It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting in front of a roaring fire in the hotel dining room. Today is Machu Picchu day and it’s going to be full, leaving at 8:30am and returning about 9pm. I was up very early Saturday morning to get the blog up before we had to meet the group at 7:30am. Thankfully, the restaurant of the airport Wydham opens at 4am. I was up at 4:30 and went down for coffee and got it done. Ash came down at some point and joined me. We were “bags out at 6:45” which means they had to be outside our room so the porter could pick them up.

We had a 10am flight into Cusco which is in the Andes, a new mountain range for me. It was beautiful from the plane – I’m not used to seeing this much green but there’s actually quite a bit of farming done here, different things grown at different elevations. These folks have it all figured out and have been living this way for thousands of years.

Note the temperature range while we are here. It’s currently 38 degrees and this time I packed for it! It’s fall here, winter starts in a month. But we are happy we will have blue skies and be out of the gloom we had while in Lima.

Cusco is right in the middle of the Andes, and was known as the capitol of the Inca civilization. It has about 600k people living here now, but even back in the 1400s it was about 125k. It was the most significant city on the continent in its day.

We had a tour of Convento Santo Domingo, a convent the Dominicans built on top of an Inca palace once European colonization began. Our guide, Caterina, is part of the tour staff, and she took this photo. She grew up here and still lives in Cusco so is super knowledgeable about everything – after a while I know there’s no way I’m retaining all those details. But she was very good about pointing out where original Inca construction was and where the Europeans built over it. One of the things the Incas had figured out was how to build for seismic activity – Cusco and Machu Picchu are on or near fault lines. The stuff the Europeans built on top didn’t hold as well. This particular complex was built around 1600.

This is Plaza de Armas, one of 3 squares in the historic center. More on this later.

We had lunch at Inkagrill right on the square, as you can see through the window!

They started us off with warm bread, butter, and a really nice chimichurri. It was spicy but not hot, which is perfect.

A pumpkin soup which was the best I’ve ever had. I know because I’m not a pumpkin fan but this was delicious, over salty in the most perfect way.

The main was simple perfection: grilled chicken lightly seasoned and surprisingly moist, mashed potatoes, squash and peppers.

We had coffees above, and a simple fruit salad of watermelon and papaya below. This was a fixed menu for the tour, everyone got the same thing.

Meet Pachacuti, represented by the statue in the middle of Plaza de Armas. He was the 9th ruler of the Kingdom of Cusco and later Emperor of the Inca Empire. Pachacuti began the expansion of the Inca dominion from the valley of Cusco to a big part of western South America. Some say that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for him.

This is the Cusco Cathedral, or Cathedral Basilica of the Virgin of the Assumption. Caterina took us on a detailed tour of this. You are lucky: photos were not allowed. You know I love cathedrals and I’d rank this as top 3 most interesting I’ve ever been in. And, I got an answer to my question from the prior blog as to why there are no crucifixes over the altar. (The other two, by the way, are St. Peter’s in the Vatican, and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.)

Here’s the gist: the Incas the Spanish missionaries encountered were quite happy with the many gods they had, based on natural things like earth, sun, moon, and weren’t very interested in Christianity. So, the Catholics got creative, and started morphing things to be more local-like so that the people could buy into it easier. For example, these crucifixes don’t have Christ in a loin cloth, but in a skirt, which was what men at the time wore in these parts. Most of the statues have wigs on them, usually made of human hair donated by followers, in order to have them more human-like. But most importantly, the big sell on the concept of Mary was that she was “like the mother of earth” which the locals just simplified to “she is mother earth.” They were big on gods being multiple things, both human-like and deity-like. So with that, Mary became the focus on Christianity here, which is why she is always the attraction at the main altar, not Christ. This American (ex)Catholic found all that completely fascinating.

From there we had a 90-minute bus ride to our hotel. Cusco, by the way, is at 11,200 feet and we have definitely been feeling that. The hotel is at 9000, and Machu Picchu today will be at 8000. I’ve had a slight headache the entire time and Ash hasn’t been feeling great as he started to catch a cold yesterday morning and now on top of the high altitude and low oxygen. He’s still resting and I’m down in the dining room getting this done. The connection in the room last night was awful and I made essentially no progress on the blog, so have to get it done between when the dining room opens at 5:30 and we lave at 8:30. And it’s going to happen.

Part of the huge lobby area of our hotel, Tambo del Inka. It’s a Marriot property, so breakfast is identical (and sadly American) to what we had in Lima.

The room is beautiful but weird – over engineered in some ways and under engineered in others. For example – all of the lamp lights are tied to switches, and multiples of them. They don’t have their own switches. So you can’t just turn on a single light, so the work I started on last night on the blog I did in the dark while Ash slept. Yet, there’s only one plug we could find to charge things with. But it’s comfortable and I was able to sleep about 7 hours on and off.

The view outside our window.

And, it has a dressing room. Ash swears we’ve had one before but seems like I would remember this. There’s a full length mirror to the left of that stool,

There were alpacas to play with out front when we got here.

This is the whole property as seen from the entrance. It’s much bigger than this photo suggests.

It has a beautiful indoor heated pool….

…that extends to the outside.

And two hot tubs. Once we got settled, I came down here while Ash rested to relax a bit after a full travel day.

I laid in the corner of that outside pool area to dry off. The weather app said it was 57 degrees but it felt great.

Ash made sure I captured a photo of the nice coffee and tea setup we have in the room. He’s already packed some of the nicer teas to bring home,

It is a beautiful dining room. Last night we were at the table on the right. At this moment I’m sitting in that chair by the fire just right of center facing the fire.

It was a huge buffet. After a salad sampling, we hit the main line. Starting at Noon and going clockwise: grilled vegetables, rice pilaf, chard, pasta pomodoro, bacon-wrapped chicken, beef medallions in a mushroom sauce. Everything was great, especially the chard and beef.

Dessert was a bit of chocolate mousse and this amazing corn cake which we both agreed was incredible.

Caterina had collected our passports as a group so the hotel could make the copies they needed. I went up to collect them before we forgot as we have to take them with us to Machu Picchu today. This is the dramatic entrance into the dining room from the lobby. We were on (and still are this morning) the other side of that fire.

Ash decided he wanted more dessert so we ordered something off the menu. This was tangerine baba. Ash says it’s one of the best desserts he’s ever had, and I’ll agree. Certainly, one of the prettiest. It was tangerine ice cream over a piece of cake in some kind of amazing sauce. He at the mint, I ate the flower.

Since I didn’t make much progress with the blog last night, I decided to give up the frustration and go to bed early. Perhaps that’s what I was supposed to do since I did get a decent rest. And, now I’m done with blog an hour before we have to leave. Mission accomplished.

It’s a beautiful day so be sure to come back tomorrow for hopefully great photos of Machu Picchu.