to organisation that characterised the Peruvian administration. Ironically, our labour saving objective had backfired, leaving us to traverse the red tape that is Macchu Picchu bureaucracy ourselves. Train tickets purchased from the PeruRail kiosk and passes to the Inca site obtained from the municipal offices at Cuzco, we were eventually good to go. The following day we got a taxi to Ollantaytambo from where we had the pleasure of queueing for roughly seven years with thousands of other travellers, only to be shooed onto a collectivo (mini-bus). Once on the bus, an arse-breakingly rocky ride was enjoyed by all, along a tiny road so dusty that visibility (and breathability) within the vehicle proved scarce. to add to the excitement, the 'road' was barely wide enough for one car. should another bus be trundling in the opposite direction, one had to reverse for about a mile to let the other scrape past. Such japes! And all before we'd even arrived at Machu Picchu! The next leg of the journey involved queueing for three quarters of an hour to board a charmingly antiquated little train that would take us to Aguas Callientes, the home of some hot springs and base camp for our long awaited day trip. At a mere hour and twenty minutes, the train ride seemed a piece of piss compared to some of the other journeys we had undertaken, and after all that standing in line and catching connections, here we were at our riverside hotel, an Inca bricks throw away from the big cheese of the Gringo Trail. We were met by the guide we had hired to show us around all the Inca shit the following day. Her name is Esmerelda (The Bells! The Bells! etc) and she wanted to know what time we wanted to be picked up in the morning. 'Not as early as all those fruitcakes who get there at 3.30 am only to be pissed on by freezing drizzle' was the answer we paraphrased. The more civilised hour of 7.30 am was agreed upon, and Esmerelda gave an audible sigh of relief at being off the hook for sparrows' fart duty.

Even as it was, the 6.30 am wake up wasn't a good way to start the day for me. So befuddled was I at being faced with breakfast at an hour that I consider to be the middle of the night, I erroneously ordered tea instead of the usual coffee. Matty promptly slapped me around the face and rectified my order to the perplexed waiter, thus rescuing me from a day of semi-consciousness. My hero.

True to her word, Esmerelda defied the usual South American guidelines on punctuality and was waiting for us in the foyer at the appointed hour, radiant in a pink shell suit jacket. What a don. We all caught yet another collectivo up the vertiginously winding mountain road to the entrance of Machu Picchu, where you can get an awesome little souvenir stamp in your passport for posterity. Wasting no time, Esmerelda took us to the main viewing point of the site, from which apparently, all the classic shots of Machu Picchu are taken. Our guide, having seen it all before, remained blase while Matt and I were quietly blown away by the beauty of the scene before us.

It doesn't matter how many pictures of the Inca ruins you see in guidebooks etc, being there and seeing it for yourself is the only way to completely appreciate its awe-inspiring splendour. Nothing can prepare you for the astonishing beauty of the sun reflecting off the square stoned buildings, the incredibly steep and vertiginous terraces and the unusually verdant grass which, unlike most of the grass in South America, looks more like an English country garden than a baked brown drought. Except that most English lawns don't have llamas for lawnmowers.

As we wandered around, our guide, Esmerelda conscientiously explained things to us that we might not have picked up on had we gone it alone. The sun temple with a window so aligned as to let in the light to it's centre specifically on the Summer and Winter equinox. How did they do that? The condor statue (as previously emulated by Zoe and Co. - see Arrequipa post), sculpted from stone to form two giant wings. The straight precision of the masonry, impossible in it's symmetry. What, did these Incas have rulers, or what?

Esmerelda took us to the Botanical Garden next, where we marvelled at more varieties of orchid than I even knew existed, bamboo and a wealth of other exotic looking flowers. Delightfully enough, we were able to get really close to the llamas that amble around the grounds, though thankfully not spitting distance! This is evidenced by the nine thousand photos of the animals we will have shown you if you were unlucky enough to receive the pre-edit slide show - eg Lucy and Neil. After a couple of hours of tour guiding, our lovely Esmerelda left us to explore by ourselves, so we took the opportunity to walk up towards the famous Sun Gate. This is the point at which people doing the Inca Trail proper enter the Machu Picchu site after four days of hard slog. Having witnessed a few such unfortunates - exhausted, stinky and so over walking, we were quite glad that we'd chosen the lazy-arse option. Even our short ramble up the path was a bit much in the scorching heat, but well worth it for the interesting and beautiful foliage you see along the way, not to mention the staggering views of the ruins from above.

We made it back down the hill in time for one last perambulation around the stone ruins and a fond farewell to our llama friends before the heavens began to open. Just as we were catching the collectivo back to Aguas Callientes the first rain drops started to fall. This also coincided with the arrival of a whole coach load of Japanese tourists, cameras at the ready. Bad luck, we chortled as we took shelter on the bus, our Machu Picchu adventure finally ticked off the 'To Do' list of our lifetimes.