Sexy Woman...and the rest...

I`ve just spent today doing the four main Inca sites that can be reached from Cusco. You can take a tour, but I decided to DIY to add to the adventure.

The first was Sacsayhuamán which is about 20 minutes walk out of Cusco. What`s really impressive is the construction of the walls and how closely fitting the stones are - particularly given how big some of them are. The jagged shape of the walls are said to represent the mouth of a Puma - but I couldn`t see it.

Here`s one with some people to give a perspective as to how big the stones are they used:
The pronunciation of the name sounds a bit like sexy woman, and is what everyone says when you tell them where you`ve been..."ah Sexy Woman" - hence the title of my post - sorry to disappoint everyone - but there is no gossip to share :-)

I then walked to Qènqo - or Labyrinth in English - which is a large rock with tunnels carved out of it.

And then I caught the local minibus to Tambomachay to see the Inca Bath. This site is at about 3,900 meters, so the air is pretty thin, and the uphill climb didn`t help. Just over the road is Pukapukara, which was used as a large fort. Here`s a few random pics:

These are of Qenqo:


And these are of the Inca Bath`s - good job they had bath`s or they`d have been called StInca`s :-) Yep - it`s a terrible joke:

A slightly amusing story - I got the collectivo and asked in my best Spanish of they went to Cusco. They said yes, and we set off. A conversation followed in which Plaza De Armas was mentioned, and as that`s where I wanted to go - I assumed they`d let me out at the right place.

The journey goes on for about an hour, and I don`t recognize anything, but I do know that we are going in roughly the right direction. After a while, there`s only me and the driver, and he pulls up next to some other buses way up on the hillside on the outskirts of town and tells me it`s the end of the line.

After much trying to work out what was going on, I asked for a bus back to Sacsayhuamán, and they pointed one out. The driver of the first bus got chatting to the driver of the new bus, and I`m fairly sure they were having a good old laugh at my expense.

Anyway - the new driver tells me where to get off, and after 10minutes walk I make it back to the place. I`m sure they`ll be having a good old laugh in the pub about it.

I met up again with my Romanian friends and had dinner again which they kindly paid for. It was Romania`s national day on the 1st of December by the way.

That`s it for now - there are going to be some delays in future posts as the Internet speeds out of the main areas are slow and it`s almost impossible to upload pictures.