Cuzco, Peru

Cuzco is the hub for Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley of the Incas. It is a cultural conglomeration with people offering massages on every street corner! ¨massage, massage, lady?, pedicure lady, manicure lady?¨It´s kind of funny at first and then it gets really annoying! Tony did offer to buy me a massage as a late birthday present and I took him up on it!

The city itself was supposedly designed to be in the shape of a Puma which is a sacred animal to the Incas. The head is at the top of the city where there is an Inca Ruin called Sacsawayman (or sexy woman as most people pronouce it) We were able to walk to four different ruins around the city. Within the city, many buildings are also historic. When the Spanish came to conquer the Incas, they destroyed most of the temples and rebuilt their own churchs on the foundations. So many buildings have beautiful Incan Stonework for their bases which you can see easily around the city. They didn´t use any morter or anything, they just shaped the rocks perfectly to fit next to each other. There is a rock in Cuzco that has 12 angles to it and there is one in Machu Picchu that has 32! They were truly amazing engineers, they also used a trapezoidal technique that protected the buildings from Earthquakes.

We have enjoyed Cusco, many great restaurants and they even had a bar with NFL Sunday ticket so we got to enjoy some Futbol Americano! Lots to do in this town... we certainly have taken advantage of it...