Day 12 - a free day in Cusco


This was our free day in Cusco, but also our only free day for the whole trip, so we decided to have a rest. That thought didn’t last long as we found a walking tour in our guidebook and thought we’d like to see where it took us.
It started in the Place de Ames and then headed off back towards our hotel.  As we headed up the hill, we came to more red stone buildings including an arch, more churches and more re-used Inca stones.
At the top of the hill was Cusco’s market, an amazing place with tourist textile stalls, veg, flowers, meat, grains, cheese and at one end lots of street food.  The chicken soup seemed to be the most popular mid-morning.
Then it was back down to the main square via lots of local shops. Then we climbed back up to San Blas, going further into the alleys than we had done yesterday.
We visited the really fascinating Machu Picchu museum and saw some of the artefacts recovered and some films about the discovery and the subsequent scientific interpretation of the site.  The craftsmen were local people and the Inca elite used it as a summer palace.
After some shopping, we stopped at a café serving empanadas for lunch and arrived back at the hotel just as it started to shower.  After the shower, we headed out again to see the regional museum, which gave us an interesting overview of the Quechua, then Inca civilisations, the Spanish conquest and the resurgence of the Quechua people eventually ending in independence for Peru.  This linked what we had learned and experienced in the last 10 days very well and added the part we knew little about, Peru’s independence from Spain.  All our guides had been mostly Quechua and very proud of their heritage.




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