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In four days we traveled well over 50 miles under our own power to get from a mountain pass at 14,500ft. above the Sacred Valley to Machu Picchu. Some of that was on the original Inca Trail, a sort of interstate highway for people who must’ve been half mountain goat. The photos aren’t great — and there weren’t many of them — but boy were we tired.

Note: I’m no longer in Peru, but since the U.S. provides a fast(er) computer and consistent internet access, I’m finishing up these last few posts from home.

Peruvian taxi drivers are a strange breed. Part Evel Knievel, part Confucius, these guys (I did not once see a woman driving one) seem to dispense white-knuckle moments and deep thoughts with equal regularity. On my first full day in Lima we landed in the back of a cab with a driver who spoke pretty good English. We told him we were headed to Cuzco in a few days and he instantly lit up at the mention of his previous home. “Ahh, Cuzco,” he said with a big smile and the jerky cadence of non-native speakers. “Every day is dancing day.”

Though not technically in Cuzco, we visited nearby Pisac to hike to some ruins and see the Fiesta Virgin de Carmen, where dancing was indeed the order of the day.

Cuzco’s most impressive ruins lie just about a 25 min. walk up the ridge from the main square. Called Sacsayhuaman (Pronounced Sexy Woman, seriously) the temple doubled as a military installation, which is apparent from the remaining fortress-like walls that weren’t dismantled for building supplies by the invading Spaniards. Also had a beautiful day in Cuzco proper.

According to Inca legend, Cuzco is the navel of the world, so named because it is the planet’s “center”. After airline delays and an unscheduled stop in the small mountain town of Arequipa, we arrived in Cuzco around lunchtime and set to work seeing the sites. After the smog and congestion of Lima it was a relief to see some blue skies. First up was the Incan Temple of the Sun/Dominican Church.  A massive earthquake in 1950  cracked hundreds of years of plaster, revealing to archeologists that the long-sought Incan temple was, in fact, the foundation and walls of one of the city’s largest Catholic structures. It seems the Incan’s knack for engineering was too good to tear down, to the Dominicans simply built over the site in an attempt to disguise it. Regardless, it was beautiful, as is the rest of the city.

Inca walls inside the Temple of the Sun.

Stone blocks made by the Incas to construct enormous walls without the use of mortar. The hole in the foreground would have a "male" block fitted to it, while the shaped cutouts would be filled with molten copper and used as "staples" to hold the blocks together.

Terraces outside the Temple of the Sun served as a place to common people to place offerings to the sun god, as only priests and the Inca king were allowed in the temple.

The city of Cuzco

A church and hillside above the Plaza De Armas in downtown Cuzco.

The cathedral in the Plaza De Armas at sunset.

About 200 yards from the hostel I’ve been staying at here in Lima, there is a huge early Incan pyramid and archeological site that’s been under excavation since the early 1980s. Built between 200 and 7900 AD, the complex was most likely a textile and religious center for the coastal-dwelling Limans. For many years, development destroyed the fringes of the site and the main pyramid was a dumping ground for locals here in the Miraflores neighborhood because it didn’t look like a pyramid at all, just a big hill. Excavations revealed a 7-level main structure, surrounded by plazas, walls, administrative centers and evidence of human sacrifices. Alas, as Lima is an  incredibly cloudy and dreary place, the photos leave much to be desired.

On my first day in Peru, we nearly got caught i a construction workers’ strike,,survived death-defying taxi rides and visited the tomb of Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizzaro in the cathedral in Lima Centro. It was an incredible church, originally built as a small chapel in 1541 and expanded on until its completion in 1622. On a Tuesday morning it was a blessed respite from the gathering riot police outside. Welcome to South America.