At just under two weeks, our stop in Cusco, Peru would be the longest of our South America trip so far…and we needed it! It had been almost three months since we left Spain (halfway through our six months of travel) and travel fatigue was setting in.
Sadly, we got off to a bad start. Our Airbnb wasn’t great. The kitchen was not well equipped and very small, the internet didn’t work as advertised (not good when you have to work) and it got very cold at night.
Cusco was really noisy as well. Lots of whistling and yelling and drivers who honk their horns every time they breathed regardless of the time of day. When you always honk your horn, you never honk your horn. It took us one short walk to stop paying any attention to it (just like the locals) thereby rendering the action of the honk completely useless. Also by this point, we’d seen enough ruins to last a lifetime. Terribly narrow minded of us, we know, but in our defense we’d seen a lot…a lot.
European cynicism was setting in too. I don’t know why, but it took it a long time to sink in that as impressive as the Incans were, most of what we were looking at was from the 1500s – same time as Da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa and designing a flying machine, and roughly the same age as the pub in C’s village in Scotland. So after the tenth person informed us that ‘the Incans did all this without the invention of the wheel!’ all we could think was, ‘how the hell had they not invented the wheel yet!?’ We’re terrible people.
Fortunately, we stuck it out and quickly realized it was just a two day lull. We made the most of the kitchen for some meals but eating out in Cusco was the best we’ve experienced yet in South America.
We put on some white noise at night and got used to the cold. We also had the internet fixed and got into a much needed routine of work and home school. We even came to enjoy Cusco itself.
It’s no Cuenca, but it was a very pleasant town. More touristy than most places in South America, but that has its benefits (great restaurants, safety), as well as its pitfalls – stand still in the historic center for more than five minutes and you’ll be swarmed by people selling sunglasses, pictures, massages or bus tours, as well as traditionally dressed locals who will dump a baby llama on you then charge you for a picture. We hate saying no to these people because they are just trying to make a living, but you’ll go broke very quickly if you don’t.
As much of a tourist destination as it is, Cusco doesn’t have a lot of “big” attractions. A 12-cornered stone is frequently listed as one of the main attractions (no? Me neither). Instead, its charm lies in walking the streets and taking in the ambiance.
C and L did another of the ‘main attractions’: Chocolate making. It was very expensive, but they did get to keep the chocolate they made, which made the price a little more palatable. We really want to be positive here…but we just can’t. We pretty much just poured some chocolate into a mold, added some extras, then had to walk around the square for 30 minutes while it hardened. Sorry, don’t get it.
We met up with two other traveling families in Cusco and that also helped tremendously. The first was a delightful family from Canada. They lived in California and were traveling through South America for a year. We met them for a nice meal one day and met them again at the Sacsayhuaman ruins another day. The kids played together for hours and all got along really well. I think we all needed that!
The second family was from the UK. We met them at the local park twice. They were great company and we enjoyed sharing our travel motivation and stories from the road with them. They were at the end of their stay in South America and itching to get back to the UK. They were initially eager to leave the UK, but found themselves missing it as they traveled. Not the first family to tell us how they traveled the world and fell in love with home. We were starting to sympathize with that!
After a bad start, but a strong finish, our time in Cusco was up. We take with us fond memories of the town that recharged our travel batteries! Next up, Bolivia via the night bus.
