The trip from Puno to Cusco was largely without incident. Wooksie was recovering from her hospitalisation, probably the best way to describe her was fragile, having a 10 hour bus ride with her feet up looking at the landscape as the altitude dropped was a good way of spending the day.
We stopped off to have a look at a museum and some ancient sites. It started to become clear that the history of the indigenous people was pretty vague and did not seem to develop into anything significant before the Inca nation emerged by conquering what existed before.
We arrived at our hotel in central Cusco with Wooksie feeling better and able to go for a gentle walk around the town. My alarm bells for the Inca Trail were ringing loud as it was only 72 hours before we were due to head off on the Inca Trail so the recovery needed to be fast.
It is worth noting that if you do the bus trip from Puno to Cusco, the bus drops you outside of the main city, so you have to get a taxi into the centre, this is a pain if you haven’t organised one when you book the bus.
We found our way to the hotel and I left Wooksie in our room to recover and went of a scouting mission to get a bit of orientation around Puno.
It is basically a beautiful town square in classic Spanish Central American style. The Incas has plenty of gold so the Spanish invested time in beautiful buildings.
The town spreads out in all directions, including up a cliff behind the main square, there are lots of boutique hotels up on this hill as they give great views down through the valleys.
As with everywhere in Peru, there is lots of traffic and every trip is fraught with danger when crossing the roads. Cusco is busy but the town square is where most tourists head for and to be fair, it can be quite peaceful when the traffic calms down.
Checking out online I discovered they had two Irish Bars, both of which claimed to be the highest Irish Bar in the world. So I headed over to investigate and found they were only about 50m apart. I’m guessing the lower of the two was first and was pretty annoyed when the other one turned up.
They both provided great sources of safe food for Wooksie and part of her recovery, live music and lots of fellow adventurers from all walks of life and all ages to chat.
The unexpected treat that I discovered was a Starbucks on the other corner of the square, this place was turning into a little bit of heaven for us as we got a bit of western culture back into us before heading back into the wilds.
Our investigations of Cusco were largely based in the streets around the main square. The ancient Inca museum was probably the highlight, as that was where all the artifacts from the archaeology were displayed.
it further reinforced our view that pre Inca, little was known about the civilisations that existed before, and most of the items on display were rudimentary tools which we would associate with the Stone Age in the UK.
The side streets were attractive, colourful, full of hawkers trying to sell us stuff and great place for Wooksie to continue to acclimate herself to the altitude.
Then it was time to prepare for the early morning departure to the Sacred Valley of the Incas and more altitude adjustment time for Wooksie..
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