Sacsayhuaman

BITE-SIZED ENTRY

Sacsayhuman

Finally got to check out Sacsayhuaman today. Beautiful day so I walked the huge uphill hike. The construction of the Inca's primary fortress with huge stones is really quite impressive considering that they didn't even have the wheel.

Lots of great views over Cusco too, including from Peru's take on Christ the Redeemer (this was a gift from Palestinians and other groups who were given refuge in the 1940s)

Had a huge Indian dinner in the Indian restaurant at the city-centre end of the Calle de la Sol. The lady in there had a special deal whereby you get unlimited rice and water with your meal. I unfortunately took this too literally and ate an "unlimited" amount of rice with my Paneer Palak for around 15 soles (about 3 euro). Quite possibly the best Indian meal I'd had in ages, but in Cusco these special offers (the low tourist count at the moment is making restaurants extremely competitive) including a huge pizza meal I had the night before, are things to watch out for as it's certainly not healthy eating so much at this altitude!!

My tour of Cusco in the afternoon was certainly "weighed" down by all that damned rice

One thing I've neglected to mention about Cvsco is the city's flag. Each town in Perv has a vniqe flag, and Cvsco's jvst so happens to have an vncanny resemblance to the "gay" rainbow flag. On first arriving in Cvsco I noticed the abvndance of these flags aloft in shop windows and thovght that this mvst be the most gay friendly city in the world! It was also rather amvsing to see the rainbow flag aloft with the national flag in the Plaza de Armas on Svnday morning for the weekly military parade. What exactly that commvnicated abovt Perv's military is open for opinion!

Apologies abovt the odd vse of "v" in this and the previovs paragraph... the damned laptop keyboard has malfvnctioned and has left several keys in a non responsive state. Get what yov pay for I gvess

Having recently come up with a complete final itinerary for the rest of the trip I proceeded to start booking flights this evening. As I'm going to have to fly around the large areas of Argentina and Chile, not to mention go to Easter Island, it's probably gonna cost me a fair whack!

My overnight bus to Puno at 7pm was nowhere near as comfortable as what I'd been used to with CIAL. CIAL didn't go down that far south-east so I was forced to crunch myself into the front row of a packed bus with a company called Santa Cruz or something. Didn't get a wink of sleep all night...