Discovering the World Sans Valise: Cusco, a beautiful colonial city situated in the Peruvian Andes at 3,400 m above sea level

We took a plane from Lima to Cusco. After flying in circles over Cusco for 40 minutes without any updates from the pilot (quite stressful), we finally landed safely. We were quite excited about the idea of discovering the town, but were also a little apprehensive about the important change in altitude, and the possible altitude sickness experienced by some travelers.We had brought with us some medicine to prevent it....just in case. I just felt a slight head ache after the first night. Marion, our daughter, and Keith, her husband, joined us the following day. They arrived directly from London where they live. The "retrouvailles" were really fun to celebrate. We explored Cusco for 2 days and stayed again one night in Cusco after our trip to Machu Picchu. We had enough time to explore the archeological sites of Tambomachay, Puca Pucara, Qenco and Sacsayhuaman, all located above Cusco. Here are some pictures from Cusco and these archeological sites.

With Marion and Keith!

We had the chance to see a wonderful open air exhibit of Xu Hongfei art work, He is a well known chinese scultptor. His "chubby women" sculpture series is delightful and celebrates the beauty of the feminine curves :)). Nice surprise to see this art work in Cusco!

The Incas had the ability to build walls of perfectly matching stones. There are many examples of this Inca architecture in Cusco.

The large stone below has 12 different corners that makes it match perfectly with the other surrounding stones. It is a work of perfection.

We really enjoyed the restaurant "Organika"offering trout ceviche, salads with fresh produce grown in the restaurant's garden. We ate alpaca meat for the first time here. The meat was tender and tasty. The pisco sour did not disappoint us either.

Visit of the Inca ruins above Cusco: Tambomackay, Puca Pucara, Qenco and the large site of Saksaywaman. Again the stones were perfectly carved to create solid and sturdy walls, made without mortar. The lack of mortar allows rocks to move independently during earthquakes and therefore explains why these walls have been able to withstand earthquakes of high magnitude on the Richter scale. This is a tremendous testament to the skills of the Inca engineers!

Tambomachay