Medellin Side Trip to Cuzco Peru

Life had become a bit boring in Medellin during the early part of January, 2023, and I saw an opportunity to take advantage of an unfortunate political situation in Peru to organize some adventure. I knew that political riots were occurring in Peru, and felt this might be a time to visit since I wouldn’t have to wade my way through hordes of tourists to photograph the countryside. I also felt this chaotic moment would allow me to photograph history while it was being made. I did not expect, however, that Peru’s political troubles would be so serious that they would prevent me from visiting Machu Pichu or the sacred valley. I now see that I didn’t thoroughly think through what conditions would be waiting waiting for me when I arrived in Peru.

My flight into Cuzco possessed the unreality of a Hollywood film. About 15 minutes after leaving Lima airport, I looked out the window and saw, mile after mile of a landscape untouched by mankind……no cities, no villages, no roads, not even the occasional glint of a metal roof on a hut. There was only an endless jumble of mountains slamming into each other. I was flying over “terra incognita”. This center of Peru was simply empty of human civilization. I wondered how Francisco Pizaro was ever able to penetrate these mountains and find the Inca capital of Cuzco hundreds of miles further up into the Andes. Then I remembered that the Inca had built a trail from the Pacific to their capital and that the coastal tribes whom the Inca had subjugated were more than happy to show Pizaro how to find Cuzco. Sometimes the human touch isn’t a friendly one.

I had taken the last flight into Cuzco for that day, and dark shadows began growing up out of the valleys as I sailed over them.
After another hour of flight, the plane turned sharply around the end of a mountain and began to descend into a dark, narrow valley. I still looked out at nothing that was even remotely civilized. The plane continued to drop into the gloomy valley. There was no airport ahead, only another mountain. We turned again around a rugged outcrop halfway down its side, and then, I could see below  the first signs of humanity, the tile roofs of scattered houses. There were no flashing lights on the ground guiding the plane to an airport that also remained invisible. We headed down towards a threatening abundance of rooftops. We were soon close enough to the houses that I could count the shirts hanging on a clothesline. Suddenly, Thunk! We had hit something! Fortunately, it was the airport’s tarmac. We had landed! Looking through the window, I saw that Cuzco’s buildings ran up to the fences on every side of the airport. The buildings were only two or three stories high which made it possible for the plane to skim them and land.

The Cuzco airport wasn’t very welcoming. It reminded me of Buffalo’s airport during the 1970s. It was small, dull, grey, and utilitarian. There was no art on the walls, and no signs welcoming you to Cuzco. Just a corridor to the luggage carousel. Now that I come to think of it, the airport was even more depressing than the old one in Buffalo because Cuzco’s airport contained no vendors of any type. In fact, there were no people in the airport at all, except the passengers on my flight and a sad-looking girl staffing a car rental booth. Where the rental cars were located I had no idea, since there were no vehicles in the airport parking lot. There were also no taxis outside the baggage claim area to take me to my hotel. I walked a block through the airport’s empty parking lot to a gate guarded by police where several men were standing around talking to whoever came out of the gate.

I had arrived during  troubled times in Peru. It would be better to say times were more troubled than usual. The country’s president and legislature couldn’t agree on any legislation. So he tried to eliminate it, but his legislative upponents moved faster. They impeached him and threw him in jail. His supporters didn’t like how he had been treated and they took to the streets in protest.

There may have also been counter-protests. I am not sure who was out in the streets and don’t even know what political positions the ex-president’s party or the legislature represented. There are loads of political parties in Peru, and his group made up a very small portion of the coalition which formed his government. I had no idea who the good guys and the bad guys were, or even if there were good guys and bad guys. I only knew that it was a bad time for Peru. By the time I had reached Cuzco 48 people had already died in the south of the country. However, the protests had not been violent here in Cuzco because as a tourist destination that brought much needed income and international attention to Peru, all sides wanted to appear reasonable here.

Cuzco was a good location for the protesters to get their message out to the rest of the world in as positive a light as possible. I am sure the government wanted the same thing.

Still, nobody was taking any chances and police and soldiers were stationed throughout the city.

One of the men waiting outside the airport’s gate grabbed my arm and said, “You need a ride to hotel?”. I said, “Yes, but where is your cab?”. “Follow me, I show you”. I followed him across the street into a dimly lit parking lot filled with empty vans and nothing else. Given that the US State Department had warned that taxi drivers sometimes participated in tourist muggings in Peru, and given that we were the only people in the parking lot, I was more than a little uncomfortable. We finally reached his van. I got in, and we took off down the street toward the historical district where my hotel was located. He apparently wasn’t going to try to mug me, 🙂 though I later learned that he charged me 3 times the normal rate. I suppose it was a kind of mugging, but as it turned out, his exorbitant rate was well worth the price. I looked out my window and decided that I would not have wanted to walk to my hotel even if I knew where it was. The streets around the airport were eerily creepy. The street lights gave out a sickly lemon-colored light that left the doorways and side streets in total darkness. The streets and sidewalks needed serious repair, and worst of all, these sidewalks were completely empty of people. We encountered two police roadblocks on the way to my hotel. They were not there to check out who I was or where I was going, but to force the van to take detours around nighttime demonstrations. I could hear, er, fireworks going off in the distance. The police didn’t seem bothered by it, so I decided not to be bothered by it either. As we got closer to the historical district where my hotel was located, automobile and pedestrian traffic began to increase. The cab pulled next to a brightly lit building. I had made it safely to my hotel with no real problem.

If you visit Cuzco I advise you not to take the last plane in before darkness falls if you don’t want to end up with a bad first impression of the city.

The next morning when I went out into the sunlit street I found Cuzco to be not at all grim or dangerous. I had let my imagination take me someplace that didn’t really exist. That is not to say that Cuzco is a particularly pretty city. It is not. It is a bit drab and rundown.

Its Inca and colonial buildings are constructed out of reddish-brown stone that pretty much just sits there, and its more contemporary buildings are cheaply constructed out of cinder blocks or bricks with some covered with plaster. Unlike Medellin and most other South American cities, there are no high-rise apartments or glassed-in office buildings scraping the sky here. This is probably a wise move since Cuzco has been hit with several devastating earthquakes over the years, (The Inca-built walls are the only man-made structures that survive these quakes). The country’s poverty may also have something to do with the way the city appears. Yet, someone was keeping the sidewalks clean, the air was fresh, and there were no suspicious characters lurking about, as I had imagined the night before. Everyone was busily going about their business and ignoring the protests.
A stoic calm pervaded the city despite its sad appearance and the ongoing street protests.

Cuzco offered a very different atmosphere from any I had previously experienced in other South American cities. No one seemed agitated or emotionally over the top. Its residents were instead patient, quiet, helpful, and practical. I came to like Cuzco a lot!

Several sections of the original Inca city walls remain standing in Cuzco, (one section forms a side of my hotel).

This is remarkable since Cuzco has experienced several severe earthquakes that flattened most of the rest of the city. One question I kept asking myself as I photographed these remaining walls was how could Pizaro’s forces penetrate them. Even with their armor, steel weapons, and horses, Pizaro would have had a difficult time getting over or through them. The defenders could have simply dropped rocks on anyone attempting the long climb to the top, and certainly, no one could topple them or set them on fire. A little research has revealed that Pizaro was very lucky. Just before Pizaro landed, one small section of the walls had been dismantled for repairs. Pizaro’s men found the gap. They and their indigenous allies then poured through it and into the city where their armor, steel weapons, and horses made short work of the defenders.

I had a pretty good idea of what problems I might face after I arrived in Cuzco. In December tourists had been stranded in Machu Picchu for 5 days by the political protests and had started to run out of food when they were finally allowed to leave. Roadblocks also prevented tourists from entering or returning from the Sacred Valley and other archeological sites. While Machu Pichu had reopened, (temporarily as it turned out), I learned there was a strong possibility that I might have to spend a lot of time bottled up in Cuzco. Since I’m not a total idiot, I booked my rooms at the most comfortable Cuzco hotel I could find, the Palacio Inka. It was built into part of the ancient Inca city wall, and though it looked rather plain on the outside, its interior was absolutely beautiful. (A lesson that beauty can be more than skin deep). The lobby was filled with antiques and paintings by artists from the 17th-century Cuzco School of Art. It provided a bountiful breakfast buffet, (I knew I would not go hungry as those Machu Picchu tourists did). It also offered several perks I never used, like a whirlpool and spa. I did, however, take advantage of its extensive cable TV offerings to stay informed about news from the outside world and its understanding of the Peruvian political situation, (very little was covered). Due to the protests only about 10% of the rooms of this fabulous hotel were filled, and most of the guests were from other South American countries.

I liked this condition at first but eventually would have liked someone to chat with over breakfast. The hotel offered a free class on how to make the perfect pisco sour one evening, but I turned it down when it became apparent that I would be the only person who would show up.

Still, it was nice to quickly transition from the chaos of the street to the temple-like stillness of the hotel, simply by walking through a massive oak doorway.

Though I was never able to travel to Machu Picchu or the Sacred Valley, I found plenty of opportunities to photograph interesting sights in and just outside Cuzco. One of those locations was the Convent of Santa Catalina. It was established by the Dominicans on a site in Cuzco previously used to house holy virgins by the Inca. This was probably done to establish a sense of continuity of the convent’s sacredness in the minds of the indigenous population who were being converted to Christianity at the time.

The site had been the enclosed home of the Inca’s “Escogides” or “chosen maidens” who, at first, seem much like the unmarried nuns later sheltered there. A closer look reveals that the Inca and Catholic objectives for the maidens were very different. The convent was established for the maintenance of women who were too poor to acquire an adequate dowry to allow them to marry. The church and local community provided for their maintenance, and in return, the nuns would pray for the benefit of the community and produce products for the community’s use.
The Inca, on the other hand, had built an “Acllawasi” or “Home for the Chosen Ones” as a residence for the most beautiful maidens of the Inca elite. These girls entered the enclosure as 8-year-olds and were from that point forbidden from any communion with men until they were of marriageable age. Any man entering the enclosure would be executed. When they were old enough for marriage some would leave to marry Inca dignitaries. Others would leave to become servants of the Inca religious temples and be considered married to the Sun God.
Their primary occupations at the temples were preparing ceremonial textiles and beverages for Sun God rituals. The rest of the chosen ones would permanently remain in the enclosure as virgins to become “mamacunas”, teachers for future generations of chosen maidens. (This last calling does create a vague parallel between these older residents of the acllawasi and some modern-day nuns).
The convent is now a museum containing tableaux of monastic life and fine artworks.

I probably have left you with the impression that the protests prevented me from photographing any Inca ruins. I was indeed unable to reach Machu Picchu or the Sacred Valley, but I managed to photograph four Inca sites, plus several different views of the remains of Inca city walls inside Cuzco. In fact, I probably have more pictures of the Inca ruins than you really want to see despite my efforts to weed out the weakest ones. I reached three of the Inca ruins simply by luck. One, Saqsaywaman sits on a hill overlooking Cuzco and is easily reached.

There were no protesters blocking entry to this location. One of the street vendors in Cuzco told me it was closed down, but this was not true. It was open all the time I was in Cuzco, and was a spectacular site. I will describe it later. Despite the vendor’s discouraging words I decided to walk up to Saqsrywaman anyway for the exercise, on Friday, January 13th by way of the artisan neighborhood of San Blas. When I reached Saqsrywaman’s open ticket booth, a young man stepped forward and said, “The roadblock on the other side of Saqsrywaman has been taken down, and I can drive you to three other Inca ruins further up in the mountains for 70 sols.” I paid the 70 sols he requested, and off we went.
Sure enough, about a mile up the road someone had toppled a large tree into the road using a chainsaw. Someone else, however, had moved the tree to the side of the road. Leaves and small branches still covered the road, but our van easily passed over them. He drove past the first two sites I would later visit to the furthest one he could reach without encountering any other roadblocks. This was Tambomachay, a temple that sits on one of the first ritual pathways, (ceques) built from Cuzco.

The temple honored the sacred nature of water.

It is thought that spiritual leaders took ritual baths here. The aqueducts bringing water to the site still operate, though the location of the baths themselves is unclear.

Just a stone’s throw down the road from Tambomachay heading back towards Cuzco lies Pukapukara which translates into “The Red Fort”.

Archeologists aren’t certain what function this edifice served, though most believe it was a small fortified outpost guarding the way from Cuzco to Tambomachay. Mysterious symbols have been found engraved into its walls, however, which raises the possibility that it performed a religious function instead.

Two or three kilometers further along the road towards Cuzco, I reached Q’enqo, “labyrinth”, which was not a particularly pretty spot, nor should it have been since its function always centered around death. Funerals for the elite were held here, and the mummy of the great Inca ruler and builder, Pachacuteq, was originally kept here. A passageway cuts into the solid stone of a huge mound, and I was able to follow it to an underground chamber where the mummification of the dead occurred, and where other rituals for the dead were conducted.

Outside facing a large plaza stands a massive rock that once was a large sculpture of a Puma. This was defaced beyond recognition during the 16th century on the orders of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo as part of the Church’s crusade to extirpate all former idolatries. It was a sad and creepy place.

I next moved a kilometer down the road to the back entrance to Saqsaywaman, which sits on top of a hill overlooking Cuzco. In many ways. it shares many similarities with Machu Pichu.

They both consist of ruins sitting on terraces that climb up to the top of a mountain. (Surprisingly enough, the top levels of Saqsaywaman are a little higher in altitude than Machu Pichu, (which you will surely realize if you decide to walk to the top from the Cuzco city center below). Saqsaywaman like Machu Picchu, is also immense, covering hundreds of acres.

Saqsaywaman was originally a complex for hosting both individual and mass public rituals honoring the Sun God. It looks like it might have been built as a fort because the Spanish removed most of the smaller stones to build the Cathedral and many of the other buildings below in Cuzco while leaving those stones too heavy for them to bother moving.

It was, however, used once as a fort by the Manca Inca, a puppet ruler installed by the Pizaro brothers, when he revolted against them in 1536.

I didn’t stay long on the day I took these pictures because I succumbed to the curse of Altahuapa’s revenge. Perhaps my presence offended the Sun God in some way. I did return several days later. I took a lot more pictures the second time I visited. (See below).

The protester’s roadblocks may have prodded me into taking more interesting photos of Cuzco itself than I had originally intended. I came to Peru to photograph only Inca ruins, but I was often disappointed with their bland colors and lifelessness. If I had gotten to Machu Picchu or the Sacred Valley, I’m sure I would have ended up taking the same boring  pictures that everyone else before me had taken. The extra time I had to spend in Cuzco forced me to look for more colorful and interesting subjects.
About two dozen indigenous ladies were traveling about Cuzco with their pet alpacas. Like the cartoon characters who populate New York’s Times Square, they made their living by posing for tips. They were a lot less aggressive, however, in their, er, marketing behavior. Yes, I know. There tourists have taken millions of similar photos before me, but each photo is unique depending on the mood of the ladies, and the alpacas at the moment the photo is taken. These ladies certainly did not dress in these traditional outfits when at home. Note that they are wearing modern slacks under their costumes.
A neighborhood I would recommend to anyone visiting Cuzco is the San Blas neighborhood which clambers up the mountain that begins rising from the central plaza.

This is an artist’s enclave that is loaded with small shops and unique restaurants. I ate there at a vegetarian Thai restaurant and inhaled a wood-fired pizza at another spot.

The outside of most of this area’s buildings may look rough and worn out, but if you manage to get into some of their inner courtyards you can find yourself in the midst of natural beauty and art.

The second time I visited Saqsaywaman I took a lot of pictures of the ruins. I’ll leave you with several of my moments now frozen in time.