So yesterday was Day 2 of our Geckos 9 day Cuzco and Machu Picchu tour. Essentially it is the first full day of the tour as Day 1 is pretty much just meeting the group leader and staying in the hotel in Lima.
Day 2 involved getting up very early to catch a flight from Lima to Cuzco and pretty much meeting everyone for the first time. We have a group of 16 and 12 of us are Aussies, so its nice to have a familiar sense of humour and hear a ‘normal’ accent again.
Due to Cuzco being situated at 3500m above sea level, there is a high chance of altitude sickness, so days 2 and 3 of this 9 day tour are basically just for acclimitisation. You have lots of free time and can decide to do things by yourself, with others, or as a whole group.
We arrived into Cusco at about 9am and were checked into the hotel by 10am. We are staying nights 2 and 3 in a hotel called Posada de la Abuela, which is about 10 minutes walk from the main square (Plaza de Amos) of the historical part of Quito. It is a nice, quite hotel and the rooms are large and well furnished. Breakfast is pretty basic but the showers are hot and have excellent pressure.
After we had checked in, John, our group leader took us on a bit of a walking tour of Cuzco. For lunch we ate at Jacks Restaurant, which is actually owned by an Aussie lady, and the food is awesome! Huge portions and proper Western style comfort food, a definite place to go for those missing home.
We also checked out a couple of churches and had the Incan history and architecture of Cuzco explained to us. Basically the Incans built everything with very little mortar using interlocking hand carved stones instead, and a trapezoidal shape. When the Spanish came they then built directly on top of a lot of the Incan building, but because they built ‘traditional’ style shapes and with standard materials, their buildings always tend to fall down during earthquakes, yet the Incan buildings remain, which is pretty amazing, considering most of the Incan stuff was built anywhere from 500 to 700 years ago.
For dinner we went to a restaurant around the corner and got to try llama steak. It too was great. Kind of like a gamier version of lamb, but not as smokey as goat. I know there is one place in Australia that breeds Alpacas for meat, so if you get a chance to buy some then i would suggest you do. Just cook it like normal chops or steak, with a bit of pepper and it is amazing! Will definitely be having it again (oh and i also won a couple of beers for eating the eyeballs of the guinea pig that was purchased). The night finished off with a few of us drunkenly wandering Cuzco to try and find the ANZAC day AFL game on TV, with no success.
- Shaun
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